What Is UserTesting?: And How Does It Compare To Sprig

Example H2

Introduction

UserTesting is a human insight platform that lets teams watch and hear real people use a website, app, prototype, or idea, typically through recorded think-aloud sessions, live or AI-moderated interviews, and usability tests. The company states it serves more than 3,000 customers, including 75 of the Fortune 100. It also runs surveys and task metrics, but its core strength is explaining why people behave the way they do, and teams that need a population-level number often add a survey platform.

Key Takeaways

UserTesting is best understood as the qualitative and behavioral half of a research stack. The essentials:

Records real people completing tasks and explaining their reasoning aloud, on screen and on camera
Combines UserTesting, UserZoom, and the User Interviews participant network under one privately owned company
Reports a combined network of 7.6 million participants, including 3.2 million verified professionals
Holds Leader status in the Forrester Wave for Experience Research Platforms, Q1 2026
Ships surveys, click tests, tree tests, and a 0 to 100 benchmark metric called QXscore
Publishes no sample size, weighting, or significance testing guidance that this guide could find
Pairs well with a survey platform when a team needs a defensible estimate for a population

The sections below cover each point with sources, starting with a plain definition.

What Is UserTesting, in One Definition?

UserTesting is a research platform for gathering video, audio, and behavioral feedback from real people as they interact with a digital experience. The company calls it the UserTesting Human Insight Platform.

Teams use it to see where someone hesitates, what they expected to happen, and what they say while it happens.

The defining artifact is the recorded session. Rather than asking someone to rate an experience after the fact, UserTesting captures the experience as it unfolds, with the participant narrating their thinking.

That makes UserTesting a reasoning instrument. It answers why a checkout flow loses people, what a new navigation label suggests to a first-time visitor, or how a customer describes a product in their own words.

UserTesting at a Glance

UserTesting is a private company founded in 2007 and owned by the private equity firms Thoma Bravo and Sunstone Partners since a take-private deal that closed in January 2023.

Two combinations shaped the current company.

UserTesting merged with UserZoom in 2023, adding a broader set of unmoderated study types. On January 7, 2026, it announced the acquisition of User Interviews, a participant recruitment platform that brought more than 6 million participants.

How Does UserTesting Work?

A UserTesting study generally moves through four steps: define the audience, write the tasks, collect the sessions, and review the evidence.

Choose who should take part, using demographic filters, screener questions, or a custom participant list.
Write a test plan of tasks and questions, which UserTesting's AI can now draft.
Launch the study and collect recorded sessions, which UserTesting says can arrive within hours.
Review video, transcripts, and AI-generated summaries, then clip and share key moments.

The output is usually a set of recorded people rather than a table of percentages. A typical study might include a handful to a few dozen participants, each producing a video with a transcript and a set of answers.

This shapes how teams use the findings. A clip of five customers failing the same task is generally persuasive in a product review, and it is often the fastest way to end a debate about whether a problem is real.

What Research Methods Does UserTesting Support?

UserTesting supports moderated and unmoderated methods that center on observing behavior. The core set includes:

Unmoderated think-aloud usability tests
Live moderated interviews
AI-moderated sessions
Prototype and Figma tests
Card sorting
Tree testing
Click testing
Split testing

The unmoderated think-aloud test is the method most people associate with the brand. A participant receives a set of tasks, completes them on their own device, and talks through what they are doing while the screen and voice are recorded.

The UserZoom lineage adds information architecture methods. UserTesting's help center lists seven unmoderated study types, including Basic Usability Test, Click Test, Survey, Live Intercept, Card Sort, Tree Test, and an advanced type that mixes qualitative and quantitative methods.

Live Intercept is the least familiar of these. It recruits visitors directly from a live website into a study, which is useful when the right participants are the people already on a page rather than a general panel audience.

Does UserTesting Do Surveys and Quantitative Research?

Yes, UserTesting does run surveys and quantitative task measures. Its help center classifies Survey, Click Test, and Tree Test as quantitative study types, and describes surveys as a way to get "fast answers from profiled participants." Rating questions, task success measures, and QXscore benchmarking sit alongside them.

That makes a qualitative-only label for UserTesting inaccurate.

