Best Employee Engagement Software in 2026: 10 Tools Compared on Price, Minimums and Fit
Quick definition: Employee engagement software sends anonymous surveys, scores the answers by team and manager, and gives managers a way to act on what people said. The best picks as of October 2026: Culture Amp for survey depth, 15Five for small teams on a budget, Lattice for reviews plus engagement, and Microsoft Viva Glint for Microsoft 365 companies.
Disclosure: TracefyHR makes HR software, not engagement survey software, and no vendor paid to be included in this list or for its position. If that ever changes, the listing will be clearly marked as sponsored. Prices and features come from each vendor's own pricing pages and documentation, checked October 2026. Vendors change packaging often, so confirm current terms before you sign.
The rest of the shortlist, by use case: Workleap (formerly Officevibe) for manager-led companies of 50 to 250, Leapsome for European teams buying one module at a time, Matter for teams under 50 in Slack or Teams, Quantum Workplace for US mid-size firms that want engagement and recognition from one vendor, and Qualtrics or Workday Peakon for large enterprises.
Most lists of this kind are feature tours written by a vendor that ranks itself first. This one looks at what decides the bill and the usefulness for a company of 25 to 250 people: seat minimums, minimum contracts, and the anonymity thresholds that hide results for small teams. A cost table at 30, 75 and 150 employees follows the picks.
Do you need engagement software yet?
Engagement tools protect anonymity by hiding results for small groups. That is the right design, and it is why a 15-person company often gets little from one.
By default, Viva Glint hides rated scores for any group with fewer than 5 respondents and hides comments for groups under 10. Lattice lets admins raise its threshold but says it can never be less than three respondents.
Take an 18-person company with four teams of four or five. With Glint's defaults, no team ever gets its own score, and comments can only be read at company level. You are paying for one company-wide average.
Under roughly 25 people, a free anonymous form and good one-to-ones tell you more. See our guide to running effective 1-on-1s and the early warning signs of burnout in small teams, which shows up in a small team well before a survey would catch it.
Survey-led tool or performance suite: which do you need?
The ten tools fall into two groups, and buying from the wrong one is the usual mistake.
- Survey-led tools (Culture Amp, Viva Glint, Qualtrics, Workday Peakon, Matter) are built around question design, benchmarks and comment analysis. Pick one when you want to know how people feel and why, and you already run reviews elsewhere.
- Suites (Lattice, 15Five, Leapsome, Workleap, Quantum Workplace) put surveys next to one-to-ones, goals and reviews, so a low score lands where the manager plans the next conversation. Pick one when managers already know the problems but rarely act on them.
The suite argument is about managers. Gallup's 2026 State of the Global Workplace report puts global engagement at 20% in 2025 and says manager engagement fell from 27% to 22% between 2024 and 2025. A survey score does nothing until a manager acts on it. The trade-off is that suites charge per seat for every module, and their survey analytics are usually lighter.
How we compared these engagement tools
We did not run paid accounts on these products. We read each vendor's pricing page, product pages and help centre, plus public price lists and press releases where they exist, all checked October 2026. The criteria:
- Published price, minimum seat count and minimum contract.
- Anonymity controls documented in the help centre, and how they treat small teams.
- Fit for companies of roughly 25 to 250 employees.
- Where employees answer (email, Slack, Microsoft Teams), which matters for frontline staff.
- Current ownership and product names, since several changed in 2025 and 2026.
Some credible tools did not make the ten. WorkTango, acquired by BI WORLDWIDE in July 2026, publishes no price, for example.
The 10 tools at a glance
| Tool | Type | Published price (checked October 2026) | Minimum | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Culture Amp | Survey-led | Quote, billed annually | None published | Survey depth, benchmarks |
| Microsoft Viva Glint | Survey-led | $2 per user per month | 50 seats | Microsoft 365 companies |
| Qualtrics EmployeeXM | Survey-led | Quote, by employee count | None published | Enterprise research teams |
| Workday Peakon Employee Voice | Survey-led | Quote; UK public-sector list £50.10 per employee per year | That list starts at 600 employees | Workday customers |
| Matter | Survey-led, in Slack or Teams | $3 per user per month with surveys | None published | Teams under 50 |
| Lattice | Suite | Engagement $4 per seat per month | $4,000 a year | Reviews plus engagement |
| 15Five | Suite | Engage $4 per user per month | None published | Small teams on a budget |
| Leapsome | Suite | Engagement €4 per employee per month | None published | European companies |
| Workleap (formerly Officevibe) | Suite | $4,999 a year plus $32 per manager per month | Base fee | Manager-led teams of 50 to 250 |
| Quantum Workplace | Suite | Quote | $15,000 a year | Engagement plus recognition |
The 10 best employee engagement tools, by use case
Picks 1 to 5 are survey-led. Picks 6 to 10 are suites that bundle engagement with performance management.
