Marvin, often searched as HeyMarvin, is one of the most capable AI research repositories on the market, and its free plan is genuinely generous. What its pricing page does not do is tell you what a paid plan costs. Every paid tier says contact sales. What the page does tell you, if you line the tiers up, is what each upgrade actually buys, and the answer is often not what you would expect. Below is what we could verify about Marvin pricing in 2026, the seat ladder that stands still in two places, and the seven alternatives worth comparing.
The short answer
Marvin has four tiers: Free, Starter, Pro and Enterprise. Only Free has a published price, which is zero. Starter, Pro and Enterprise are quote-only. The free plan includes 2 full seats, 3 collaborator seats, 50 viewer seats and 5 file uploads / month, along with an AI-moderated interviewer, an AI note-taker, project-wide Ask AI, insight reports and video clips, with no credit card required.
Third-party guides widely repeat a figure of $50 per user per month with a 5-user minimum, which would put the floor at $3,000 a year. We could not find that figure on Marvin's own pricing page, and the one guide we traced it to gives no source. Treat it as a directional estimate, not a quote.
The bigger structural point: Marvin is repository-first. Its core job is storing, searching and analysing research, and the AI interviewer sits inside that repository. Koji is interview-first: it runs AI-moderated voice and text interviews at volume, themes every conversation automatically, and publishes every price.
How Marvin pricing actually works
Here is what each tier includes, taken from Marvin's pricing page.
- Free: 2 full seats, 3 collaborators, 50 viewers, 5 file uploads a month. Includes the AI Moderated Interviewer, Marvin AI Notetaker, project-wide Ask AI, an insight library, and video clips and playlists.
- Starter: 2 full seats, 10 collaborators, 100 viewers. Adds unlimited data ingestion, repository-wide Ask AI, collaborative research tools, AI-assisted analysis, automatic translation, and EU and US data residency. Price on request.
- Pro: 5 full seats, 15 collaborators, unlimited viewers. Adds research-platform and support-ticket integrations, Deep Research, thematic and emotion analysis, custom branding, and API and MCP access. Price on request.
- Enterprise: 5 full seats, 15 collaborators, unlimited viewers. Adds automatic PII redaction, HIPAA compliance, custom security and legal review, a dedicated customer success manager and 24/7 support. Price on request.
The free plan is worth taking seriously. For a two-person team that runs a handful of studies a month, five uploads and an included AI interviewer is a real way to evaluate the product before any sales call. On Capterra, Marvin holds a 4.8 out of 5 rating, although that is from 13 reviews, which is a thin sample for a decision this size.
The seat ladder that stands still twice
Line the four tiers up by full seats and a pattern appears: 2, 2, 5, 5.
The first upgrade, Free to Starter, adds zero full seats. You still have two people who can do the actual research work. What you are buying is unlimited ingestion instead of five uploads a month, more collaborators and viewers, repository-wide search and data residency. That is a reasonable thing to pay for, but it is a capacity-for-data upgrade, not a capacity-for-people one.
The last upgrade, Pro to Enterprise, adds zero seats of any kind. Full seats stay at 5, collaborators at 15, viewers unlimited. What Enterprise buys is compliance and service: PII redaction, HIPAA, security review, a named CSM. For regulated teams that is the whole point, and our guide to HIPAA-compliant AI user research explains why those features matter. But it means a team that needs PII redaction pays the Enterprise price without getting one extra researcher seat for it.
Now set that ladder next to the $50-per-user, 5-user-minimum figure that circulates in third-party guides. A 5-user minimum cannot apply to Starter, a plan that ships with 2 full seats. Either the figure describes Pro, or it describes an older plan structure, or it counts collaborators differently. We cannot tell which, and the fact that a buyer cannot tell is the finding. When the only public number contradicts the public plan structure, the real price is whatever the sales call says it is, and your negotiating position depends on how many other quotes you bring to it.
Why this matters more for AI research tools
Quote-only pricing is common in enterprise software, but it lands differently in a category where usage is shifting fast. Maze's Future of User Research Report 2026 found that 69 percent of respondents now use AI in at least some of their research projects, up 19 percent year on year. The Condens State of AI in User Research Analysis report found 81 percent of 332 practitioners plan to increase AI usage over the next year. A tool you price once today will be used very differently in twelve months. If the contract meters seats while your usage grows through AI features, the renewal conversation is where you find out what the meter really was.
Quality matters too. The same Condens survey found 52 percent of practitioners say AI-generated insights are too generic or surface-level, and 42 percent say AI loses important context. That is an argument for tools that generate richer primary data, not just tools that summarise faster. A repository can only analyse what went into it, which is why the interview itself is where depth is won or lost. Our guide to AI interview hallucinations and bias mitigation covers how to keep AI synthesis grounded.
