Maze is one of the most recognizable names in product research. The company built a strong self-serve usability-testing product, supports it with a deep template library, and has earned customer logos like Atlassian, Lowe's, and Vimeo. If your team runs prototype tests and quick usability studies, Maze's free plan and its Starter tier at around $99 per month are a credible, well-established way in.
AI Moderator, Maze's AI-interview product, sits in a different part of the lineup. As of July 2026, it is available on the sales-led Business and Organization tiers, with third parties reporting pricing in the range of $12,000 to $15,000 or more per year, and with recruitment credits billed separately. The "Experience Maze's AI moderator" page on their site is a demo-booking form, not a live demo.
That gap matters if AI interviews are the thing you came for. User Evaluation is built so that the AI-interview workflow is the self-serve product itself, not an enterprise add-on.
The $99 plan is not the AI-interview plan
This is the detail worth understanding before comparing prices. Maze's free plan and Starter tier cover the core usability-testing product: prototype tests, surveys, and the workflows Maze is best known for. AI Moderator is not part of those tiers. To run AI-moderated interviews on Maze, you enter a sales conversation for a Business or Organization contract, and participant recruitment is billed on top through credits.
None of that is unusual for an enterprise product line. It simply means the entry price you see on the pricing page and the price of AI interviews are two different numbers, and only one of them is published.
The buying motion is the main difference
With Maze's AI Moderator, the path looks like this: book a demo, qualify, negotiate an annual contract, then run your first AI-moderated interview.
With User Evaluation, the path looks like this: create a free account with no credit card, and Eva, the AI assistant, drafts the study with you. Run your first interviews with your own people, 3 of them on us. If the workflow earns its place, upgrade to Pro at $49 per month and pay per completed interview from there.
Both paths can end in good research. The difference is how much you learn about the product, and how much you commit, before anyone from sales is involved. For a founder, product manager, or small research team that needs five to twenty real conversations this week, the second path is usually faster.
What User Evaluation does
User Evaluation is an AI research workspace built around Eva, an AI assistant. You describe the decision you are trying to make, and Eva works through the study with you:
- It plans the study and drafts a discussion guide and screener.
- It recruits participants from your own people, from screened everyday consumers, or from professionals by job title, industry, and company size.
- It runs AI-moderated voice interviews with real people: real-time conversations with adaptive follow-ups, available in 40 languages, with the ability to show stimuli like concepts or screens mid-interview.
- It transcribes and analyzes the sessions: themes, cited quotes, sentiment and emotion.
- It produces reports with clickable citations that link back to the exact moment in the source recording, plus highlight clips for sharing.
Nothing is published and no money is spent without your approval. Eva shows the plan and the expected cost, then waits. There is also a public API and MCP server if you want the same loop inside your own tooling.
The evidence always comes from real humans. AI is the interviewer and the analyst, never the participant.
Pricing you can read before you talk to anyone
User Evaluation's full price list is on the public pricing page:
- Free: $0 forever, no card. 3 interviews with your own people on us, 3 hours of uploads a month, 50 questions to Eva a month, 1 Swarm run a month, and 1 seat.
- Pro: $49 per month, or $41 per month billed yearly. Unlimited studies, unlimited questions to Eva including deep research, 10 hours of uploads a month, 5 Swarm runs a month, and API and MCP access.
- Team: $199 per month, or $166 per month billed yearly, with everything in Pro, 5 seats plus unlimited viewers, 50 hours of uploads, 25 Swarm runs, and client workspaces for agencies.
- Interviews: paid per completed interview, the same on every plan. $10 with your own people, $39 with everyday people, and $99 with professionals, all-in, including the participant's payment, recruiting, recording, transcript, and cited study report.
You can compare those numbers against your expected research volume in a spreadsheet before speaking to anyone.
When Maze is the better fit
Choose Maze if unmoderated usability testing is your primary job. Their core product is mature, self-serve, and well-templated, and the free and Starter tiers make sense for that use case.
Maze is also a reasonable choice if you are a larger organization that wants usability testing and AI interviews under one enterprise contract, with procurement support and a dedicated vendor relationship, and the reported Business-tier pricing fits your budget. The brand is established and the logos are real.
Side by side
| Maze AI Moderator | User Evaluation | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free and ~$99/mo Starter cover usability testing; AI Moderator is on sales-led tiers (third parties report $12,000 to $15,000+/yr) | Free, Pro at $49/mo |
| Free tier | Yes, for core usability testing, not AI interviews | Yes, $0 forever with 3 own-people interviews on us |
| Self-serve signup | Yes for usability testing; no for AI Moderator | Yes, no credit card required |
| Try without signup | No, the AI Moderator page is a demo-booking form | No; a free account with no card instead of a demo |
| AI interview format | AI-moderated interviews on Business and Organization tiers | Real-time voice interviews with adaptive follow-ups and mid-interview stimuli |
| Participant sourcing | Recruitment credits billed separately | Included in the interview price: $10 own people, $39 consumers, $99 pros |
| Languages | Not published for AI Moderator (as of July 2026) | 40 |
Start with the free account
If Maze's core usability product is what you need, use it. It is good at that job. If AI-moderated interviews are the goal, you can find out whether User Evaluation fits in an afternoon instead of a sales cycle. Create a free account at https://app.userevaluation.com/signup, no card needed, and Eva drafts the study with you. Every price you would ever pay is listed at https://www.userevaluation.com/pricing.
