15Five vs Culture Amp Pricing, Year-One Cost by Headcount

15Five publishes its prices and Culture Amp does not. 15Five lists Engage at $4 per user a month, Perform at $11 and Total Platform at $16, all billed annually. Culture Amp's pricing page states only that cost depends on the number of employees, the product chosen and the service tier, with every product billed annually and every route ending in a quote request. So the honest comparison is this: you can total 15Five at your headcount today, and you should use that total as the number any Culture Amp quote has to beat for the same job.

Every figure below was read on 29 September 2026 from 15five.com/pricing and cultureamp.com/pricing. The yearly totals are our arithmetic from 15Five's published rates, and each table says so. We are not affiliated with either company and we do not resell either product.

Is 15Five cheaper than Culture Amp?

Nobody outside a Culture Amp sales conversation can say for certain, because Culture Amp publishes no rate. What can be said is that 15Five's engagement product costs $4 per user a month with no minimum spend stated on its standard packages, which is the low end of the published market. For a Culture Amp quote to come in cheaper on engagement alone, it would have to land below $4 per employee per month at your headcount. Ask for the quote per employee per month so you can make that comparison directly.

Be careful with the per-employee figures that review sites print for Culture Amp. They are reconstructed from contract data and user reports, they disagree with each other, and none of them appear on Culture Amp's own site. We do not repeat them here, and you should not put them in a budget.

15Five vs Culture Amp pricing at a glance

How much does 15Five cost at 50, 150 and 400 employees?

This is the number you can hand finance before any demo. It is our arithmetic from 15Five's published per-user rates, multiplied by twelve months, before any add-ons or negotiated discount.

The Culture Amp column is missing on purpose. When the quote arrives, divide the annual total by your headcount and by twelve, and put it next to the row for the same product. If the Culture Amp quote bundles service, ask for the service tier as its own line so you are comparing software with software.

For the full 15Five card, including the add-ons, see our 15Five pricing breakdown. For what Culture Amp does and does not publish, and how its quote is built, see the Culture Amp pricing page.

What does 15Five charge on top of the plan?

The plan price is not always the full bill. 15Five lists several paid extras on the same page, each billed annually: Kona Meeting Assistant at $2 per employee a month, Kona Coach at $19 per manager a month, and compensation at $9 per user a month, or $11 with salary benchmarking. Its FAQ notes that some optional add-ons may carry their own minimums. A 150-person company that adds the meeting assistant to Total Platform goes from $28,800 to $32,400 a year by our arithmetic.

Compensation is where the two vendors differ most visibly on paper. 15Five prices it openly. Culture Amp's pricing page sells Engage, Perform and People Science Consulting and shows no compensation price. If a pay review cycle is part of the reason you are buying, get that module priced in writing from both before comparing totals. Expect employees to come to those conversations prepared, too: a growing number rehearse with a salary negotiation coach before the meeting, which is one more reason managers need clean pay-band data in front of them.

Why is Culture Amp pricing not published?

Because it is sold as a sales-led, service-heavy product, and the service tier moves the price. Culture Amp names three inputs: headcount, product and service tier. Under 200 employees, the page describes group Customer Success support, on-demand training and 24/5 chat and email support. From 200 to 999 employees, customers also receive a one-on-one Customer Success partnership and expert project management with implementation. People Science Consulting is listed as its own offering. None of it carries a figure.

That structure is not a trick, and plenty of good vendors sell this way. It does mean the quote you receive is a bundle of software and people, and the people are the part that differs most between buyers. Ask which service level the quote assumes and what dropping to the tier below would save.

15Five vs Culture Amp: which should a 150-person company buy?

It depends on the job. 15Five's center of gravity is the manager: weekly check-ins, one-on-ones, reviews, OKRs and AI coaching, with engagement surveys as one module. Culture Amp's center of gravity is employee listening and the science behind it: survey design, a large benchmark set and a consulting arm. Both sell both halves now, but each is stronger on its home ground.

• Pick 15Five if the budget is tight, you want a price you can total today, and the problem you are paying to fix is manager effectiveness or a review process that nobody finishes.
• Pick Culture Amp if engagement measurement is the program, you want benchmarks and survey science you can defend to a board, and you can absorb an annual contract with service attached.
• Pick neither yet if you do not know whether engagement is the actual problem. A weak score can come from broken processes, stalled systems or a skills gap as easily as from culture.

Does 15Five or Culture Amp have a minimum contract?

15Five's FAQ says its standard packages are designed to be flexible for organizations of all sizes and states no minimum spend, while noting that some optional add-ons may have minimums. Culture Amp publishes no minimum, and no figures of any kind, so any minimum would appear in your quote. Both bill annually, so either way you are signing for a year. Compare that with Lattice, which states a $4,000 minimum annual agreement, or Quantum Workplace, whose published minimum annual contract is $15,000.

What neither 15Five nor Culture Amp measures

Both products measure how people feel and how managers perform. Neither scores how mature your processes are, how far along your technology is, where your skills gaps sit or whether your compliance work would hold up. If the engagement result is poor, those are usually the next questions leadership asks, and a sentiment survey cannot answer them.

AssessmentCloud scores all five in one report: culture and engagement, process maturity, digital maturity, skills gaps and compliance readiness, each 0 to 100 against an industry median. It is a flat price for the whole company, $49 a month for one area or $119 a month for all four assessment areas, with no per-employee meter and no minimum term. It is not a replacement for a continuous engagement platform, and we would not pitch it as one. It is the cheap, fast way to learn whether you need one. See AssessmentCloud pricing.

How to get a fair quote from both

1. Fix the headcount. Use the same number with both vendors and write it into the request.
2. Name the product. Ask for engagement alone first, then the bundle. The difference is what the second module really costs.
3. Itemize service. Ask Culture Amp which service tier the quote includes and for its price as a separate line.
4. List the add-ons. With 15Five, decide on Kona and compensation before the call so the total is complete.
5. Normalize. Convert both annual totals to dollars per employee per month and compare row by row.

If Culture Amp is on the shortlist but you want other options priced the same way, our Culture Amp competitors table lists ten vendors with every price cell read at source, and the 15Five vs Lattice pricing comparison runs the same headcount math against Lattice's card.