How is this employee engagement ranking decided?

Mechanically. The 20 approved employee engagement listings on this page are sorted by their published rating, highest first, with the number of ratings behind each score as the tie-break and the product name as a final tie-break so the order is stable. Those ratings are aggregated from public sources, not collected from Softwr readers, this site hosts no reviews, so the order is a summary of what is already published elsewhere, not a verdict of our own. Nothing on this page is paid placement.

Is this list re-ordered for freelancers?

No, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. The catalogue records no data about which team sizes or roles each tool suits, so the ranking is the same published-rating order as the unsegmented list. What the freelancers framing changes is which of the figures below matter most. Freelancers are buying one seat, so per-seat pricing works in their favour and the free tiers are worth taking seriously. Read the bottom of every price ladder on this page first.

How much does employee engagement software cost?

Across the 20 employee engagement tools listed here, paid plans start between $1 and $200 a month, with a median entry price of $3.40. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $200 a month (Guusto). 2 of 20 also publish a $0 plan.

What is the cheapest employee engagement software?

2 of the 20 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, Empuls has the lowest published entry price at $1 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.

Is there free employee engagement software?

Yes, 2 of 20 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 2 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.

What features should employee engagement software have?

Judging by what vendors put in their own published pricing tiers, the most frequently named capabilities in this category are analytics (12 of 18 tools that publish plan detail), mobile app (6) and recognition (6). Treat those as the category baseline. Anything named by only one vendor, such as advanced gamification or basic recognition, is a differentiator rather than a standard, so it is worth deciding whether you need it before it narrows your shortlist to one.

How is employee engagement software usually billed?

subscription (16), quote (2), counted across the 20 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 17 of 20 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.

What does employee engagement software actually cover?

The 20 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are enterprise (4), recognition (4), engagement (3), rewards (3), communications (2). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under employee engagement may overlap on very little.

How many pricing tiers do employee engagement tools offer?

18 of 20 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 2 tiers. 4 of 20 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.

How many employee engagement tools are listed on Softwr?

20 approved employee engagement listings appear on this page, including Assembly, Awardco, BetterUp, Betterworks. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/employee-engagement, which ranks the same set by published rating.

Employee Engagement · ranked shortlist

Best Employee Engagement software for Freelancers in 2026

20 approved employee engagement listings, ordered by published rating with the method stated below rather than assumed. Freelancers are buying one seat, so per-seat pricing works in their favour and the free tiers are worth taking seriously. Read the bottom of every price ladder on this page first.

Tools ranked: 20
Entry price range: $1-$200
Publish a $0 plan: 2 of 20

How this ranking is derived

The sort key

Published rating, highest first. Ties break on the number of ratings behind the score, then on product name so the order never depends on what the API happened to return first. That is the whole rule, there is no weighting, no score of our own, and nothing paid: no sponsored slot runs on these pages.

Where the ratings come from

No listing in this set carries a rating, so the order falls back to name. Those scores are aggregated from public sources rather than collected here, Softwr hosts no reviews of its own, which is also why no rating on this page is marked up as ours in structured data.

What the pool is

Approved employee engagement listings, capped at 20 per page; 20 came back for this one. It is not the whole market, and a tool being absent means we hold no record of it rather than that it failed a test. The unranked full set is on the employee engagement category page.

The ranking

Each entry lists why it sits where it sits, drawn from its own published rating and pricing.

