10 Best Listen Labs Alternatives for Research Teams

For methodology control in AI-moderated research, look at Outset. For AI plus optional human moderation, Strella. For AI video interviews with automated analysis, Conveo. For multilingual AI voice interviews in market research, Glaut. For self-serve with no contract, Koji. For live human-moderated interviews and focus groups, Discuss.io. For recruiting your own audience, User Interviews. For live, real-time voice AI interviews, Usercall. For simulated customer responses, Simile.

And if your concept, creative and usability decisions depend on what people looked at and how they reacted, Decode runs AI-moderated interviews with real participants and measures emotion and attention in the same session.

Not sure which fits? Talk to our research team and bring the study you’re planning next.

Listen Labs alternatives compared at a glance

Pricing, plans and ownership as of October 2026. Every cell comes from the vendor’s own pricing or feature pages.

What the Salesforce deal means for Listen Labs buyers

What’s confirmed. Salesforce signed a definitive agreement to acquire Listen Labs on September 29, 2026. Salesforce says Listen Labs will complement Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud and its broader AI portfolio. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal year 2027, subject to closing conditions and regulatory approval. Salesforce hasn’t disclosed the price. Listen Labs says CEO Alfred Wahlforss and CTO Florian Juengermann will stay, and the same team will keep building the product inside Salesforce AI Labs.

What isn’t known yet. Future pricing and packaging, whether Listen Labs will still be sold on its own or bundled into Salesforce contracts, and whether anything changes in how participant data is handled. Neither company has addressed these, so treat them as open questions, not predictions.

What you can do now. Before you sign or renew, check three things in your contract: assignment and change-of-control clauses, data processing terms, and any roadmap commitments you’re relying on. None of this is a judgment on Listen Labs or Salesforce. It’s the same diligence any buyer should do when a vendor changes hands.

Why teams look for Listen Labs alternatives

Six reasons come up in buyer guides, G2 reviews and coverage of the Salesforce deal.

1. Ownership change. Teams that want an independent research vendor, or that don’t run on Salesforce, want options before renewal.

2. Contract-first pricing. There’s no public pricing page, and reported annual base fees plus per-interview costs make frequent small studies expensive.

3. Interviewing your own customers. Paying panel-style costs makes less sense when you bring your own participants.

4. Methodology control. Some researchers want more say over the discussion guide, probing and screener logic.

5. Simulated respondents. Listen Labs also sells Listen Twins, digital twins built from interviews. Some teams want every data point from a real person.

6. Signal depth. Listen Labs now reads emotion from voice, face and words. Teams that also need to know what participants looked at, or want facial coding across a wider set of expressions, look further.

How to choose a Listen Labs alternative

Evaluate each tool on the same criteria you’d use to evaluate Listen Labs:

1. AI-moderated interviews: probing depth, follow-up logic, video, voice and text, and language coverage.

2. Qualitative research rigor: methodology control, a human moderation option, and quality checks on participants.

3. Market testing: concept, ad and pack tests alongside interviews.

4. Customer insights: synthesis quality, cited evidence and auto-generated reports.

5. Signal layer: say, do and feel, defined below.

6. Respondents: real versus simulated, a built-in panel, bringing your own, and B2B reach.

7. Vendor and contract: independence, pricing model and data terms.

Say, do, feel: the signal layer

What people say and what they do often part ways. In one survey cited in Harvard Business Review in 2019, 65% of consumers said they want to buy purpose-driven brands that advocate sustainability, yet only about 26% actually do so. An interview captures the first number. It takes other signals to get closer to the second.

• Say: answers to the moderator’s questions.

• Do: tasks, clicks, paths and on-screen behavior.

• Feel: facial coding, eye tracking, voice emotion and attention, measured during the session.

For a discovery interview, say is often enough. For a concept, an ad or a checkout flow, the feel column, and above all what people looked at, shows the reactions nobody mentions.

The 10 best Listen Labs alternatives

1. Decode by Entropik: best for AI-moderated research that also measures emotion and attention

Listen Labs captures what participants say at scale and now scores emotion from voice, face and words. Decode adds what they looked at, and measures how they reacted across 62 facial expressions.

Best for: consumer insights, brand and UX teams whose concept, creative and usability decisions depend on reaction, not just on what people say about it.

Key features

• AI Moderator for interviews at scale, in 70+ languages, plus live moderated sessions.

• Concept, creative and usability tests on prototypes, websites and apps.

• Facial coding (90%+ accuracy, 62 expressions), eye tracking (96% accuracy), voice emotion and attention, captured in the same session through a standard webcam.

