Engagement Surveys People Actually Answer: The Tools Compared

As of 13 October 2026, only three of the five tools reviewed here publish a price: Lattice lists Engagement at $4 per seat per month, Microsoft Viva Glint at $2.00 per user per month, and Workleap plans from $4,999 a year. Culture Amp and Workday Peakon sell by quote. Price matters less than whether people answer, and Gallup says response rates drop when employees doubt a survey is anonymous.

No vendor-neutral response-rate comparison exists in the public sources reviewed. So this post compares what each vendor publishes on the things that plausibly drive participation: privacy rules, survey length and cadence, and how easy it is to act on results. Vendor claims are labelled as the vendor's own.

What makes employees actually answer an engagement survey?

Employees answer when they trust the survey is anonymous and believe something will happen afterwards. Gallup's Q12 guidance says to build trust before the survey, set clear expectations and show that feedback leads to action, and it calls anonymity critical.

Gallup's survey guide adds three practical points:

• Results should be reported in aggregate, with a minimum number of responses (its example is five or more) before a team sees them.
• Pulse surveys are typically short, five to 10 questions.
• Cadence should match managers' capacity to review results and act, so fatigue does not set in.

The risk on the other side is real. In a 2023 Gallup article, Louis Efron wrote that "only 8% of employees strongly agree that their organization takes action on surveys." The article does not give the sample or year, so treat it as Gallup's claim. It also warns that doing a survey and nothing more will likely decrease engagement and increase turnover.

Which engagement survey tools publish a price?

Three of five do, and the units differ, so the numbers are not directly comparable. All figures below are as of 13 October 2026 and come from each vendor's own page.

Two cautions. Lattice's pricing page lists Performance at $10 seat/month in one place, while its FAQ says Performance and Goals & OKRs can be unbundled for $8 a month, so check which applies if you buy more than Engagement. And Workleap says its pricing applies to new customers, and its pricing page does not mention Officevibe by name.

How do Lattice, Culture Amp, Viva Glint, Workleap and Peakon compare on features?

They overlap heavily on pulse surveys and AI comment summaries. The differences are in lifecycle surveys, benchmarks and what is bundled. Everything below is the vendor's own description.

Lattice's Engagement price also includes 1:1s, weekly updates and feedback tools, which it groups as manager tools. If you only want surveys, that bundle is something you pay for either way.

Which tool protects anonymity best?

Viva Glint is the only one of the five that states exact numbers publicly. Microsoft says it recommends "five or more respondents" before a manager sees quantitative results and at least ten respondents in the rollup group before comments appear. It adds that the thresholds are configurable by the customer.

Others are less specific on the pages reviewed:

• Workleap says "We ensure feedback is anonymous, shown only when privacy rules are met" and links to a help article, but its product page gives no threshold.
• Workday Peakon mentions a "minimum segment size" in its API description but does not state the number.
• Culture Amp and Lattice say nothing about anonymity or minimum group size on the pricing and product pages reviewed.

That is not proof they lack protections. It means you should ask each vendor for the default threshold, whether it can be raised, and how comments are handled before you sign. Small teams are where this bites: a threshold of five means a team of six may never see its own results.

What does each tool cost a 100-person company?

At 100 people, the published prices work out as follows, using the vendor's own list rates and my arithmetic. This is a list-price floor, not a quote.

• Viva Glint: 100 users x $2.00 x 12 months = $2,400 a year. Microsoft says to contact your Microsoft representative to add Viva to an existing Microsoft 365 enterprise subscription.
• Lattice Engagement: 100 seats x $4 x 12 months = $4,800 a year, above the $4,000 minimum.
• Workleap: the Standard plan starts at $4,999 a year. The page does not say how the price scales with headcount.
• Culture Amp and Peakon: no public basis for a calculation.

The Viva Glint figure looks cheapest, but it assumes you already buy Microsoft 365 through an enterprise agreement and does not include other licences. Microsoft says some features need extra licences, for example Viva Insights for combining sentiment with workplace analytics data and a Copilot licence for Copilot-related sentiment.

Which tool fits which company?

Match the tool to your existing stack and your size, not to a ranking.

• Under about 100 people, already using a performance tool: Lattice's $4 seat price bundles surveys with manager tools. Related reading: BambooHR vs HiBob vs Rippling for a 50-person company, since some HRIS suites include basic surveys.
• Microsoft 365 enterprise customers: Viva Glint has the lowest published rate and the clearest stated privacy thresholds.
• Small and mid-sized teams wanting a lighter survey tool: Workleap positions its product for SMBs and lists Slack, Teams and HRIS integrations.
• 200 to 999 employees wanting a survey specialist: Culture Amp says organizations in that band get a one-on-one Customer Success partnership and expert project management for implementation.
• Workday customers: Peakon is Workday's own product. For the wider platform choice, see Workday vs SAP SuccessFactors vs Oracle HCM.
• Very small budgets: a general survey form plus a spreadsheet may be enough. See the free HRMS options small businesses overlook.

What should you do to raise response rates, whichever tool you choose?

Fix the process before the software. Based on Gallup's published guidance, five steps follow:

1. Tell employees before launch who sees what, and state the minimum group size in plain words.
2. Keep pulse surveys to five to 10 questions.
3. Pick a cadence your managers can keep up with. Gallup suggests semiannual engagement surveys and quarterly or monthly pulses.
4. Have leaders endorse the survey and share results.
5. Report back on at least one visible action before the next survey goes out.

What's still unclear?

Several things cannot be settled from public pages.

• No independent response-rate data. None of the vendors' pages publish a comparable, sourced response rate by product. Which tool gets the most answers in your company is an empirical question.
• Anonymity defaults. Only Microsoft states thresholds. For the others, the numbers sit in help documents or sales conversations.
• Price at scale. Culture Amp and Peakon publish nothing, and Workleap does not show how price changes with headcount. Quotes can differ from list prices.
• Price conflicts inside vendors. Lattice's Performance price appears as both $10 and $8 on the same page.
• The weakest point of this comparison. It rests on vendor pages, which describe features, not outcomes. Gallup's own argument is that action after the survey matters more than the tool, and no software can supply that for you.

Last checked: 13 October 2026. Pricing changes often, so confirm with each vendor before you buy.