#1
Assembly
Highest rated here
Employee recognition platform for distributed teams
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Free, no paid tier is published at all.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
2 tiers
Assembly breakdown Compare with Awardco
#2
Awardco
Employee recognition powered by Amazon Business
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $2.50 a month, with no free plan.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
2 tiers
Tags
recognition, rewards, amazon, incentives
Awardco breakdown Compare with BetterUp
#3
BetterUp
Unlock human transformation
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
3 tiers
Tags
coaching, mental-health, leadership, Enterprise
BetterUp breakdown Compare with Betterworks
#4
Betterworks
Align, develop, and inspire your workforce
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
3 tiers
Tags
okrs, performance, Enterprise, goals
Betterworks breakdown Compare with Blink
#5
Blink
Employee app for frontline and deskless workers
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $3.40 a month, with no free plan.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
2 tiers
Tags
frontline, mobile-first, deskless, communications
Blink breakdown Compare with Cooleaf
#6
Cooleaf
Employee engagement and recognition made easy
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $4 a month, with no free plan.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
2 tiers
Tags
recognition, rewards, wellness, gamification
Cooleaf breakdown Compare with Empuls
#7
Empuls
Employee engagement platform for connection and recognition
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $1 a month, with no free plan.
- 5 published tiers, topping out at $3 plus a tier sold by quote.
Billing
Model not published
Published tiers
5 tiers
Tags
recognition, social-intranet, rewards, affordable
Empuls breakdown Compare with Engagedly
#8
Engagedly
Cloud-based employee engagement and performance management
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Free, no paid tier is published at all.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
2 tiers
Engagedly breakdown Compare with Firstup
#9
Firstup
Intelligent communication platform for workforce engagement
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
quote
Published tiers
1 tier
Tags
AI-Powered, Enterprise, communications, personalization
Firstup breakdown Compare with Fond
#10
Fond
Employee experience platform for modern teams
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
1 tier
Fond breakdown Compare with Glint
#11
Glint
Employee engagement powered by AI
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
1 tier
Glint breakdown Compare with Guusto
#12
Guusto
Gift-based employee recognition platform
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $200 a month, with no free plan.
Billing
Model not published
Tags
gift-cards, social-impact, simple, pay-per-use
Guusto breakdown Compare with Humu
#13
Humu
AI-powered employee coaching platform
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
1 tier
Humu breakdown Compare with Kazoo
#14
Kazoo
Employee engagement and recognition platform
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
1 tier
Kazoo breakdown Compare with Leapsome
#15
Leapsome
People enablement platform for performance and engagement
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $5 a month, with no free plan.
- 3 published tiers, topping out at $8.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
3 tiers
Tags
performance, engagement, okrs, learning
Leapsome breakdown Compare with Limeade
#16
Limeade
Employee well-being and engagement platform
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Paid from $3 a month, with no free plan.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
2 tiers
Tags
wellbeing, wellness, engagement, recognition
Limeade breakdown Compare with Mo
#17
M
Mo
Employee recognition and culture platform
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
1 tier
Mo breakdown Compare with O.C. Tanner
#18
O.C. Tanner
Culture and engagement solution for purpose-driven organizations
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
1 tier
O.C. Tanner breakdown Compare with Peakon by Workday
#19
Peakon by Workday
Turn employee feedback into business success
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
Billing
quote
Tags
engagement, pulse-surveys, analytics, Enterprise
Peakon by Workday breakdown Compare with Perceptyx
#20
Perceptyx
Employee listening platform powered by AI
- No rating on record, so it ranks below everything that has one.
- Its top tier is unpriced and sold by quote.
Billing
subscription
Published tiers
1 tier
Perceptyx breakdown

What employee engagement software costs

Counted from the published pricing of the 20 listings on this page. A tool counts as free only where it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence or a starting price of zero.

Cheapest paid plan: $1Empuls
Median entry price: $3.40across 7 priced
Dearest entry price: $200Guusto
Publish a $0 plan: 2of 20

Paid employee engagement plans in this set start anywhere from $1 a month for Empuls to $200 for Guusto. The median entry price across the 7 tools that publish one is $3.40, half of them start below that figure and half above it.

2 of 20 publish a $0 plan, and 2 of those charge nothing at all. 7 tools have no free tier of any kind.

17 of 20 keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote, which in practice means the number you end up paying at the top end is not on this page or on theirs.

Empuls pricing Guusto pricing Guusto plans

How these vendors bill

The billing model each of the 20 employee engagement listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.

subscription: 16
quote: 2

Separately, 17 of 20 publish at least one tier with no price attached. Those are sold by quote, so the top of the ladder is negotiable, and unknowable, until you talk to sales.

What comes as standard, and what you pay extra for

Every capability named in a published pricing tier by any of the 18 employee engagement tools here that break their plans down, counted once per vendor. This measures what vendors choose to advertise as a selling point, not everything the software does, an absence below is silence, not a missing feature.

Named by most of the category

Analytics , 12 of 18

Named by fewer

Mobile app , 6 of 18
Recognition , 6 of 18
Engagement surveys , 5 of 18
Integrations , 5 of 18
Advanced analytics , 3 of 18
Custom integrations , 3 of 18
Dedicated support , 3 of 18
Pulse surveys , 3 of 18
Action planning , 2 of 18

Named by exactly one vendor: Advanced gamification, Basic recognition, Culture tools, Goals, Performance improvement, Rewards. Those are differentiators rather than table stakes.

What “Employee Engagement” covers in practice

The subject tags that recur across these 20 listings, with the number of tools carrying each. A category label is a filing decision; this is the closer read of what is actually filed under it.

