User Interviews vs Optimal Workshop

From $45 per participant (indicative, general population)

From $199 per month (indicative, per user)

Per-participant recruiting fee plus the incentive you choose. Specialist B2B professionals cost considerably more.

Annual plans reduce the effective monthly rate substantially; recruitment is separate.

Free to manage your own participants; recruitment is pay-per-participant.

Free plan with limited participants per study.

Widely used

User Interviews · since 2015

Established

Optimal Workshop · since 2008

• Solves recruiting, which is the actual bottleneck in most research programmes.
• Handles incentive payment and scheduling logistics, saving substantial coordinator time.
• Works with whatever session tooling you already use.

• The reference tool for card sorting and tree testing; the analysis visualisations are excellent.
• Tree testing validates navigation before any build effort is spent.
• Well-established methodology support and training material.

• No testing or analysis features — it is recruitment only.
• Panel is strongest in North America.
• Costs mount quickly for specialist B2B roles.

• Narrow scope — it does not do usability testing of interfaces.
• Expensive per seat for occasional use.
• Interface is dated in places.

Teams whose research is blocked on finding and paying the right participants.

Teams restructuring navigation, taxonomy or content on a large site.