Qualtrics pricing: How much will a subscription cost?

Lauded by an 18,000-strong client base, including 99 of the top 100 global business schools, the Qualtrics Experience Management (XM) platform is a top choice for companies wanting to survey, monitor, and improve their customer experiences.

So, if your organization is looking to improve its product offering, you’ll struggle to find a tool that comes more highly recommended.

Qualtrics has earned itself a 4.6-star Capterra rating and a further 4.8 stars with GetApp, with users citing user-friendliness and customization among its greatest features. But with SaaS prices continuing to rise exponentially, the pressure is on to procure software solutions that provide a real return on investment — which begs the question of how much Qualtrics costs?

Read on to find out all you need to know about Qualtrics pricing, including how much of a discount you could be looking to secure.

How much does Qualtrics cost?

Qualtrics follows suit with the 55% of SaaS vendors that choose to obscure their standard pricing options. The vendor’s website offers no insights regarding the pricing editions available for its flagship product, Qualtrics CoreXM, instead providing prospective customers with the option to input their business information and request a product demo.

Following a demonstration with a member of the Qualtrics sales team, customers can receive a tailored quote for pricing based on their usage needs.

However, this approach illustrates the issue of pricing transparency in software procurement.

By not listing any price points, vendors place prospective buyers in a difficult position. On the one hand, you could follow the standard entry channel into the Qualtrics pipeline, but this would leave you ill-equipped to determine whether you’re getting a good price for your subscription or not. Alternatively, if you approached the Qualtrics sales conversation with knowledge about what the vendor expects you to pay, then you’d be able to make an informed choice — and negotiate with leverage if there were a better deal to be had.

So, what are your next steps?

First of all, you’ll want to understand precisely what Qualtrics offers as part of their XM platform offering so that you can get a feel for which services your company may need access to as part of your subscription. Let’s take a look at what the vendor offers.

Qualtrics pricing plans

Qualtrics offers three distinct product suites for experience management – XM for Customer Experience, XM for Employee Experience, and XM for Strategy and Research.

Within each of these suites, are a further three plans.

XM for Customer Experience

• Frontline Digital – Best for digital owners wanting to increase both conversion and CSAT, while reducing the cost to serve. Pricing for this plan is based on digital interactions, including survey responses.
• Frontline Care – Best for customer experience and contact center leaders wanting to retain and upsell more customers. Pricing is ultimately based on care interactions, such as survey responses, call records, chat conversations, and email.
• Frontline Locations – Best for CX leaders in location-based industries such as retail, hospitals, and restaurants. Pricing for this particular plan is based on location interactions, for example online reviews

XM for Employee Experience

• People Engage – This plan is best suited to employee experience leaders who want to improve both engagement and productivity, while lowering the cost of attrition. Pricing is based on employee count.
• People Lifecycle – The People Lifecycle plan is designed for talent acquisition and people development leaders wanting to optimize employee journeys. While pricing is based on employee headcount, there is the option to add full or partial coverage for 360 development.
• People Analytics – Ideal for people analytics leaders who want to know which investments will drive the most business impact. Pricing is based on employee count.

XM for Strategy & Research

• Strategic Research – Designed for research and insight leaders wanting to make research more cost-effective. Pricing for this plan is based on interactions such as number of survey responses and minutes of video feedback.
• Strategic UX – Qualtrics’ Strategic UX plan is ideal for product and UX leaders who want a single solution for all of their product research. Pricing is based on interactions.
• Strategic Brand – The Qualtrics’ plan for marketing and brand leaders, with pricing dependent on interactions such as the number of brand tracking responses and social mentions.

Each plan provides access to xID, IQ and Xflow.

How to access pricing for Qualtrics?

Now you have an idea of the plan type you’re after, how do you go about accessing pricing?

Well, your first option is to search online for pricing insights.

One article, for example, indicates that Qualtrics pricing starts from $1,500 a year – a figure that is corroborated by a review on TrustRadius.

The issue is, the review in question is three years old, meaning the cost is likely outdated. And even if it was a more recent review, it’s not clear which plan the cost is for, nor is it clear what the subscription actually entailed.

Plus, SaaS prices are always subject to change, and have been on a steady incline in recent years with price increases rapidly outpacing the rate of market inflation – in the 12 months leading up to January 2025, software prices increased by 11.4%, compared to the 2.7% average market inflation rate of G7 countries.

While these insights can offer a frame of reference for what you might expect to pay for Qualtrics, they can only provide a ballpark figure. There’s no guarantee that the information you’ll find online will be up-to-date, or even accurate.

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Can you get a discount on Qualtrics pricing?

Software prices are rarely set in stone, meaning that there is almost always an opportunity to obtain a discount on list pricing. Our own benchmarking data even shows that there are some inconsistencies between the prices that companies with similar usage needs are paying for Qualtrics.

Of course, it’s not quite as simple as just asking for a discount. To secure the best price and terms on any contract, you’ll need to deploy an effective negotiation strategy and gain purchasing power in the form of leverage.

So, which tactics should you be using?

Commit to a longer subscription period

Software providers generally focus on recurring revenue, which is why many offer additional incentives to encourage long-term commitments. This may be flexible renewal clauses or a discounted monthly – or annual – fee.

While signing up for a longer subscription term can be a great way to reduce overall spend, you should only be considering an annual or multi-year subscription if you’re confident that the tool will remain a mainstay in your software stack for the foreseeable future.

According to our data, providers will generally offer an extra 5% off their standard pricing for each additional year a user commits to.

Leverage pricing benchmarks

The most powerful form of leverage is intel into what organizations similar to yours are paying for their subscriptions. When you enter into negotiations equipped with this data, you’ll be prepared to negotiate the most competitive pricing for your business.

This is because pricing benchmarks provide clarity on how your quoted price compares to the going rate offered to your peers. As a result, you can determine whether the price or discount you've been offered is a good deal, or whether you need to negotiate for better terms.

As mentioned earlier though, reliable pricing insights can be hard to come by, which is why it can pay to partner with a procurement expert that not only has access to accurate, up-to-date data, but that can ideally leverage this intel on your behalf.

Partner with Vertice to reduce your overall SaaS spend

At Vertice, we not only leverage the transactional data for more than 16,000 global software vendors – Qualtrics included – but our expert team of SaaS purchasers can also handle negotiations on your behalf, utilizing their deep knowledge of each vendor and knowing exactly which levers to pull and when, in order to secure you the best possible deal.

See for yourself how we helped one company save $155,000 on a single SaaS contract.