• Dedicated research agents for different use cases, so each type of study is handled by an agent built for it. Cole runs concept validation; Remy runs creative testing.

• Insights Hub as your research repository, and 103M+ participants in 151 markets through Cint and Dynata, or your own audience.

Pros

• Shows what participants looked at and how they reacted, second by second, alongside what they said.

• An independent research platform, not part of a CRM suite.

• Built on 17 patents and used by 150+ global brands, with first evidence delivered in under 48 hours.

Good to know

• Webcam capture for gaze and emotion starts only after a participant gives consent.

• Interviews and tests use real participants. Synthetic audiences are used only for predictive creative scoring, so if you want simulated respondents for interviews, pair Decode with a simulation tool.

• Enterprise plans are tailored to your research volume, and you can start on the Free plan (100 responses a month).

Pricing: Free plan published; Enterprise is quote-based.

Choose Decode if your decisions depend on how people react to a concept, ad or flow, not only on what they say about it. For the full head-to-head,

See our Decode vs Listen Labs comparison.

Bring your next concept to Cole: book a demo, or start free.

2. Outset: best for methodology control in AI-moderated research

Outset’s AI moderator follows the guide the researcher programs, with settings for how deep it probes.

Best for: research teams that want control over the discussion guide, probing and screeners.

Key features: text, voice, video and voice-to-voice (beta) interviews in 40+ languages, up to 10 follow-ups per question, stimuli and concept tests, picture-in-picture screen share on prototypes, live sites and mobile apps, and Visual Intelligence, which lets the moderator see click paths and label facial emotions in video interviews.

Pros: strong control over probing, and usability sessions run in the same platform as interviews.

Cons: sales-led, contract-first pricing; buyers have reported an entry point of about $20,000 a year, which some describe as per seat, from before its December 2025 Series B. Recruiting runs through partner panels or your own audience.

Pricing: quote only.

Outset vs Listen Labs: Outset gives researchers more control over how the AI probes. Listen Labs bundles the whole study, recruiting from its 50M+ network included. For more, see our Outset alternatives guide.

Choose Outset if methodology control matters most and you already have a recruiting route.

3. Strella: best for AI plus optional human moderation

Strella runs AI-moderated interviews and lets you switch to human moderation when a study needs it.

Best for: research teams that want AI scale with a human-moderated option in one platform.

Key features: real-time AI-moderated voice interviews, webcam and screen recording, AI-generated discussion guides, concept, usability and mobile testing, highlight reels and fast theme synthesis.

Pros: AI, hybrid and (in beta) fully human moderation in one place, with recorded sessions that look and feel like moderated ones.

Cons: pricing isn’t published, and recruiting runs through partner panels (Respondent and User Interviews, up to 8M participants), so confirm reach and enterprise governance features for your audience.

Pricing: custom annual plans, which Strella describes as usage-based, with no per-seat charges.

Choose Strella if you want AI moderation with the option of a human moderator.

4. Conveo: best for AI video interviews with automated analysis

Conveo’s AI moderator interviews real people on video and analyzes more than the words.

Best for: consumer brands testing concepts, packs, ads and shopper journeys on video.

Key features: AI-moderated video and voice interviews in 48 languages, screen share with probing on what participants do on screen, second-by-second facial coding for creative tests, and analysis of tone, emotional cues and on-camera objects.

Pros: video-first research with multimodal analysis, and enterprise security (SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 27701, GDPR).

Cons: brand pricing is no longer published, and panel reach varies by market. Its own FAQ notes that most panel partners are consumer-focused, so B2B audiences usually need to be brought or recruited separately.

Pricing: brands are quoted after a demo. Its agency hub publishes $5 per interview minute for the first 1,500 minutes of a study, then $2, with a $5,000 yearly credit commitment.

Choose Conveo if video is your main format and you research consumers.

See our Conveo alternatives guide.

5. Glaut: best for multilingual AI voice interviews in market research

Glaut is built for market research agencies and insights teams that want interview depth at survey scale.

Best for: agencies and insights teams running multi-market studies.

Key features: AI-moderated voice interviews (AIMIs) with dynamic probing, classic surveys in the same platform, 50+ languages, a choice of voice or typing for participants, automated coding, and reports that export to PowerPoint. AIMIs can be embedded into existing survey and panel workflows.

Pros: built around market research workflows, with traceable findings.

Cons: a market research focus, with fewer UX research methods, and platform pricing that’s quoted.

