Best Culture Amp Alternatives in 2026: 12 Performance and Engagement Platforms

Updated August 2026

Let's be fair to Culture Amp before we talk about leaving it. It is the reference product for employee listening, and it earned that. The company says 25 million employees across more than 6,000 organizations are on the platform, which gives its benchmarks a comparison pool almost nobody else can match. Its people scientists design the question sets rather than letting a product manager guess at them, so an Engage survey tends to produce signal you can act on instead of a flattering number for a slide. If your board asks how your score compares to other 800-person software companies this quarter, Culture Amp answers that better than anything below.

So why do buyers keep shopping? Five reasons come up over and over. Culture Amp publishes no pricing at all, so even a rough budget number requires a sales cycle. Every product is billed annually, which rules out a cheap month-by-month trial. Below roughly 200 employees the benchmark advantage gets harder to justify against the invoice, and Culture Amp's own published segments start at "under 200 employees" for a reason. Its Perform module is competent but trails the review-first specialists on cycle configuration and calibration depth. And teams that want one system rather than a listening layer sitting next to an HRIS end up asking whether engagement should live where the employee record already lives.

This guide covers 12 alternatives for CHROs, People Ops leads, HR directors, and founders at companies roughly 50 to 2,000 employees. Every price below was pulled from the vendor's own pricing page in August 2026, and where a vendor publishes nothing, this guide says so instead of inventing a range. Start with the performance management software roundup if you have not narrowed the category yet, or the employee engagement software guide if listening is the whole job.

Key Facts

• Global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, its lowest level since 2020, costing the world economy an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity, or 9% of GDP (Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026).
• Business units in the top quartile of engagement show 23% higher profitability, 51% lower turnover in low-turnover organizations, and 78% lower absenteeism than bottom-quartile units, across 183,806 business units in 90 countries (Gallup Q12 Meta-Analysis, 11th edition).
• 71% of employees say their organization shares survey results and 59% say action plans get created, but only 51% report that actual improvements followed (Perceptyx, State of Employee Listening 2026).
• Disengagement plus attrition costs a median-size S&P 500 company an estimated $228 million to $355 million a year in lost productivity (McKinsey, September 2023).
• Manager engagement dropped from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025, the steepest decline of any employee group, which is why several tools below now sell manager enablement rather than survey volume (Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026).

Quick Comparison Table

1. Lattice - The Closest Thing to a Direct Swap

Lattice is where most Culture Amp evaluations end up, because it covers the same ground from the opposite direction. Culture Amp started with listening and added performance. Lattice started with performance reviews, goals and 1:1s and added engagement. If your pain is that Perform feels thin while your survey program is fine, Lattice inverts the trade.

The practical difference is that Lattice publishes its prices, so you can build a budget before you book a call. The catalog is modular: Performance at $10 per seat per month, Goals and OKRs at $8, Engagement at $4, with Compensation adding $6 and Grow adding $4 on top. Everything is billed annually and quoted in USD only, and there is a $4,000 minimum annual agreement, which is the real floor for small teams. A 200-person company running Performance plus Engagement lands at $14 per employee per month, or $33,600 a year.

Target audience. People teams at 100 to 2,000 employees that run structured review cycles and want engagement data attached to them rather than living in a separate tool.

Sizing fit. Strong from 100 to 2,000. Under 40 seats the $4,000 minimum makes the effective per-head cost climb fast.

Stage fit. Best once you have a real manager layer and a defined review cadence. Too much machinery for a pre-Series A team still running reviews in a doc.

Pricing: Performance $10 per seat/month, Goals and OKRs $8, Engagement $4, Compensation add-on plus $6, Grow add-on plus $4. All contracts billed annually. Minimum annual agreement $4,000.

Best for: Teams that want performance depth first and engagement as a connected module, with a price they can model before the sales call.

Worth reading next: the head-to-head on Lattice vs Culture Amp, and if Lattice itself is the thing you are replacing, the Lattice alternatives guide.

---

2. 15Five - Fix the Manager Layer, Not Just the Survey

Gallup's finding that manager engagement fell from 31% to 22% between 2022 and 2025 explains 15Five's entire product strategy. The company decided the bottleneck is not survey coverage, it is what a manager does on the Monday after results land. So the platform pushes weekly check-ins, a manager effectiveness score, and microlearning aimed at managers instead of at the whole population.

That makes it a genuine alternative rather than a cheaper copy. You give up benchmark breadth and you gain a weekly rhythm your managers actually operate. It also publishes prices: Engage at $4 per user per month, Perform at $11, and Total Platform at $16, all billed annually. A 300-person company on Total Platform pays $57,600 a year. Watch the coaching add-ons, though. Manager Content runs $49 per manager per month and Manager Coaching is $399 per credit, which is where the invoice surprises teams that buy the coaching story wholesale.

