Qualtrics is built for enterprise experience-management programs — many seats, an annual contract, a sales-quoted price. Wavefield is built for one study at a time: upload a brief, the AI agent programs the survey, and you get weighted, significance-tested results — priced per project, from $99.
From $99 per project · No subscription required · Also comparing Wavefield vs. SurveyMonkey
This isn't a “worse Qualtrics for less money” pitch — Qualtrics is a genuinely capable platform for large, multi-team programs. The honest comparison is what each is actually built for.
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| Qualtrics | Wavefield | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | No published pricing — sales-quoted annual contracts, commonly reported from ~$6K to well over $100K/year | $99–$299 per project, published up front. No annual contract, no seats. |
| Getting started | Sales call, contract negotiation, implementation onboarding | Create an account and field a study the same day |
| Questionnaire programming | You build it yourself in the editor, or pay for professional services | Upload a brief or Word doc — the AI agent programs the full survey |
| Weighting & significance testing | Available, typically through Stats iQ or an analyst add-on | Built into every report by default — no add-on |
| Exports | Available across formats depending on plan tier | SPSS, Excel banner books, and Word toplines included, one click |
| What it's built for | Enterprise experience-management programs — CX, EX, product, brand — across many seats and teams | One study at a time — market research or public-opinion polling — done to research-grade standard |
Qualtrics pricing and feature availability vary by plan tier and are set through its sales team, so treat the figures above as commonly reported ranges, not a quote from Qualtrics itself.
Most teams shopping for a Qualtrics alternative for market research or polling are weighing more than one option. Here's how ten commonly shortlisted platforms differ on the dimensions that decide the choice — pricing model, how you get started, and whether research-grade analysis (weighting, significance testing) is actually built in.
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| Platform | Pricing model | Getting started | Weighting & significance | Built for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wavefield | $99–$299 per project, published | Self-serve, field the same day | Built into every report | One study at a time, done to research grade |
| Qualtrics | Sales-quoted annual contracts, commonly reported from ~$6K/yr | Sales call, contract, implementation | Available via Stats iQ / analyst add-ons | Enterprise experience-management programs |
| SurveyMonkey | Per seat (~$30–$92/user/mo on team plans, 3-seat minimum) | Self-serve; team pricing needs 3+ seats | Not in the core survey product | Frequent quick polls and feedback forms |
| QuestionPro | Per user (~$99/user/mo on the Advanced plan, billed annually) | Self-serve; research features skew to higher tiers | Available on research-oriented tiers | Teams that want a per-seat research suite |
| Alchemer | Per-user licenses, billed annually | Self-serve; enterprise tiers via sales | Limited; deeper stats need higher tiers or export | Mid-market teams outgrowing form tools |
| SurveySparrow | Per-user subscription tiers | Self-serve | Not a core feature | CX teams wanting conversational, chat-style surveys |
| Survicate | Subscription, tiered by response volume | Self-serve | Not a core feature | In-product and website feedback |
| Sprig | Free tier; paid plans mostly sales-quoted | Self-serve entry; sales for scale | Not a core feature | In-product UX research and microsurveys |
| Formbricks | Open-source core; hosted cloud plans | Self-serve or self-hosted | Not built in | Product teams that want open source |
| Zonka Feedback | Subscription tiers | Self-serve | Not a core feature | Multi-channel CX — kiosk, email, SMS surveys |
Competitor figures are commonly reported ranges as of mid-2026 and change over time — verify against each vendor's current pricing before deciding. If your shortlist includes SurveyMonkey specifically, the Wavefield vs. SurveyMonkey page covers that comparison in depth; for the whole field sorted by job type — form builders, CX tools, open source included — see online survey platforms, compared.
Both. Qualtrics doesn't publish pricing because it's selling an enterprise experience-management platform — industry-reported contract values commonly range from the mid-thousands to well over $100,000 a year. Wavefield charges per project, from $99, because it's built for one study at a time rather than a company-wide program.
It depends what you use Qualtrics for. If you run a single-team research or polling program — brand trackers, concept tests, opinion polls — Wavefield covers the same core: programmed logic and quotas, weighting, significance testing, and SPSS/Excel/Word exports. If you run a multi-department experience-management program (CX, EX, product feedback, workflow automation) across a large organization, that's a different scale of product and Qualtrics is built for it.
You can bring your own contact list (email or SMS invites are included) or have Wavefield source panel sample for you, from $3.50 per quality-checked complete.
Qualtrics' editor is powerful but you (or an analyst) build the questionnaire by hand. Wavefield's agent reads a brief or an existing Word-doc questionnaire and programs the whole thing — logic, quotas, rotations, translations — then you refine it by chatting with the agent or in the visual editor, both of which edit the same underlying document.
Free tool: sample size calculator · Read quota sampling vs. random sampling or what survey programming involves
Create an account, upload a brief, and watch the agent build it. You don't pay until you field.
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