How much does playtesting cost?

A playtest can cost nothing or run into thousands. The price depends on three things: who finds the players, who runs the sessions, and who turns them into findings. Every figure below comes from a price the company publishes itself, checked on 20 October 2026.

The short answer

• Free, if you invite your own community and run the test yourself. Some PC stores offer a playtest feature that costs developers nothing.¹
• From $115 a month per game for software that runs playtests with players you bring.²
• $23 to $39 per tester for a recruited, unmoderated test on a credit-based testing platform, with the tester's pay included.³
• From €1,025 a month, billed annually, for a subscription to a specialist games playtest platform.⁴
• Quoted per study for moderated sessions with screened, recruited players. On our panel, player pay alone is typically US$75⁠–⁠150 a session.

What you're paying for

The players

Someone has to find players who match your buyers, check them, and pay them for their time. Published guidance on tester pay starts at $5 for a test of up to 15 minutes, $10 for up to 30 minutes and $15 an hour after that.³ One specialist platform pays its testers $5 to $9 for a 15-minute playtest and survey.⁵

Longer sessions with a tighter player profile pay more. Ours typically run 60 to 90 minutes and pay US$75⁠–⁠150, because we screen for the genres, platforms and play habits a studio names.

Recruiting

Recruiting services charge per session on top of what the player earns. One published rate card runs from $36 to $49 a session for consumers, with the player's pay added on top.⁶

Running the sessions

Unmoderated tests send players a build and collect their recordings and answers. They cost less per player and scale further. Moderated sessions have a researcher watching live, who can ask why a player did something at the moment it happens. They cost more, and they show you why players struggle as well as where.

Turning sessions into findings

Recordings change nothing until someone watches them, logs what happened and ranks the problems. Self-serve tools leave that work to your team. A research partner does it for you and hands over a report with the fixes in order.

What moves the price

• How specific the players are. "Plays games" is cheap to fill. "Finished two tactics games on PC this year" takes screening.
• Moderated or unmoderated. A moderator's time is the biggest cost in a moderated study.
• Session length. Player pay rises with every extra minute.
• Players and rounds. Five to eight players per round usually surfaces the biggest problems. Several small rounds with fixes between them teach more than one large round with the same number of players.
• Confidentiality. NDAs, unannounced builds and secure access add setup work.
• What you get at the end. Raw recordings cost less than a report ranked by severity with a debrief call.

Testing on no budget

A free test costs your team's time. Recruit from your own community, write down what you want the round to answer, watch without helping, and ask open questions afterwards. Our playtest feedback form gives you a player questionnaire and an observer sheet to start from.

How we price

We quote every study after a short scoping call, from the questions you need answered, the players you need and the date you need the findings by. See what a study includes on our playtests and focus groups page, or read how we run a focus group.