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testcritic

UserTesting 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

Quote on request

Quote only

From $166 per month (Growth, billed annually)

Free tier

What drives the bill

The metric that actually scales your invoice.

Annual contracts, historically in the tens of thousands. Priced by seats and study volume, not per session.

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 free tier; demo and trial on request.

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

Open source

Self-hostable

No-code authoring

Languages

Codeless
Codeless

Platforms

WebiOSAndroidDesktop
Web

Fits teams

Enterprise
Solo / side projectStartupScale-up / mid-market

Adoption

Category standard

UserTesting (Thoma Bravo) · since 2007

Established

Lyssna · since 2011

Strengths

  • The deepest participant panel, including hard-to-reach professional segments.
  • Sessions come back within hours, not days.
  • Analysis tooling — transcripts, sentiment, clip creation — makes findings shareable.
  • 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 with a high minimum commitment; unaffordable for small teams.
  • Panel participants are experienced testers, which can skew behaviour towards articulate narration.
  • Annual contracts do not suit occasional research needs.
  • 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

Enterprises running continuous research with dedicated researchers.

Design teams that want quick evidence for everyday interface decisions.

All of these integrate with: Figma, Slack.

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