Target audience. Companies from 50 to 1,500 employees where HR owns manager development, not just review administration.

Sizing fit. Best from 50 to 1,500. Under 50 the manager tooling outweighs the number of managers you have.

Stage fit. Ideal right after a growth spurt has created a lot of first-time managers.

Pricing: Engage $4 per user/month, Perform $11, Total Platform $16, all billed annually. Add-ons: Compensation $9 per employee/month, Compensation with benchmarking $11, Kona Meeting Assistant $2, Kona Coach $19 per manager/month, Manager Content $49 per manager/month, Manager Coaching $399 per credit.

Best for: People teams whose engagement scores are really a manager-quality problem. If you have shortlisted it already, the 15Five alternatives guide covers the rest of that bracket.

---

3. Qualtrics Employee Experience - When the Research Rigor Has to Match

If you are leaving Culture Amp because it is not rigorous enough, there is essentially one place to go. Qualtrics is a research platform first, and its employee experience products carry that DNA: driver analysis, text analytics across open-ended responses, lifecycle studies from candidate to exit, and 360 development feedback a people-analytics team can genuinely interrogate.

Note the packaging, because this is where stale articles get it wrong. The pricing page no longer sells a product called EmployeeXM. The two published employee-experience lines are People Engage, aimed at engagement, productivity and the cost of attrition, and People Lifecycle, aimed at optimizing employee journeys. Both are priced on employee count with unlimited users included, and Qualtrics publishes no dollar figures at all. Every plan routes to a pricing request, and the page notes that plans may differ based on industry security requirements.

So on the specific complaint that sent you looking, Qualtrics does not solve it. You trade one quote-only vendor for another, and Qualtrics is usually the more expensive of the two. What you buy is depth: the ability to run a study rather than a survey.

Target audience. Enterprises above 1,000 employees with a people-analytics function that will use the depth.

Sizing fit. 1,000 and up. Below 500 the admin overhead outruns the value.

Stage fit. For organizations already running mature listening programs that have hit the ceiling of a mid-market tool.

Pricing: Quote only. People Engage and People Lifecycle are both priced on employee count with unlimited users included. No figures published.

Best for: People-analytics teams that need statistical defensibility, not a faster survey tool.

---

4. Microsoft Viva Glint - The Cheapest Real Listening Platform Here

Here is the fact that changes budgets: Microsoft publishes Viva Glint at $2.00 per user per month, paid yearly, as a standalone app. It is also bundled into Microsoft Viva Workplace Analytics and Employee Feedback at $6.00 per user per month alongside Viva Insights and Viva Pulse, or the full Viva Suite at $12.00. For a 1,000-person company, standalone Glint is $24,000 a year for a listening platform built on the original Glint people-science team Microsoft acquired.

One clarification, because this trips up nearly every roundup: Viva Glint is not Viva Goals. Microsoft retired Viva Goals on 31 December 2025, and after retirement its web and Teams apps went dark while the Azure DevOps, Teams and Power BI connectors stopped working. Glint is a different product and is very much live, with continued investment through 2026. Don't let a stale article talk you out of it, and don't expect it to carry your OKRs.

The honest limitation is scope. Glint does listening and action planning. It does not run performance reviews, so if you were using both halves of Culture Amp you still need a review tool next to it.

Target audience. Microsoft 365 organizations of 500 or more that want serious listening without a serious invoice.

Sizing fit. 500 and up, and it scales comfortably into the tens of thousands.

Stage fit. Best for established organizations already standardized on Microsoft 365 and Entra ID.

Pricing: Viva Glint $2.00 per user/month paid yearly. Viva Workplace Analytics and Employee Feedback $6.00 per user/month. Viva Suite $12.00 per user/month. All plans require an annual commitment.

Best for: Microsoft-standardized organizations that want strong listening at a fraction of the spend and already have a separate review process.

---

5. Leapsome - One Platform Instead of Three Contracts

Leapsome sells the widest module range in this comparison: HRIS, Reviews, Surveys, Goals, Learning, Compensation, Time Tracking, and Recruiting in early access. For a team that currently pays Culture Amp for listening, a review tool for cycles, and an LMS for training, the consolidation argument does real work. It is also the strongest option in this list for European buyers, where GDPR posture, EU data residency and works council consultation are procurement gates rather than footnotes.