The 7 best Marvin alternatives in 2026
1. Koji, the best alternative for running AI interviews at volume. Koji conducts AI-moderated voice and text interviews with no moderator in the loop, applies automatic thematic analysis across every conversation, and produces a one-click report. Because the AI asks the core questions the same way each time, there is no moderator bias, and a customizable AI consultant lets you set its tone and depth. Every price is published: Insights is EUR 29 a month for 29 credits, Interviews is EUR 79 a month for 79 credits, a text conversation costs 1 credit and a voice conversation 3, and only conversations scoring 3 or above on the quality gate consume credits. New accounts get 10 free credits with no card. There are no seat tiers to climb. Koji supports six structured question types, open_ended, scale, single_choice, multiple_choice, ranking and yes_no, so quantifiable answers sit next to the conversation; see the structured questions guide. Teams go from question to insight in hours, not weeks, with no research expertise required. Read the full Koji vs Marvin comparison.
2. Dovetail, the repository incumbent. The deepest tagging, highlight and insight-library tooling in the category, with strong stakeholder sharing and published pricing tiers. Like Marvin it is primarily a place to analyse research you collect elsewhere. See our Dovetail vs Marvin comparison.
3. Looppanel, the published-price analysis tool. Solo is $49 a month and Pro $395 a month with a 5-editor minimum, and it auto-records and transcribes your calls. Watch the per-project auto-analysis cap, covered in our Looppanel alternatives guide.
4. Condens, the researcher-first repository. Tight control over taxonomies and a clean synthesis flow; see our Condens alternatives guide.
5. Notably, the visual synthesis canvas. Good for affinity-style clustering with AI assistance. Its third-party price listings disagree, which we unpack in our Notably alternatives guide.
6. Great Question, the research-ops suite. Recruitment, scheduling, incentives and a repository together, for teams building a formal research function. See the Great Question alternatives guide.
7. Reduct, the transcript-as-video editor. Best in class for turning recordings into stakeholder reels by editing text. Narrower on cross-study synthesis.
Marvin vs the alternatives at a glance
| Tool | Published entry price | Core job | AI-moderated interviews |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marvin | Free; paid tiers quote-only | Repository and analysis | Yes, inside the repository |
| Koji | EUR 29/mo | Conducting and analysing interviews | Yes, core product, voice and text |
| Dovetail | Published | Repository and analysis | No |
| Looppanel | $49/mo | Call recording and analysis | No |
| Condens | Published | Repository and analysis | No |
| Notably | Third-party listings only | Synthesis canvas | No |
| Great Question | Published | Research operations | No |
| Reduct | Published | Video transcript editing | No |
How to choose without regretting it at renewal
Decide first whether your bottleneck is storage or supply. If your organisation already produces a steady stream of interviews, support tickets and call recordings, and the problem is that nobody can find anything, a repository is the right category, and Marvin is a strong one. Our research repository guide covers how to structure one so it stays useful.
If the problem is that too few customer conversations happen in the first place, a repository will sit mostly empty. That is the case for most product teams, founders and agencies, and it is where an interview-first tool pays off. See AI-moderated interviews for how that works in practice.
Before any sales call, write down three things: the number of people who need full research seats, not viewer access; whether you need PII redaction or HIPAA, since on Marvin those are Enterprise features; and your expected monthly interview volume in twelve months, not today. Then ask for a written quote against those numbers, and bring at least one published-price alternative so the quote has something to be measured against.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Marvin (HeyMarvin) cost in 2026?
Marvin's free plan costs nothing and includes 2 full seats and 5 file uploads a month. Starter, Pro and Enterprise are quote-only on Marvin's pricing page. Third-party guides cite $50 per user per month with a 5-user minimum, but that figure is not published by Marvin and does not match the 2 full seats on Starter.
Does Marvin have an AI-moderated interviewer?
Yes. Marvin lists an AI Moderated Interviewer on every plan, including Free, alongside its AI note-taker. It is built into Marvin's repository product, whereas Koji is built around AI-moderated voice and text interviews as its core product.
What do you get when you upgrade from Marvin Pro to Enterprise?
Compliance and service rather than capacity. Pro and Enterprise both list 5 full seats, 15 collaborators and unlimited viewers. Enterprise adds automatic PII redaction, HIPAA compliance, custom security and legal review, a dedicated customer success manager and 24/7 support.
Is there a free version of Marvin?
Yes. Marvin's free plan requires no credit card and includes 2 full seats, 3 collaborator seats, 50 viewer seats and 5 file uploads a month, plus the AI interviewer, AI note-taker and project-wide Ask AI.
What is the best Marvin alternative with published pricing?
Koji publishes every price: EUR 29 a month for 29 credits on Insights, EUR 79 for 79 credits on Interviews, 1 credit per text conversation and 3 per voice conversation, with 10 free credits at signup. Looppanel is the best published-price option if you want a pure analysis tool for calls you run yourself.
Is Marvin or Dovetail better as a research repository?
Both are strong. Dovetail has the more mature tagging and insight-library tooling and publishes its prices. Marvin has stronger built-in AI collection, including its AI interviewer and note-taker, and a generous free plan. If you need the interviews run for you at volume, Koji covers that job directly.
Fill the repository before you price it
A research repository is only as valuable as the conversations inside it. The hard part for most teams is not finding last quarter's insight, it is getting twenty customers to talk this week.
Koji runs those conversations for you with an AI moderator in voice or text, themes every transcript automatically, and returns a one-click report, at a price you can read without booking a call. Plans start at EUR 29 a month and new accounts get 10 free credits without a card. Start your first study free and have real interviews to analyse by tomorrow.
