Pendo Pricing 2025: Is It Worth It?

Want to find out if Pendo is a good fit for your company but can't find the prices or the quote you received is mind-boggling? You wouldn't be the only one.

Pendo's "Downright simple user-based pricing" means you must go through their lengthy sales process to even get a quote. 😆

Not today, tough. We have done some digging, and in this post, we'll break down what you can expect from Pendo's pricing and whether it's really worth your money! 👇

✨ Looking for a modern & affordable Pendo alternative? Check out Featurebase →

What is Pendo?

Pendo is a product experience platform that helps SaaS companies gather insights into user behavior, onboarding, product adoption, customer satisfaction, and more.

It's mainly targeted towards enterprises and basically helps them understand how users interact with their platforms.

Pendo pricing in 2025

Pendo offers five different plans that are all priced based on your monthly active users (MAUs):

• Free - Allows for 500 MAUs, basic product analytics, in-app guides, branded NPS surveys, and roadmaps
• Base - Everything in Free, plus custom MAUs and one integration
• Core - Everything in Base, plus session replays
• Pulse - Everything in Core, plus white-labeled NPS and product discovery features
• Ultimate - Everything in Pulse, plus journey orchestration, data sync, and advanced in-app guides

Pendo's exact pricing isn't publicly available and you must contact their sales team to get a quote. However, we can get some good estimates based on their customers' insights. 🕵️

According to a Reddit post, the Base plan costs $2k/quarter for 2k monthly active users. This is probably as low as it can get.

Another user said their Base plan quote was $30k/year for webhook access. This was backed up by a third post claiming that their old plan (costing $7k/year) was removed and was being pushed to the new Base plan for $35k/year.

According to a vendor negotiating Vendr, Pendo's cost can range from $25,800 to $132,400 a year. So, the prices vary significantly, but at least you get the picture.

Who counts as monthly active users (MAU) in Pendo?

All of Pendo's plans limit the monthly active users (MAU) you can have. But who counts as an active user, and how is it calculated?

Monthly active users (MAU) are the number of unique visitors who have used your app in the last 30 days. MAUs are calculated by adding up anyone who engages with your app at least once during this time period.

Does Pendo have a free trial?

Pendo does not offer a free trial. However, they do have a limited free plan allowing 500 monthly active users.

To try out any of their paid plans, you must first contact their sales team and request a demo.

Does Pendo offer discounts?

Pendo does not offer any discounts. However, there have been reports of some negotiation tactics you could use to lower the final quote:

• Use multi-year deals: committing upfront for two or three years typically secures a more favorable price
• Mention competition: with Amplitude, Featurebase, PostHog, Mixpanel, and others in the market, Pendo knows it’s not the only game in town—use that to your advantage
• Bundle services: onboarding and training can get costly. Ask to include them (or reduce fees) in your contract to avoid surprises
• Negotiate payment & renewal terms: push for semi-annual billing and consider removing auto-renewal to maintain flexibility at renewal time
• Don’t fear ‘deadlines’: some customers successfully held onto their discounted rate even past “sign now or lose it” cutoff dates

What if Pendo is too expensive for me?

Well, as you saw from the screenshots above, you wouldn't be the only one. 🤒

Luckily, there are many modern and affordable alternatives offering the same features and even more. Here’s a list of the 12 best Pendo competitors in 2025:

1. ✨ Featurebase - All-in-one feedback tool, best value for money
2. ProdPad - For larger companies, roadmapping and feedback collection
3. UserBack - For large teams with many products
4. Canny - For super small or enterprise companies, no in-between
5. Userpilot - Best for those also looking for product tours & analytics
6. ProductPlan - Best for issue management & roadmaps, poor collection features
7. Rapidr - Feedback collection, good price for very large teams
8. Frill - Simple design and lightweight widgets
9. featureOS - Good for collecting feedback, poor for prioritizing it
10. Trello - Best for simple idea and task management
11. Productboard - Best for issue management, poor collection features
12. Aha! - for large companies looking to handpick what they get

You can see all of the Pendo alternatives more in-depth here, where we analyze the details of each tool and find out which one is the best.

Pendo pros and cons to keep in mind

Pendo pros:

• Centralized feedback collection
  Pendo feedback tools like surveys and in-app messages help you collect customer feedback efficiently. You can even respond directly to users, making it simple to close the feedback loop and show customers their voices are heard.
• Good for enterprises
  Once you get through the lengthy onboarding, Pendo can be pretty decent for enterprise software companies. Sure, there’s a learning curve, but enterprise teams are used to much worse, making it a relatively modern tool for large organizations.
• Works on both mobile and web apps
  Pendo lets you create responsive in-app guides that look great, whether your users are on mobile apps or web. This ensures a smooth, consistent experience across platforms, no matter where your users engage.

Pendo cons:

• Expensive & untransparent pricing
  Pendo’s pricing is notoriously high, with many users reporting quotes around $30k a year. For startups or small businesses, this can quickly burn through a tight budget. Plus, all their plans are gated behind a sales process, so it’s hard to know Pendo's cost upfront.
• Steep learning curve
  Pendo’s interface can be tough to navigate, especially for new users. Even basic tasks, like customizing a feedback widget, often require coding skills like CSS or HTML, adding unnecessary complexity.
• Incorrect data
  Many of their users have noted that the data coming out from product analytics is completely wrong and inaccurate. Furthermore, their support tickets sit open without any resolutions.

So, is Pendo worth it?

Short answer: If you're an enterprise, then maybe. If you're anyone else, then no.

Longer answer: Pendo is a comprehensive product analytics platform with all the features large enterprises would need. From in-app guides to user onboarding and behavioral analytics.

However, their untransparent and expensive pricing makes them unviable for SMBs and startups. It’s hard to get your boss to agree to pay $30k+ for a product analytics platform. Especially, when many competitors offer the same features for $99/month or less.

Featurebase (👋 that's us) is a modern & affordable Pendo alternative offering many of the same features and more. You can collect user feedback, run NPS surveys, boost feature adoption, and even let AI manage customer feedback to understand user behavior.

We offer a Free plan that allows unlimited MAUs and feedback. The onboarding is super fast and doesn't require a credit card, so there's no downside to trying it. 👇

✨ Start collecting feedback & building better products with Featurebase →

More reading:

• Pendo vs Featurebase
• Top Pendo alternatives
• What is Pendo and Who is it for?