Enterprise4
recognition4
engagement3
rewards3
communications2
okrs2
performance2
wellbeing2
wellness2

Carried by a single tool: affordable, amazon, deskless, gamification, incentives, mental-health, personalization, social-impact. If one of those is the reason you are here, the category page is the wrong lens, go straight to that product.

How to choose between them

Four things the numbers above should change about your shortlist.

Start with the free tiers if there are enough of them

2 of 20 employee engagement tools here publish a $0 plan, which is enough to run a real trial without a purchase order. A free tier is worth more than a free trial when you are evaluating: a trial expires on the vendor's schedule, a free plan expires when you outgrow it. The thing to check before you commit is which of the capabilities below sit above the free line, starting with analytics, the single most frequently named capability in this category's published tiers.

Read the spread before you read the features

$1 to $200 is a $199 spread on entry price alone, and a spread that wide is never about polish, it is about who the vendor built for. Tools at the bottom of this ladder are priced for one person or a small team; tools near $200 are priced for a department with a procurement process. Decide which of those you are before you compare capability, or you will shortlist four tools that were never competing for the same buyer.

Check which tier you actually land on

4 of 20 tools here publish three or more tiers, and the median vendor in this category ships 2 of them. The advertised price is the first rung, and the things teams tend to need, analytics, mobile app, recognition, are named in higher plans far more often than in entry ones. Price your shortlist at the tier that contains what you need, not at the tier on the pricing page's left edge.

The billing model matters more than the headline number

This category splits across 2 billing models: subscription on 16 listings, quote on 2, and nothing else. A per-user price and a flat subscription at the same headline figure are not the same purchase, the first one grows with headcount and the second does not. Multiply by your real team size before you compare two numbers side by side.

Compare employee engagement tools directly

Every pairing below is a full comparison: the same checklist applied to both, so a gap in one is a gap in the other.

Go straight to the numbers

Build your own comparison See the shortlist instead

Questions people ask about employee engagement software

Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.

How is this employee engagement ranking decided?: Mechanically. The 20 approved employee engagement listings on this page are sorted by their published rating, highest first, with the number of ratings behind each score as the tie-break and the product name as a final tie-break so the order is stable. Those ratings are aggregated from public sources, not collected from Softwr readers, this site hosts no reviews, so the order is a summary of what is already published elsewhere, not a verdict of our own. Nothing on this page is paid placement.
Is this list re-ordered for freelancers?: No, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise. The catalogue records no data about which team sizes or roles each tool suits, so the ranking is the same published-rating order as the unsegmented list. What the freelancers framing changes is which of the figures below matter most. Freelancers are buying one seat, so per-seat pricing works in their favour and the free tiers are worth taking seriously. Read the bottom of every price ladder on this page first.
How much does employee engagement software cost?: Across the 20 employee engagement tools listed here, paid plans start between $1 and $200 a month, with a median entry price of $3.40. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $200 a month (Guusto). 2 of 20 also publish a $0 plan.
What is the cheapest employee engagement software?: 2 of the 20 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, Empuls has the lowest published entry price at $1 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.
Is there free employee engagement software?: Yes, 2 of 20 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 2 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.
What features should employee engagement software have?: Judging by what vendors put in their own published pricing tiers, the most frequently named capabilities in this category are analytics (12 of 18 tools that publish plan detail), mobile app (6) and recognition (6). Treat those as the category baseline. Anything named by only one vendor, such as advanced gamification or basic recognition, is a differentiator rather than a standard, so it is worth deciding whether you need it before it narrows your shortlist to one.
How is employee engagement software usually billed?: subscription (16), quote (2), counted across the 20 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 17 of 20 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.
What does employee engagement software actually cover?: The 20 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are enterprise (4), recognition (4), engagement (3), rewards (3), communications (2). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under employee engagement may overlap on very little.
How many pricing tiers do employee engagement tools offer?: 18 of 20 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 2 tiers. 4 of 20 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.
How many employee engagement tools are listed on Softwr?: 20 approved employee engagement listings appear on this page, including Assembly, Awardco, BetterUp, Betterworks. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/employee-engagement, which ranks the same set by published rating.

Keep reading

Neighbouring categories

Adjacent in the same taxonomy, not a ranking.

How this ranking is derived

The sort key

Where the ratings come from

What the pool is

The ranking

Assembly

Awardco

BetterUp

Betterworks

Blink

Cooleaf

Empuls

Engagedly

Firstup

Fond

Glint

Guusto

Humu

Kazoo

Leapsome

Limeade

Mo

O.C. Tanner

Peakon by Workday

Perceptyx