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testcritic

Respondent vs Lyssna

Feature checklists rarely decide anything. What decides it is the pricing metric, who has to write the tests, and which limitation you can live with.

Entry price

From $40 per B2C session at pay-as-you-go, plus the incentive you set

Paid

From $166 per month (Growth, billed annually)

Free tier

What drives the bill

The metric that actually scales your invoice.

Session fees are $40 B2C and $80 B2B at pay-as-you-go, falling about 30% on a large annual commitment, with a further discount for unmoderated studies. You are only charged for completed sessions — no-shows and screen-outs are free. Incentives are separate and you fund them: $100-$400 per professional B2B participant is normal, on top of the session fee.

Growth buys 5 in-depth studies a month, 5 seats and unlimited self-recruited responses. Panel responses are purchased separately per participant, typically a low single-digit dollar amount for general audiences.

Free tier

No subscription required; pay per completed session.

Free plan: unlimited quick studies, 3 seats and 15 self-recruited responses.

Open source

Self-hostable

No-code authoring

Languages

Codeless
Codeless

Platforms

Web
Web

Fits teams

StartupScale-up / mid-marketEnterprise
Solo / side projectStartupScale-up / mid-market

Adoption

Established

Respondent · since 2016

Established

Lyssna · since 2011

Strengths

  • Reaches professional segments that general panels simply do not contain.
  • Verification meaningfully reduces participants misrepresenting their role.
  • No subscription commitment.
  • Extremely fast — a first-click test can be designed, run and answered inside an hour.
  • Cheap enough to use for routine design decisions rather than special projects.
  • Simple test types that non-researchers can run correctly.

Limitations

  • Expensive per participant once incentives are included.
  • Recruitment only, no research tooling.
  • Some fraudulent participation persists despite verification.
  • Narrow: it answers specific comparative questions, not exploratory ones.
  • No moderated sessions.
  • Panel is general-population; niche B2B audiences are hard to reach.

Best for

B2B product teams that need to talk to specific professional roles.

Design teams that want quick evidence for everyday interface decisions.

All of these integrate with: Slack.

Pricing last reviewed August 2026 and is indicative only — confirm on each vendor’s own page.