The more useful distinction is between asking a structured question and producing a defensible estimate. A question type is not a methodology.

Producing a number that holds for a population typically requires four things beyond the question itself:

Sample size planning
Weighting or quotas
Named significance test
Repeatable fielding

UserTesting's public documentation describes its survey and click test study types by purpose and use case.

This guide found no published guidance on sample size, weighting, or significance testing for them.

That is a documentation gap to raise with any vendor, and a reasonable question to ask before a UserTesting survey result goes into a business case.

What Is QXscore?

QXscore, short for Quality Experience Score, is UserTesting's 0 to 100 benchmark metric for the quality of a digital experience. According to UserTesting's QXscore page, QXscore combines six behavioral and attitudinal components: usability, task success, customer satisfaction, reliability and trust, appearance, and Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Teams can compare QXscore results over time and against competitors.

The American Airlines case study on the same page describes using QXscore as a common metric to track success over time, which is the use it is best suited to.

QXscore is a genuine strength for teams that want one experience metric to report upward. Rather than presenting a stack of clips, a design team can show a score moving from one release to the next.

The same page does not state a recommended sample size for calculating QXscore. Teams using it to compare releases or competitors should confirm the base size behind each score and how differences are tested before treating a movement as real.

The UserTesting Participant Network

UserTesting's participant network is one of its clearest competitive advantages. The company reported a combined network of 7.6 million participants, including 3.2 million verified professionals across 140 industries, in its July 2026 product release.

User Interviews contributed more than 6 million participants to that total. The acquisition added a recruitment business built for hard-to-reach audiences, such as specialized professionals and niche consumer segments.

UserTesting's homepage separately cites "7M+ authenticated participants across 34 countries," so the published figures vary by page. Buyers should confirm which network, which countries, and which audience types apply to their plan.

Some TrustRadius reviewers raise concerns about how well screeners filter participants. Buyers should ask how UserTesting verifies participants and removes low-quality testers, a question worth asking of any large panel.

UserTesting AI Capabilities and MCP Server

UserTesting has added AI across study creation, fielding, and analysis during 2026. Its April 2026 release introduced AI-generated test plans and AI-generated test summaries.

The platform also lists AI Moderation among its capabilities, which lets an AI interviewer run sessions without a live researcher. Buyers should confirm which plans include AI Moderation.

The July 2026 release added a UserTesting Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. It connects participant recruitment, test creation, and results to Claude, ChatGPT, Figma Make, and other AI clients.

Rather than treating AI as a replacement for observation, UserTesting generally positions it as a way to get to the recorded human faster. Researchers remain responsible for judging whether an AI summary reflects what the sessions actually show.

Who Uses UserTesting?

UserTesting's customer stories center on user experience researchers, designers, and product managers, and the company states it serves 75 of the Fortune 100.

Common use cases include:

Prototype testing
Checkout diagnosis
Design comparison
Customer language
Navigation validation
Competitive benchmarking

Rather than limiting itself to product teams, UserTesting also markets the platform to marketing teams for testing campaign concepts and landing pages before launch.

Where UserTesting Is Strongest

UserTesting is strongest wherever the evidence a team needs is a person's behavior and reasoning, captured on video, and four areas stand out.

First, observed behavior. No survey reproduces watching a participant search for a button in plain view, and a clip like that often changes a stakeholder's mind faster than a chart.

Second, speed for general audiences. UserTesting markets results within hours, which often suits a design sprint with a decision due that week.

Third, network depth. After the User Interviews acquisition, UserTesting reports 7.6 million participants, including 3.2 million verified professionals across 140 industries.

Fourth, analyst standing. UserTesting was named a Leader in the Forrester Wave for Experience Research Platforms, Q1 2026, with the second highest score in the current offering category.

UserTesting is best for teams whose next decision depends on seeing and hearing how real people experience a product.

Where UserTesting Is Not the Right Instrument

UserTesting is not the right primary instrument when the answer needs to hold for people who were not in the study. Rather than explaining behavior, those questions ask how many, how often, or which option wins by how much.

