Comparing The 10 Most Popular Tools For MaxDiff Analysis
MaxDiff is generally seen as an advanced research method, so you shouldn’t be surprised to find that the majority of products offering MaxDiff solutions will want to charge you an arm and a leg to use theirs.
Most of us don’t have a couple thousand dollars lying around for a MaxDiff project, so I decided to check out all the MaxDiff tools I could find to report back to you about which ones are (1) free, (2) available to try yourself without having to talk to a sales team, and (3) sufficiently advanced to cover the most common feature requirements teams have for survey design and analysis.
Let’s jump in!
But First, What Is MaxDiff Analysis?
MaxDiff Analysis measures people’s priorities by asking them multiple times to choose the best and worst option from sets of 3-6 statements. Each time the respondent finishes, a new set of statements from the full ranking list is shown.
^ The example above shows a typical MaxDiff question with a set of written options and toggles representing “Best” and “Worst” on each side.
Many companies will tell you that MaxDiff can also be called “Best-Worst Scaling” but this isn’t true (even ChatGPT gets this one wrong). Best-Worst Scaling means plotting a set of options from best to worst using choice-based voting data. MaxDiff surveys just one approach to Best-Worst Scaling, but they are not the only way to create best-worst scaled data! Check out our guide to 4 alternative research methods to MaxDiff Analysis that are also best-worst scaled and comparison-based ranking.
What Are The Most Popular Survey Tools For MaxDiff Analysis?
OpinionX
Sawtooth Software
Qualtrics
SurveyMonkey
Confirmit
Conjointly
QuestionPro
SurveyKing
Alchemer
Q Research Software
Comparing The 10 Most Popular Tools For MaxDiff Analysis Surveys
Remember, I’m considering each for the following conditions:
(1) Free version available?
(2) Can to try yourself without having to talk to a sales team?
(3) Sufficient survey design and analysis features?
1. OpinionX ✅
OpinionX is a free survey tool for ranking people’s priorities. You can use the “Pair Rank” question to create MaxDiff-style ranking projects like this:
^ Voting and results of a Pairwise Comparison survey (an alternative to MaxDiff) created for free on OpinionX
OpinionX is used by thousands of teams around the world, from companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft, to national governments and Ivy League academics. It comes with both a free tier and a premium tier:
OpinionX Free Tier
The free tier of OpinionX allows unlimited ranking options on your questions and even lets you set how many pair votes you’ll show to each respondent. OpinionX surveys can have multiple types of ranking questions and other survey formats too like email collection or multiple-choice questions. Free users can create unlimited surveys with unlimited questions and engage up to 50 participants per survey.
OpinionX Premium Tiers
OpinionX premium tiers start at $30/month. Our premium tiers give you larger participant limits, the ability to segment your ranked results (pick a segment of your respondents and see how they voted compared to everyone else — example video below), and other customizations (eg. remove OpinionX branding or hide the “skip” button for forced comparison).
^ segmenting your ranked results on OpinionX
2. Sawtooth Software ❌
Sawtooth Software has a proprietary MaxDiff approach called “Bandit MaxDiffs”, which uses Thompson Sampling to decide which sets of voting options to display next to gain the most information possible. Sawtooth Software starts at $4,500/year for their “Basic” package.
3. Qualtrics ❌
Qualtrics provides MaxDiff questions as an additional purchase, so you must already have a premium account and then you need to contact your Account Executive to “learn more about this product”.
4. SurveyMonkey ❌
SurveyMonkey offers MaxDiff as a separate product called “Feature Importance” under their Market Research solutions set. To get access to MaxDiff on SurveyMonkey, you have to submit an enterprise request form via their Market Research website and engage a sales rep to purchase it separately.
5. Confirmit ❌
Confirmit was a comprehensive survey software platform that offered MaxDiff capabilities, however since merging with Forsta and Dapresy under the Forsta brand, they no longer offer MaxDiff as a research format.
6. Conjointly ❌
MaxDiff is included as one of Conjointly’s “advanced methods”, meaning it is only available on the Professional tier ($1,795 per user per year) or higher tiers.
7. QuestionPro ❌
Offers MaxDiff and Conjoint analysis only as part of its most expensive tier “Research Suite”, which is available by custom quote only. However, their “Workplace” product starts at $5,000/year, so it is fair to assume that the Research Suite is likely considerably more expensive.
8. SurveyKing 🟠
SurveyKing offers a limited version of MaxDiff on their free version, however you can only include 3 “attributes” (ranking options), so the free version is really just for testing out the product — not for running an actual MaxDiff project. The premium version starts at $19 per user per month (with some response viewing limits).
9. Alchemer ❌
MaxDiff is only available on Alchemer’s “Full Access” (their most expensive tier) which starts at $275 per user per month or $1,895 per user per year.
10. Q Research Software ❌
No free tier available. To create MaxDiff surveys, you must purchase either their Standard ($2,235/year) or Transferable License ($6,705/year).
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Create A Free Comparison-Based Ranking Survey Today
There’s no reason to be stuck on only using MaxDiff when similar methods are more widely available. Pairwise comparison is used today by thousands of tech giants, governments, and academics who use OpinionX to facilitate their ranking research projects. Create your own MaxDiff-style ranking survey using the free Pair Rank question type on OpinionX!
Learn more about MaxDiff Analysis
Not quite ready to jump into building a MaxDiff project? Check out our Ultimate Guide to MaxDiff Analysis, which is full of useful info like real examples of MaxDiff research projects, formulas for calculating ideal sample size, and more. Alternatively, if you didn’t find the right tool just yet, I recommend checking out our guide to The 3 Most Popular Pairwise Ranking Tools. Click any of the images below for those guides :)