Pricing: quote after a demo. For scaleups, Glaut publishes €5,000 per study (up to 300 interviews of 15 to 20 minutes, with recruiting and incentives quoted separately).

Choose Glaut if you run multilingual market research and want voice interviews inside your survey workflow.

6. Koji: best self-serve option with no contract

Koji runs AI-moderated interviews you can start without a sales call.

Best for: small teams and founders who want AI interviews on a credit card.

Key features: AI-moderated voice and text interviews, outbound phone interviews on Enterprise, structured question types, panel recruitment on paid plans or your own link, and automatic synthesis.

Pros: published, credit-based pricing, with free credits to start.

Cons: no participant video or screen-share sessions on self-serve plans (video is an Enterprise module), and lighter enterprise governance and recruiting than end-to-end platforms.

Pricing: 10 free signup credits. A text interview uses 1 credit and a voice interview uses 3, at €1 a credit. Monthly plans start at €29.

Choose Koji if you want AI interviews without a contract and don’t need video.

7. Discuss.io: best for live human-moderated interviews and focus groups

Discuss.io runs live interviews, focus groups, AI interviews and surveys on one platform.

Best for: insights teams and agencies running live qualitative research across markets.

Key features: live focus groups and IDIs in 100+ markets with a private observer room and live translation, AI-moderated interviews in 50+ languages that capture voice, video and reactions to stimuli, built-in panels and a recruiting team, and Discuss Intelligence, a searchable library across every study.

Pros: human moderation where it matters, AI interviews where scale matters, and SOC 2, GDPR and HIPAA support.

Cons: live sessions depend on scheduling, which limits speed and scale compared with AI-only moderation. Pricing isn’t published.

Pricing: custom plans for brands and agencies.

Choose Discuss.io if live human moderation is central to your research.

See our Discuss.io alternatives guide.

8. User Interviews: best when you only need recruiting

User Interviews is a recruiting marketplace that works with any moderation tool. UserTesting acquired it in January 2026.

Best for: teams that run their own interviews and need participants.

Key features: a 6M-member panel of B2C and B2B participants, screeners, scheduling automation, incentive distribution and integrations with research tools.

Pros: strong targeting and published per-session pricing.

Cons: no AI moderation of its own, and per-session fees sit on top of your research tool.

Pricing: pay as you go from $49 per session, or $98 with advanced B2B targeting, with discounts on annual plans.

Choose User Interviews if recruiting is your only gap.

9. Usercall: best for live, real-time voice AI interviews

Usercall runs AI interviews as live, one-to-one voice conversations, so participants answer in the moment rather than pacing and polishing their replies.

Best for: product teams that want quick voice interviews with their own users.

Key features: AI voice or text interviews of a few minutes to about 45 minutes, 50+ languages on every plan, research triggers at signup, onboarding drop-off or cancellation, and “User Twins” on the Core plan.

Pros: published pricing, no demo needed, and in-the-moment answers.

Cons: the voice-first format suits some topics better than others, and its 4M+ panel is available on request rather than self-serve.

Pricing: Lite at $89 a month, Core at $199 and Pro at $399, billed monthly, or less billed yearly. Custom plans are available.

Usercall vs Listen Labs: Usercall captures in-the-moment voice reactions from your own users. Listen Labs runs respondent-paced interviews at larger scale with built-in recruiting.

Choose Usercall if you want live voice interviews with your own customers at a published price.

10. Simile: best for simulated customer responses

Simile builds AI simulations of how customers, employees or populations respond to change. It’s on this list because Listen Labs also sells digital twins, so buyers comparing that capability need a like-for-like option.

Best for: teams that want fast directional answers before fielding a study.

Key features: simulated populations built from studies with real people, weekly validation against real human responses, a confidence level on every result, and the option to train a custom model on your own data.

Pros: a way to test ideas you can’t yet put in front of customers, with a confidence level on each result.

Cons: simulated respondents aren’t real people. Use them for early hypotheses, and validate decisions with real participants.

Pricing: not published.

Choose Simile if you want simulated direction early, before you field real research.

Listen Labs pricing in 2026: what you can confirm and what you can’t

Listen Labs doesn’t publish prices. It describes its model as a platform subscription plus participant credits, with credits per recruited participant varying by audience difficulty, and pricing for larger companies set through a demo and pilot. Pricing as of October 2026.

What Listen Labs publishes

What others report

Third-party figures put Listen Labs at roughly a $20,000 annual platform base plus $300 to $400 per completed interview (reported by Koji, a competitor, citing Contrary Research and buyer guides; not confirmed by Listen Labs). Treat it as a range of reports, not a price.