Examples include:

Feature demand sizing
Monthly NPS tracking
MaxDiff prioritization
Conjoint pricing studies
Board-level percentages

Each of these typically needs a large, planned sample and a stable instrument. A recorded session gives up identical stimulus in exchange for depth, which is the correct trade for a qualitative method and the wrong one for population estimation.

Cost structure is the other consideration. UserTesting does not publish list pricing, so buyers should ask how costs scale at high response volumes.

Is UserTesting Qualitative or Quantitative?

UserTesting is primarily a qualitative and behavioral research platform with a set of quantitative study types built in, including surveys, click tests, tree tests, and QXscore. It is neither purely qualitative nor a survey platform, and its core evidence is the recorded session.

The line between the two categories is clearer when it is drawn on the question rather than the vendor. If the answer needs to hold for people who were not in the room, it is a survey question.

If the answer is about what happens in the room, it is a session question.

Vendors increasingly cross that line in both directions. UserTesting ships surveys, and survey platforms ship video responses, so rather than routing by vendor category, route each question by the evidence it needs.

Qualitative Session or Survey: A Question-Routing Table

Routing a research question to the right instrument starts with the evidence the decision requires. The table below maps common questions to the instrument that typically answers them best.

The pattern is consistent across the table: session research wins when the reasoning is the deliverable or the population is small. Survey research wins when a number will leave the room.

Two cases are contested.

A directional read on a short list, with no number shared outside the team, can work in either instrument. And open-ended feedback that used to sit unread in a free-text survey field is often better captured in a short recorded session.

Where Sprig Fits: The Quantitative Counterpart to UserTesting

Sprig is a survey platform built for quantitative research, and a common counterpart to a platform like UserTesting.

Rather than recording sessions, Sprig fields structured studies to a known population and turns the responses into measures a team can track, segment, and defend.

Sprig distributes studies through six channels: in-product surveys on web, native mobile apps, email, shareable links, QR codes, and external research panels. That lets one platform reach current users inside a product and defined external audiences for market research.

Three AI agents cover the research lifecycle. The Design Agent builds a programmed study from a research goal, the Field Agent adds follow-up questions during fielding, and the Synthesize Agent groups responses into themes linked to source quotes. Researchers remain responsible for checking every AI-drafted study and theme against the raw responses before sharing it.

On the Enterprise plan, Sprig supports advanced methods including MaxDiff and conjoint analysis. The Sprig MCP connector lets agents in Claude and ChatGPT create studies in draft, with a human approving every study before it reaches a respondent.

Sprig is best for teams that need survey-based customer and market research, measured repeatedly, with AI agents drafting studies and grouping responses for a researcher to review.

What Sprig Does Not Do

Sprig does not run moderated interviews, AI-moderated interviews, or live screen observation. The closest capabilities are asynchronous video and voice responses and Recorded Task, which captures screen, voice, and video inside a prototype, but none of these is a live session.

Teams that need observed think-aloud research should use a platform like UserTesting for that work. Sprig should not be evaluated as a substitute for it.

Sprig also has documentation gaps of its own. It does not publish its weighting approach, sample size guidance, or MaxDiff estimation methodology, so the vendor questions in the checklist below apply to Sprig as much as to anyone.

Sprig hosts its software in Amazon Web Services facilities in the United States, and it does not offer regional data residency. Buyers with residency requirements should treat that as a constraint.

How UserTesting and a Survey Platform Work Together

Qualitative sessions and surveys generally work best in sequence, with each one setting up the next. A typical loop has five steps:

Run recorded sessions in UserTesting to find where and why people struggle.
Turn the observed problems into hypotheses and answer options.
Field a survey to a planned sample to measure how common each problem is.
Prioritize fixes by prevalence and impact across segments.
Return to sessions to test the redesign, then re-survey to track the change.

Consider a subscription app with rising cancellations.

A round of recorded sessions surfaces three reasons people give up during plan changes. A survey to recent cancellers, sized in advance for the annual-subscriber segment, then shows which of the three is most common.

The sessions found the problem, and the survey sized it.

The order often reverses, too. A tracking survey shows satisfaction dropping in one segment, and a round of sessions with people from that segment explains why before anyone commits to a fix.