Pricing needs care, because Leapsome's own site disagrees with itself. Leapsome prices per module and does not publish a single flat per-seat rate. Its own comparison pages put the entry point near US$3 per user per month for one module, while the pricing configurator quotes a starting total rather than a seat rate. Minimum contract term is one year, there are no setup fees, multi-module and volume discounts apply, and a 14-day free trial is available. Customer Success support requires an annual contract of at least US$6,000.

Read that as: cheap to start on one module, quote-driven once you build the stack, and worth modeling against your full current spend rather than against Culture Amp alone.

Target audience. Mid-market companies of 100 to 2,000 employees replacing three vendors with one, especially in DACH, the UK and Benelux.

Sizing fit. 100 to 2,000. Small teams pay for depth they will not reach.

Stage fit. Best when a scaling company is consolidating tooling rather than adding a first HR system.

Pricing: Modular and quote based. Entry near US$3 per user per month for one module by Leapsome's own comparison pages, with the configurator quoting a starting total instead. One-year minimum term, no setup fees, discounts for multi-module and volume.

Best for: European mid-market teams consolidating listening, reviews and learning into one contract. If it is already on your shortlist, the Leapsome alternatives guide covers the rest of that field.

---

6. PerformYard - Review Cycles Configured Exactly Your Way

PerformYard takes the opposite bet from Culture Amp. Instead of one opinionated methodology backed by benchmarks, it gives you a configuration engine and a human to set it up. If your review process has genuine quirks, dual-rater cycles, project-based reviews, staggered anniversaries, calibration by department, PerformYard bends to them instead of asking you to bend.

The service model is the underrated part. Unlimited training, implementation, a dedicated success manager and SSO are all included at no extra cost, which is unusual in a category where implementation fees routinely run four or five figures. That matters most for HR teams of one or two people with no internal admin to own the tool.

Pricing is published as ranges and billed annually: core Performance Management runs $5 to $10 per person per month, with PerformYard AI adding $1 to $3, Employee Engagement at $1 to $3, Meetings adding $2 to $4, and Surveys adding $2 to $4. Those are vendor ranges, not estimates, and where you land inside them depends on headcount and module mix.

Target audience. HR teams of 50 to 1,000 employees whose review process is the priority and whose engagement program is secondary.

Sizing fit. 50 to 1,000, with the sweet spot around 100 to 500.

Stage fit. Good for companies formalizing reviews for the first time, and for those escaping a rigid tool that would not fit their cycle.

Pricing: Performance Management $5 to $10 per person/month. Add-ons: PerformYard AI plus $1 to $3, Employee Engagement $1 to $3, Meetings plus $2 to $4, Surveys plus $2 to $4. Billed annually. Unlimited training, implementation, a dedicated success manager and SSO included.

Best for: HR teams that need a review cycle shaped around their org, with a real human helping them build it.

---

7. Peoplebox - Reviews, Goals and AI in One Published Price List

Peoplebox is the option for teams that want performance and goals tied together and are tired of quote-only pricing. It publishes a per-module rate card, billed annually, starting at $8 per employee per month for Performance Management and $2 for Engagement. There is no free tier.

The product's distinguishing idea is connecting goals to the systems where work actually happens, then using AI to draft review summaries from the evidence rather than from memory. If your complaint about reviews is that managers write them the night before from vibes, that mechanism is the point.

Where it does not match Culture Amp is comparison data. Peoplebox will tell you what your engagement score is and how it moved. It will not tell you how you compare to 6,000 other organizations, and if that context is what your leadership team responds to, this is a downgrade on the axis that mattered most.

Target audience. Growth-stage companies of 100 to 1,000 employees running OKRs seriously and wanting reviews attached to them.

Sizing fit. 100 to 1,000. Below 100 the module math is fine but the OKR machinery is heavy.

Stage fit. Best for Series B and later companies with an established goal cadence.

Pricing: Performance Management $8 per employee/month, 360 Degree Feedback $8, Individual Development Plans $3, Compensation $5, Engagement $2. All billed annually. Nova AI recruiting is quote-only.

Best for: OKR-driven teams that want reviews grounded in goal evidence and a price list they can read without a call.

---

8. Workleap - Flat Annual Packages, No Seat Math

Workleap folded Officevibe, its performance tools and its LMS into a single platform, and it changed the pricing model to match. This is the trap in older comparisons, so read it carefully: Workleap no longer sells Officevibe at a per-seat rate. Pricing is now package-based, with Standard starting at $4,999 USD billed annually and Pro starting at $11,999 USD billed annually. Enterprise is custom and aimed at organizations of 250 or more. There is no free plan on the pricing page.

