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: open the site and talk to the research agent without creating an account. Create a free account with no credit card. Run a trial interview. If the workflow earns its place, upgrade to Pro at $49 per month or buy an interview pack.
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 agent in a chat workspace. You describe the decision you are trying to make, and the agent works through the study with you:
- It plans the study and drafts a discussion guide and screener.
- It recruits participants from your own list or from the User Evaluation participant pool.
- 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. The agent shows the plan and the expected cost, then waits. There is also a public API 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, 100 agent credits per month, 3 projects, 1 GB of storage, plus trial grants for interviews and transcription. Deep Research is available on paid plans.
- Pro: $49 per month, or $41 per month billed yearly. Includes 5 own-participant AI interviews each month, unlimited projects, 30 audio and video processing hours, and 30 Deep Research runs.
- Team: $199 per month, or $166 per month billed yearly, with 5 seats and 25 own-participant interviews per month.
- Interview packs: one-time purchases that never expire. Own participants at $9 each in a 10-pack or $8 each in a 25-pack. Participants from the User Evaluation pool, with sourcing included, at $24 each in a 10-pack or $22 each in a 25-pack.
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 100 agent credits/mo and trial interview grants | | 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 | Yes, live agent chat on the site | | 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 | Your own list, or the UE pool with sourcing included from $22 per interview | | 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. Try the agent chat on the site, then create a free account at https://app.userevaluation.com/signup. Every price you would ever pay is listed at https://app.userevaluation.com/pricing.