Feedback Tool Pricing Explained (2026)
The headline price on a feedback tool means little. This guide breaks down the 4 pricing models with worked cost examples for 7+ tools.
Every feedback tool leads with a friendly headline number — “$29/month,” “free plan available,” “starts at $15.” And that number tells you almost nothing, because feedback tools don’t charge for the same thing. One charges by how many of your users show up. One charges by how many of your teammates log in. One charges a flat fee per board. And a couple don’t charge for the core loop at all.
The number that matters isn’t the price — it’s what the price scales with. Two tools at “$29/month” can diverge to a 10× difference in annual cost depending on whether that $29 grows with your users, your team, or neither. This guide is the map: the four pricing models in this market, a worked cost example for each, a tool-by-tool snapshot with 2026 numbers, and the add-ons that quietly inflate the bill after you’ve signed up.
Prices below reflect each tool’s public plans at the time of writing (July 2026). Feedback tools re-price often — always confirm on the vendor’s own pricing page before you commit. Where a tool is priced in a way that scales, we’ve said so, because that part rarely changes even when the dollar figures do.
The four pricing models
Almost every feedback tool on the market uses one of four models. Learn to spot which one you’re looking at and half the confusion disappears.
1. Per tracked user
Who uses it: Canny, Sleekplan (lower tiers).
You pay by how many end users interact with your feedback — anyone who posts, votes, comments, or (with AI-assisted tools) gets “discovered” and associated with a request. Canny caps its free plan at 25 tracked users; Sleekplan’s free and Indie tiers cap around 25 and 100.
Why it’s the model people flee: your cost is pinned to engagement — the exact behavior you want more of. Run a great board, get lots of votes, and your reward is a bigger invoice. In a B2B SaaS, roughly 1–5% of your total users end up tracked, so the growth sneaks up on you: a launch that gets 30 people voting has already blown past a 25-user free cap. This is the model most “Canny alternative” searches are trying to escape.
Worked example. You’re a SaaS with 3,000 users and healthy engagement, so ~150 are tracked. On a per-tracked-user tool that puts you two tiers up — call it ~$200/month — for the same boards, votes, and roadmap you’d have had at 25 users. Double your user base and you climb again, for no new features.
2. Per admin seat
Who uses it: Featurebase, Savio (and most support-suite tools).
End users are unlimited and free — good — but you pay for every teammate who needs admin access. Featurebase runs $29/$59/$99 per seat per month; Savio is $39/month for one seat with each extra seat $23–$49 depending on tier.
Why to watch it: it quietly discourages the thing you want — bringing your whole team in to triage feedback. A five-person team that all help with feedback is 5× the base price. Some tools soften this with cheaper “lite” or read-only seats (Featurebase includes a batch of lite seats on higher plans), so check whether the people who only need to read feedback count as full seats.
Worked example. A five-person team on Featurebase Professional ($59/seat) is $295/month. On Savio Professional ($79 + $39/extra seat) it’s $79 + 4×$39 = $235/month. Your users cost nothing; your colleagues cost everything.
3. Flat / per board
Who uses it: Nolt (and FeatureWish’s Pro tier).
A fixed monthly fee regardless of how many users or teammates you have. Predictable and honest — the same bill whether ten or ten thousand people use your board. Nolt is ~$29/month for one board and ~$69/month for multiple boards; it has no free plan, only a short trial, so you pay from day one.
Why it’s a good shape (with one catch): flat pricing is the model that never punishes success. The catch with Nolt specifically is the absence of a free tier — fine once you’ve validated, a real cost before you have.
Worked example. Nolt is $29/month at 25 users and $29/month at 25,000 users. That predictability is the whole appeal. The only variable is board count: need more than one and you’re on the ~$69 tier.
4. Free core loop
Who uses it: FeatureWish, UserJot.
The essential loop — boards, voting, comments, a public roadmap, a changelog, an embeddable widget — is free forever, with unlimited end users. You pay only for advanced extras (white-label, integrations, an MCP server for AI agents), and that upgrade is a flat fee, not a meter. FeatureWish’s Pro is $20/month flat; UserJot’s paid tiers start around $29/month. Both keep end users and (for FeatureWish) team members unlimited on every tier.
Why it fits growing teams: the free plan is the actual product, not a countdown. You can run a real board indefinitely at $0, and when you upgrade it’s for a specific capability at a price that doesn’t move as you grow.
Worked example. At 3,000 users and a five-person team, FeatureWish is $0 on the free plan, or $20/month flat if you want custom CSS, GitHub/Linear sync, and the MCP server. Neither your audience nor your team changes that number.