The packaging changes who this suits. At 400 employees, the Standard package works out around $1.04 per employee per month, which is the cheapest real engagement program in this list. At 60 employees it is $6.94, which is no longer a bargain. Package pricing rewards headcount, so the question is not "is Workleap cheap" but "is Workleap cheap at my size".

Feature-wise you get pulse and custom surveys, anonymous feedback, Good Vibes peer recognition, AI-recommended actions off survey results, and integrations with Slack, Teams and 100-plus HRIS tools. It is deliberately lighter than Culture Amp on survey science and much easier to launch.

Target audience. SMB and lower mid-market teams of 100 to 400 employees that want engagement running in weeks, not a quarter.

Sizing fit. 100 to 400 on Standard, 250 and up on Enterprise. Under 80 the flat package is hard to justify.

Stage fit. Great as a first engagement platform. Limited as a system of record for formal performance.

Pricing: Standard starting at $4,999 USD billed annually. Pro starting at $11,999 USD billed annually. Enterprise custom, for organizations with 250 or more employees.

Best for: Teams between roughly 150 and 400 people that want predictable engagement spend and a fast rollout.

---

9. WorkTango - Recognition and Listening on One Contract

WorkTango's argument is structural. Most companies buy engagement surveys from one vendor and recognition from another, then try to correlate the two in a spreadsheet. WorkTango puts surveys, action planning, recognition and rewards in one platform, so recognition activity becomes a continuous engagement signal next to your survey results instead of a separate spend nobody measures.

That matters more than it sounds. Perceptyx found that only 51% of employees see actual improvements after a survey, even though 71% see the results shared. Recognition data gives you something moving weekly between survey cycles, which makes the gap between "we heard you" and "something changed" visible faster.

The friction is pricing. All three WorkTango tiers say "Request Pricing", and the vendor states only that annual platform costs depend on your employee count. Coming from Culture Amp specifically, that means you are swapping one quote-only vendor for another, so if procurement transparency is your reason for leaving, WorkTango does not fix it. Treat any per-seat figure you find in a third-party listicle as unverified.

Target audience. Companies of 200 to 5,000 employees consolidating an engagement survey vendor and a recognition vendor.

Sizing fit. 200 to 5,000, with the consolidation savings growing with headcount.

Stage fit. Best where both programs already exist and the renewal dates are close enough to combine.

Pricing: Quote only. All three tiers request pricing, and the vendor notes only that annual platform costs depend on employee count.

Best for: People teams merging two vendors into one contract who accept a quote-based conversation to do it. For the wider program design, our employee engagement resource library covers what to run alongside the tool.

---

10. Engagedly - Buy a Talent Suite One Module at a Time

Engagedly has the broadest catalog in this comparison and the most granular way to buy it. Modules are priced per user per month and billed annually, from $2 for Engage and Listen up to $10 for Manage Compensation, with the full-platform bundle quote-only. The vendor notes that pricing may vary based on employee count and bundling, with a minimum of $7,500 per year.

That $7,500 floor is the number to plan around. At 300 employees, Engage and Listen at $2 comes to $7,200 a year, just under the minimum, so you are buying a second module whether you planned to or not. Above roughly 400 employees the math turns in your favor and the breadth pays off: few competitors sell mentoring, talent mobility and deskless communications in one catalog.

The trade against Culture Amp is depth for range. Engage and Listen is a competent survey module. It is not a people-science program, and there is no benchmark pool of comparable scale behind it.

Target audience. Mid-market and enterprise HR teams of 300 to 5,000 building a talent stack in stages.

Sizing fit. 300 to 5,000. Below 300 the annual minimum distorts the per-seat price.

Stage fit. Best for organizations with a multi-year people-tech roadmap rather than a single urgent gap.

Pricing: Per user/month billed annually. Manage Performance $5 to $8, Learn and Grow $3 to $5, Recognize and Reward $2, Engage and Listen $2, Talent Mobility $2, Mentoring $8, Manage Compensation $10, Deskless Comms $5. Minimum $7,500 per year. Full bundle quote-only.

Best for: HR teams sequencing a talent stack over several years who want to start small and add modules.

---

11. Bonusly - Make Recognition the Engagement Program

Bonusly is not a survey tool and does not pretend to be. Its bet is that engagement is built by frequent peer recognition rather than measured by quarterly questionnaires, so the product runs on small peer-to-peer bonuses, public praise tied to company values, and Bizy, its AI layer for prompting and summarizing recognition activity.

Used well, it produces something surveys cannot: a continuous view of who is contributing and where energy sits, updated daily rather than twice a year. Used badly, it becomes a points economy nobody takes seriously. The difference is almost entirely manager behavior, worth grounding in a real practice like our guide to giving feedback before you roll it out.