1. Culture Amp: best for survey depth and benchmarks
Culture Amp is built around the survey itself. Engage is sold separately from its Perform product, and the company says its benchmarks draw on more than 1 billion survey responses, with 40+ templates designed by data scientists and organisational psychologists. An AI Coach turns results into manager action plans.
No price is published. The pricing page says the quote depends on employee count, product and service tier, and that all products are billed annually. The drawback is the sales call: you cannot compare its cost with anything here until you have sat through one. Under about 30 people, the anonymity problem above makes the benchmarks moot.
2. Microsoft Viva Glint: best for Microsoft 365 companies with 50 or more staff
Glint is now sold only as Microsoft Viva Glint, at $2 per user per month, paid yearly, with a 50-seat license minimum. That is the cheapest per-seat survey tool here, with a $1,200 annual floor. It also comes inside the Viva Workplace Analytics and Employee Feedback plan ($6) and the Viva Suite ($12).
The catch is in setup. Microsoft's documentation says survey-level reporting thresholds can only be changed before a programme launches its first survey, so settle your anonymity rules before you send anything. Skip Glint under 50 people, or if your staff do not sign in to Microsoft 365 every day.
3. Qualtrics EmployeeXM: best for research teams in large organisations
Qualtrics comes from survey research, and EmployeeXM suits a company with a people analytics team that designs its own studies and runs lifecycle surveys at scale. Its pricing page lists two employee experience products, both priced "based on employee count" behind a "Request Pricing" button.
Drawback: the power goes unused without someone whose job includes survey design. A 100-person company with one HR generalist gets results out faster with a template-led tool.
4. Workday Peakon Employee Voice: best for organisations already on Workday
Workday completed its acquisition of Peakon in March 2021, and the product page publishes no price. The one public figure is Workday's own UK G-Cloud 14 price list for public-sector buyers: bands start at 600 employees, at £50.10 per employee per year, on a three-year subscription.
Commercial deals will differ, but that tells you who it is built for. Without a Workday contract and a few hundred staff, look elsewhere.
5. Matter: best for teams under 50 that work in Slack or Microsoft Teams
Matter runs inside Slack and Teams, so people answer where they already chat. Its pricing page lists a free kudos plan with unlimited users, Basic at $1 and Pro at $3 per user per month (billed annually), and a Surveys add-on at $2 on either paid plan. It bills only for people in a Matter-connected channel.
That puts a survey-capable setup at $3 per user per month, the lowest entry price here. You give up benchmark depth. And if half your staff work a shop floor without Slack or Teams accounts, the delivery advantage disappears.
6. Lattice: best for performance reviews and engagement in one tool
Lattice sells modules per seat: Performance at $10, Goals and OKRs at $8 and Engagement at $4 per seat per month, with a $4,000 minimum annual agreement billed in USD. Engagement covers pulse, onboarding and exit surveys, eNPS, action planning and AI analysis.
What sets it apart is the link between a survey result and a manager's one-to-ones, reviews and goals. Lattice has also narrowed its scope: it told customers in late 2025 that it would sunset its HRIS and payroll products during 2026, so plan on a separate HR system beside it.
Drawback: the minimum binds below 84 seats on engagement alone. A 30-person company buying only engagement pays the equivalent of $11.11 per employee per month.
7. 15Five: best for small teams that want a suite at a published price
The 15Five pricing page lists Engage at $4, Perform at $11 and Total Platform at $16 per user per month, billed annually. Engage covers surveys, targeted assessments, action planning, heat maps and benchmarking, with no minimum seat count stated.
For a 30-person company that wants surveys now and reviews later, that is the cleanest start on this list: $1,440 a year, with a clear upgrade path. Watch the add-ons, which the page says can carry their own minimums: manager content at $49 per manager per month, the Kona Coach AI at $19, and human coaching at $399 per credit.
8. Leapsome: best for European companies that buy one module at a time
Leapsome prices each module separately, in euros, on its pricing page: Engagement Surveys at €4 per employee per month, Performance Reviews at €7, Goals and OKRs at €4. It now sells its own HRIS too, and offers a 14-day free trial.
Those are list prices. Multi-module and volume discounts come through a sales quote, and when we checked, the page's calculator and plan cards did not agree on one figure. Treat the page as a ceiling and get the quote in writing.
9. Workleap (formerly Officevibe): best for manager-led companies of 50 to 250
The old Officevibe page now carries the banner "Officevibe is now Workleap!", with pulse surveys, anonymous feedback and Good Vibes recognition cards folded into the Workleap platform.