What drives the cost

Completed interviews, audience difficulty and incidence, contract length, and services.

Does the Salesforce deal change the price?

Not by itself. The agreement doesn’t set new pricing, and neither company has announced pricing changes.

Where Decode fits on value

Decode also uses custom pricing for Enterprise, so this isn’t a cheaper-price claim. It’s a scope comparison. A Listen Labs contract buys AI-moderated interviews, recruiting and synthesis. A Decode plan covers AI Moderator, research agents for different use cases, measured emotion and attention, and Insights Hub.

If you’re renewing or scoping a Listen Labs contract during the ownership change, get a Decode quote for the same scope.

Which Listen Labs alternative is right for you?

Decision guide: ten reasons for reconsidering Listen Labs, one shortlist each

Find your reason for reconsidering Listen Labs on the left, and start your shortlist with the tool on the right. If two apply, let the decision with the most riding on it choose.

Frequently asked questions

1. Did Salesforce buy Listen Labs?

Salesforce signed a definitive agreement to acquire Listen Labs on September 29, 2026. As of October 2026, the deal hasn’t closed; it’s expected to close in the fourth quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal year 2027, subject to regulatory approval.

2. Will Listen Labs pricing change after the Salesforce deal?

Neither company has announced pricing changes. Future packaging, and whether Listen Labs will be sold on its own or bundled into Salesforce contracts, are open questions. Check assignment and renewal clauses before you sign.

3. How much does Listen Labs cost?

Listen Labs doesn’t publish prices. It sells a platform subscription plus participant credits. Third-party reports put it at roughly a $20,000 annual base plus $300 to $400 per completed interview (reported, not confirmed by Listen Labs).

4. Who are Listen Labs’ main competitors?

For methodology control, Outset. For AI plus human moderation, Strella. For AI video, Conveo. For multilingual market research, Glaut. For self-serve, Koji. For live focus groups, Discuss.io. For recruiting, User Interviews. For live voice AI, Usercall. For simulation, Simile. For measured emotion and attention, Decode.

5. Outset vs Listen Labs: which is better?

Outset is better if you want control over how the AI probes and you already have a recruiting route. Listen Labs is better if you want an end-to-end bundle with built-in recruiting from a 50M+ participant network, and you’re comfortable with the Salesforce roadmap.

6. Is Decode a good Listen Labs alternative?

Yes, when your concept, creative and usability decisions depend on what people looked at and how they reacted. Decode runs AI-moderated interviews with real participants and measures facial coding, eye tracking, voice emotion and attention in the same session.

Can Decode run AI-moderated interviews like Listen Labs?

Yes. Decode’s AI Moderator runs adaptive interviews in 70+ languages, presents stimuli, asks follow-up questions and generates summaries and insight clips. Recruiting runs through 103M+ participants in 151 markets or your own audience.

Listen Labs review: what it does best and where Decode fits

Listen Labs is a strong end-to-end AI research platform. Its AI Study Builder drafts studies, it recruits from a 50M+ network, its AI moderator runs interviews around the clock in 120+ languages, and its Research Agent turns them into reports, clips and decks. Its Emotional Intelligence layer scores emotion from voice, facial expressions and word choice, Visual Insights logs on-screen behavior, and Listen Twins simulate responses from digital twins built on real interviews. Customers include Microsoft, Anthropic and Sweetgreen.

Stay on Listen Labs if you want recruitment and moderation bundled in one contract, you run high-volume consumer studies, and you’re comfortable with the Salesforce roadmap.

Where Listen Labs stops is a method difference, not a product flaw. It reads emotion in what participants say and show on camera, but it doesn’t track what they looked at, and its emotion scores are built on Ekman’s six core emotions plus states such as confusion and frustration, while Decode’s facial coding reads 62 facial expressions alongside webcam eye tracking. That’s where Decode fits: for concept, creative and usability studies where reaction decides the outcome, add measured emotion and attention to the interview.

Plenty of teams run both. Listen Labs handles fast, high-volume interview programs, and Decode handles the studies where how people react matters as much as what they say. For the full head-to-head, see our Decode vs Listen Labs comparison.

Find the Listen Labs alternative that fits your research

Want methodology control? Outset. AI plus a human moderator? Strella. AI video? Conveo. Multilingual market research? Glaut. No contract? Koji. Live focus groups? Discuss.io. Recruiting only? User Interviews. Live voice AI? Usercall. Simulated direction? Simile. Need to see what people looked at and how they reacted? That’s Decode.