Teams running both tools commonly hit friction at the handoff. Using the same segment definitions in each keeps a clip and a percentage about one problem in one review.

What to Ask Any Research Vendor Before Trusting a Number

Any vendor's structured result deserves the same scrutiny before it reaches a business case. These questions apply equally to UserTesting, Sprig, and every other platform:

Ask what the base size was and whether the team planned it before fielding began
Ask how participants were recruited and which screener criteria removed people from the sample
Ask whether responses were weighted, and to which target population the weights were matched
Ask which significance test was used and at what confidence level results were reported
Ask whether every participant saw an identical instrument, with no adaptive or personalized questions
Ask whether the same study can be re-fielded later to track change over time

A vendor that answers these clearly in its documentation is typically easier to defend in front of a finance or executive audience. A vendor that cannot answer them is often still useful, but for directional reads rather than reported estimates.

UserTesting and Sprig Ratings on Review Sites

UserTesting holds 4.4 out of 5 across 793 reviews on G2, in the User Research Tools category, and 8.1 out of 10 across 326 reviews on TrustRadius, both retrieved September 24, 2026.

UserTesting's Capterra listing shows 4.5 out of 5 across 132 reviews, but many of those reviews come from paid participants rather than buyers, so it is not a reliable read of customer sentiment.

For comparison, Sprig holds 4.3 out of 5 across 199 reviews on G2, retrieved September 24, 2026. UserTesting's review base on G2 is roughly four times larger, which makes its score the more stable of the two.

Frequently Asked Questions

Short answers to the questions people ask most about UserTesting.

What is UserTesting used for?

UserTesting is used to watch and hear real people interact with websites, apps, prototypes, and ideas. Teams run think-aloud usability tests, moderated and AI-moderated interviews, card sorts, and tree tests to understand why people behave the way they do before and after a product ships.

Is UserTesting only for usability testing?

No, UserTesting also supports interviews, surveys, card sorting, tree testing, click testing, and the QXscore benchmark. Usability testing remains its best-known method, but the UserZoom merger and the User Interviews acquisition broadened the platform into a wider customer insights suite.

Can UserTesting replace a survey platform?

UserTesting can run surveys, but it is generally not a replacement for a dedicated survey platform when a team needs large planned samples, weighting, significance testing, or repeated tracking. Most teams use UserTesting for the reasons behind behavior and a survey platform for how common that behavior is.

Who owns UserTesting?

UserTesting is owned by Thoma Bravo and Sunstone Partners, which completed their acquisition of the company in January 2023 and took it private. UserTesting then merged with UserZoom and, on January 7, 2026, announced the acquisition of User Interviews, which added more than 6 million participants to its network.

Is User Interviews part of UserTesting now?

Yes, User Interviews is part of UserTesting following an acquisition announced on January 7, 2026. User Interviews contributed more than 6 million participants and recruitment for specialized professional and consumer audiences to UserTesting's combined network.

Does UserTesting have an MCP server?

Yes, UserTesting announced a Model Context Protocol server in its July 2026 release. It connects participant recruitment, test creation, and results to AI clients such as Claude, ChatGPT, and Figma Make, so teams can launch tests and pull feedback from those tools.

How much does UserTesting cost?

UserTesting does not publish list prices. Its plans page lists three plans, Advanced, Ultimate, and Ultimate+, each priced through a sales request, with two consumption models: test-based consumption and team-based unlimited testing within a defined enterprise scope. Buyers should ask how costs scale with volume.

What is the difference between UserTesting and Sprig?

UserTesting is a qualitative and behavioral research platform built around recorded sessions and interviews, while Sprig is a survey platform built for quantitative research across in-product, email, link, and panel channels. The two are commonly used together, with UserTesting explaining behavior and Sprig measuring it.

Bottom Line

UserTesting is the platform to use when the evidence a decision needs is real people showing and telling you how they experience a product. It is strong on observed behavior, participant reach, and speed.

If your next question is why people struggle, UserTesting is built for it. If your next question is how many people struggle, and whether that number is changing, a survey platform like Sprig is the better instrument. Ultimately, most research programs need both.

This is Sprig's independent guide. Sprig is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a partner of UserTesting.