Pricing changed with the name. The Workleap pricing page shows Standard from $4,999 a year and Pro from $11,999, each plus $32 per manager per month, billed annually, with a custom plan above 250 employees. Standard includes performance management, engagement reports, goals and recognition.
Per-manager pricing favours flat organisations. It punishes small ones: at 30 people with four managers, Standard is about $18 per employee per month.
10. Quantum Workplace: best for US mid-size firms that want engagement and recognition together
Quantum Workplace sells Engagement, Performance, Development and Recognition, together or separately. Its pricing page gives no per-employee price but states a $15,000 minimum annual contract and no implementation fee.
Recognition is the new part: the company acquired the Assembly recognition platform in January 2026. Under about 150 employees, though, that $15,000 floor is hard to justify against 15Five or Lattice.
What does engagement software cost at 30, 75 and 150 employees?
Annual list price for the engagement module only, from the published prices and minimums above, checked October 2026. Workleap assumes one manager per eight employees. Quotes are often lower, but minimums rarely move.
| Tool | 30 employees | 75 employees | 150 employees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Matter (Basic plus Surveys) | $1,080 | $2,700 | $5,400 |
| Microsoft Viva Glint | $1,200 (minimum) | $1,800 | $3,600 |
| 15Five Engage | $1,440 | $3,600 | $7,200 |
| Leapsome Engagement Surveys | €1,440 | €3,600 | €7,200 |
| Lattice Engagement | $4,000 (minimum) | $4,000 (minimum) | $7,200 |
| Workleap Standard | $6,535 | $8,455 | $12,295 |
| Quantum Workplace | $15,000+ | $15,000+ | $15,000+ |
At 30 people, minimums decide the order more than seat prices do: Lattice costs nearly three times what 15Five does for the same $4 seat. The two most expensive rows are not pure engagement purchases either. Workleap's price includes performance management, and Quantum Workplace's floor applies to whatever modules you buy.
What should you check before you sign?
- Billing terms. Culture Amp, Lattice and 15Five bill annually, while Matter also offers monthly billing at a higher rate.
- Anonymity defaults, and whether you can change them once surveys start.
- Where people answer. Frontline teams need a mobile link or a chat app they actually open.
- Your HR data. Every tool slices results by department, manager, location and tenure, pulled from your HR system. Messy records give you meaningless heat maps.
If you are still building the rest of the stack, our guide to the best HR software for startups shows where engagement fits and when it is worth buying at all.
Key takeaways
- Survey-led tools (Culture Amp, Viva Glint, Qualtrics, Workday Peakon, Matter) measure. Suites (Lattice, 15Five, Leapsome, Workleap, Quantum Workplace) tie results to one-to-ones and reviews.
- Viva Glint's default anonymity settings hide scores for groups under 5 respondents and comments for groups under 10.
- Minimums often matter more than seat price: Viva Glint needs 50 seats, Lattice a $4,000 annual agreement, Quantum Workplace a $15,000 contract.
- The lowest published survey prices are Matter at $3 and 15Five Engage at $4 per user per month, billed annually.
- Officevibe is now sold as Workleap, from $4,999 a year plus $32 per manager per month.
- Under about 25 employees, a free anonymous form and regular one-to-ones usually beat paid survey software.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best employee engagement software for small businesses?
For 25 to 100 people, 15Five Engage ($4 per user per month) or Matter ($3 with surveys) are the cheapest published options without a large minimum. Under 25, start with a free form and one-to-ones.
How much does employee engagement software cost?
Published survey prices run from $2 to $4 per user per month as of October 2026. Minimums change the real number: Lattice requires $4,000 a year and Quantum Workplace $15,000.
Are employee engagement surveys really anonymous?
Yes, when groups are big enough. Tools hide scores below a threshold, usually 3 to 5 respondents, but in very small teams people can still guess who said what.
What happened to Glint?
Glint is now Microsoft Viva Glint, sold at $2 per user per month with a 50-seat minimum, or inside Microsoft's Viva bundles.
Is Officevibe still available?
Under a new name. Officevibe's surveys and Good Vibes recognition are now part of Workleap, which charges a yearly base fee plus a per-manager price.
What is the difference between engagement software and recognition software?
Engagement software measures how people feel. Recognition software lets people thank each other, often with points and rewards; see the best employee recognition software for that category.
How often should you run an engagement survey?
A common pattern is one full survey a year with short pulses in between. Survey only as often as managers can act on the results, or response rates fall.
TracefyHR does not run engagement surveys. It is the HR system beside one: it holds the employee records that survey tools use to slice results by team and manager, plus the leave and attendance history that often shows strain before a survey does, at a flat price from $20 a month. Compare TracefyHR's flat pricing or start a 30 day trial with no card.