Pricing is published and simple: Free for up to 8 users, Team plus Bizy at $5 per user per month or $50 per user per year, and Organization plus Bizy at custom pricing. Budget for the second line item honestly, though. The reward budget is separate from the platform fee, and Bonusly's own wording is that you only pay for the rewards your team redeems. A recognition program's true cost is the subscription plus the reward spend, and teams that forget the second half always overshoot.

Target audience. Distributed and hybrid teams of 50 to 1,000 that want daily engagement signal, not a survey program.

Sizing fit. 50 to 1,000. Works down to very small teams on the free tier.

Stage fit. Best for fast-growing companies where culture is diluting and peer visibility is dropping.

Pricing: Free for up to 8 users. Team plus Bizy $5 per user/month, or $50 per user/year. Organization plus Bizy custom. Reward budget is separate: you pay only for rewards your team redeems.

Best for: Teams that want engagement to be a daily habit with visible activity, alongside a cheaper listening tool rather than instead of one.

---

12. Small Improvements - Honest Reviews on a Small Budget

Small Improvements is the sanity check at the bottom of this list. It runs reviews, 360 feedback, 1:1s, objectives and praise, and never pretends to be a people-science platform. For a 120-person company that needs a fair, well-documented review cycle, it does the job for a fraction of what the suites cost.

Pricing is published and refreshingly plain, all billed annually, running from $3 per user per month on Launch to $9 on Elevate, with a 30-day free trial. At 150 employees, the middle Grow tier is $10,800 a year for the full review program.

What you give up is the entire reason people buy Culture Amp: benchmarks, people-science-designed instruments, and lifecycle analytics. If your engagement score has to survive a board conversation, this is not the tool. If your problem is that reviews are inconsistent and nobody documents anything, it solves that cleanly, and pairing it with a documented performance review framework closes most of the gap.

Target audience. Companies of 30 to 400 employees that want structured reviews without a strategic listening program.

Sizing fit. 30 to 400. Minimums of 20 to 30 users rule out very small teams.

Stage fit. Ideal for a first formal review cycle at a company that has outgrown documents and spreadsheets.

Pricing: Launch $3 per user/month (20-user minimum), Grow $6 per user/month (20-user minimum), Elevate $9 per user/month (30-user minimum). All billed annually. Volume discounts for 1,000-plus users on Grow and 200-plus on Elevate. 30-day free trial.

Best for: Small and mid-sized teams that need reviews done properly and can live without benchmark data.

---

Sizing and Persona Fit

Headcount changes the answer more than feature lists do. Package pricing rewards scale, per-seat pricing punishes it, and annual minimums quietly reprice the bottom of the market.

Stage Fit

Migrating Off Culture Amp: What You Lose and What to Export

Two things do not come with you, and both are worth pricing honestly before you sign elsewhere.

The first is benchmark history. Culture Amp's comparison data is licensed, not owned by you. You can export your own scores, but the industry, size and stage comparisons that made those scores meaningful stay behind. If your leadership team is used to hearing "we are four points above software companies our size", plan for two or three cycles where no vendor can give you that sentence.

The second is people-science support. Culture Amp's consulting layer designs instruments, reads results and helps HR frame findings for executives. Most alternatives sell software and a success manager, not a researcher. PerformYard includes a success manager at no extra cost and Leapsome sells Customer Success support above a US$6,000 annual contract, but neither is the same service. If nobody on your team can defend a question set, budget for a consultant.

Then export before you give notice, not after. Access usually ends at termination, and all Culture Amp products are billed annually, so check your notice window early.

Run one more full survey cycle on Culture Amp before you switch if you can. It gives you a clean, complete final dataset instead of a half cycle nobody can interpret.

How to Choose: Decision Framework

Before the table, one honest fork. If your real conclusion is that engagement should live inside your HRIS rather than beside it, that is a different shortlist entirely: start with HiBob alternatives or, if global payroll and contractors are in scope, Deel alternatives.

What to Do Next

Take your two strongest candidates from the decision framework and price them at your actual headcount, not at the vendor's example headcount. That single step eliminates about half of most shortlists, because package pricing and annual minimums move the ranking hard between 80 and 400 employees.

Then run a real pilot. Pick one department of 30 to 50 people, run one full survey or review round end to end, and watch whether managers finish their part without HR chasing them. Voluntary adoption in a pilot predicts adoption at scale better than any feature matrix. Give yourself eight weeks between signing and your next cycle to import your exported history, rebuild attribute mappings and train managers.

Camellia writes about HR and people-operations tooling for B2B teams. Pricing verified against vendor pricing pages in August 2026.