Tool-by-tool pricing snapshot (2026)
| Tool | Free plan | Model | Entry paid price | What the price scales with |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FeatureWish | Yes, forever (unlimited users + members) | Flat | $20/mo | Nothing — flat |
| UserJot | Yes, forever (unlimited users) | Flat | ~$29/mo | Nothing — flat |
| Canny | Yes (25 tracked users) | Per tracked user | ~$79/mo (Pro) | Your users’ engagement |
| Featurebase | Yes (1 seat) | Per admin seat | $29/seat/mo | Your team size |
| Nolt | No (10-day trial) | Flat per board | ~$29/mo | Board count |
| Sleekplan | Yes (~25 users capped) | Per tracked user | ~$15/mo | Your users’ engagement |
| Savio | No (14-day trial) | Per seat (private vault) | $39/mo (1 seat) | Your team size |
| Frill | No (trial) | Flat, feature-tiered | ~$25/mo | Idea cap / features |
| Upvoty | No (trial) | Flat, feature-tiered | ~$25/mo | Features (changelog/integrations higher) |
| FeedBear | No (trial) | Per board + seat | ~$19/mo | Boards & seats |
Two patterns jump out. First, most tools in this category have no free plan — Nolt, Savio, Frill, Upvoty, and FeedBear all run on trials, so “free” narrows to essentially FeatureWish, UserJot, Sleekplan (capped), and Canny (capped). Second, the tools that do scale, scale on one of two axes — your users or your team — and which one bites depends on whether you have a big audience or a big team.
The hidden costs to check before you sign
The headline model is only half the story. These add-ons routinely change the real number:
- AI features are usually metered separately. Auto-deduplication, summaries, and AI agents frequently sit outside the base plan. Canny’s automatic de-duplication lives in its paid Autopilot AI; Featurebase charges $0.29 per AI resolution on top of the per-seat fee, plus $19/agent/month for unlimited AI Copilot. Budget for AI as a line item, not a feature.
- White-label / “remove branding” can be a premium tier. On some tools, taking off the vendor badge is an expensive jump — Frill’s white-label is a ~$100/month add-on; FeedBear’s de-brand tier is ~$99/month. On FeatureWish it’s included in the $20 Pro plan.
- “Lite” vs full seats. On per-seat tools, confirm whether read-only teammates need a paid seat. The difference between “everyone needs a $59 seat” and “read-only is free” is enormous for a growing team.
- Board and idea caps. Some flat plans cap what you’d think is unlimited — Frill limits ideas on its entry tier; Nolt limits you to one board until you upgrade. Count the boards you actually need.
- Annual-only discounts. Several tools advertise the annual monthly-equivalent price. Confirm whether you’re seeing the month-to-month or the billed-yearly number before you compare.
- The MCP / API tier. If you want an AI agent (Claude, Codex, Cursor) to read and triage your board over MCP, check which tier it’s on. It tends to sit on the top paid plan — Nolt’s is on its ~$69/month Pro, Canny’s on Pro-and-above in its Ideas beta. FeatureWish includes it in the $20 Pro tier.
How to predict your actual bill
Skip the headline number and run this three-step check on any tool:
- Identify the model. Per tracked user, per seat, flat, or free-core-loop? This one fact predicts your cost trajectory better than the price.
- Project 12 months out, not today. If it’s per-tracked-user, estimate your tracked users a year from now (roughly 1–5% of total users, higher for consumer apps). If it’s per-seat, count everyone who’ll want to triage. Price that, not your launch-day size.
- Add the extras you’ll actually use. White-label, AI, integrations, the MCP tier — add their real cost. A cheap base plan with three paid add-ons isn’t a cheap plan.
If the answer to step 2 makes you wince, you want a flat or free-core-loop tool. If your team and audience are both small and stable, a capped free tier may genuinely be enough. The point isn’t that flat pricing is always cheapest today — it’s that it’s the only model you can predict.
FAQ
Which feedback tools have a genuinely free plan in 2026? Free-forever with unlimited end users: FeatureWish and UserJot. Free-but-capped: Canny (25 tracked users) and Sleekplan (~25). Open-source and free to self-host: Fider and Quackback. Most others — Nolt, Savio, Frill, Upvoty, FeedBear — are trial-only.
Why is Canny so expensive as you grow? Because it charges per tracked user — anyone who posts, votes, comments, or is discovered by its AI. Your bill rises with engagement, so a successful board costs more than a quiet one. See our full Canny pricing and alternatives breakdown.
What’s the cheapest way to run a real public feedback board? A free-core-loop tool: $0 for boards, voting, roadmap, and changelog on FeatureWish or UserJot, with a flat upgrade (from $20/month on FeatureWish) only if you want white-label or an MCP server. No per-user or per-seat meter.
Is per-seat pricing bad? Not inherently — it keeps end users free, which is great. It just taxes team growth, so it fits companies with a small, fixed set of admins better than teams where everyone pitches in on triage.
How do I compare two tools priced differently? Normalize to your 12-month reality: estimate your tracked users and your admin seats a year out, plug them into each tool’s model, add the extras you’ll use, and compare those totals — not the headline prices.
FeatureWish is the free-core-loop option built for the team that per-tracked-user pricing prices out: boards, voting, a public roadmap, a changelog, and an embeddable widget free forever with unlimited users and team members, and a flat $20/month for white-label, GitHub/Linear sync, and the MCP server. Create your board, or read the best Canny alternatives for the wider field.