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by Dima

canny alternatives in 2026: honest comparison

a no-fluff comparison of canny, featurebase, userjot, frill, and spirby. real prices, real api access, no scoring rubric. you decide.

every "canny alternatives" listicle is written by a marketing team or by an seo affiliate site. neither one is going to give you the actual numbers.

so here's the actual numbers. five tools, current as of may 2026. real entry prices. real api access. real growth-tax behavior. one of them is us, and we'll be honest about that too.

the tools

  • canny — the category leader. enterprise sales motion. tracked-user pricing.
  • featurebase — fastest-growing competitor. tier-based.
  • userjot — newer entrant. flat-ish pricing, indie positioning.
  • frill — long-running smaller player. simpler, cheaper.
  • spirby — us. $19 entry, api on every plan.

entry price

toolentry plan pricewhat's included
canny$79/mo100 tracked users, basic boards, no api
featurebase$59/mo1 board, basic features, no api on this tier
userjot$29/mounlimited boards, read api only
frill$29/mounlimited boards, no api
spirby$19/mounlimited boards, full api, outbound webhooks, custom domain

the $19 / $29 / $59 / $79 entry-price gap is the most obvious thing on this page. the api row is the second most obvious.

what happens when you grow

canny's tracked-user model is the case worth understanding because it's the one most teams get blindsided by. tracked users are unique identified end-users on your boards within a 30-day window. as you grow, this number grows. canny's pricing scales with it.

published canny prices, current as of may 2026:

  • 0–100 tracked users: $79/mo
  • 500 tracked users: $311/mo
  • 2,500 tracked users: $661/mo
  • 10,000 tracked users: contact sales

a growing saas crosses 500 tracked users on a feedback board in roughly the first quarter after the board is shared widely. crossing 2,500 typically happens in the first year. so the $79 entry price is misleading: real teams pay $300+ within six months.

featurebase, userjot, and frill avoid the tracked-user model. their tiers scale on team seats, board count, or post count instead. less punishing, but watch for "growth," "scale," or "pro" tier upsells when your team adds a second admin.

spirby is flat $19 on the entry tier. higher tiers (planned post-launch) raise limits on board count, vote count, and team size. tracked users are not metered. you do not pay more for talking to more of your customers.

api access

toolrest api on entrywebhooks on entryopenapi spec
cannyno — enterprise onlyno — enterprise onlynot published
featurebaseno — pro tier and aboveno — pro tier and abovepartial
userjotread-onlyyes (signed)yes
frillnot availableyes, basicno
spirbyfull read + writeyes (hmac-signed)yes (3.1)

the api row is where most "alternative" listicles get vague. they'll write "yes, has api" without saying which plan. the answer matters. an api on the $359 plan is not the same product as an api on the $19 plan.

integrations

canny has the largest integration directory: jira, linear, intercom, slack, salesforce, hubspot, and a long tail. featurebase has slack, linear, and a zapier connector. userjot and frill ship slack and zapier.

spirby ships zero pre-built integrations at launch. that's a deliberate trade. the api is shipped first, marketplace integrations come later. if you need slack alerts on day one, you'll write a five-line webhook listener (we have an example post on that).

if your team isn't going to write that listener, the integration directory matters more than the api, and canny or featurebase will fit better than us. that's a real consideration. don't pick spirby because the price is lower if you have nobody to wire up the webhook.

roadmap and changelog

every tool in this comparison ships boards, voting, comments, statuses, public roadmaps, and changelogs. those features are at parity. the differences are in:

  • rss feeds on the changelog. canny no, featurebase yes, userjot yes, frill yes, spirby yes.
  • email digests for changelog subscribers. all five ship this.
  • custom domain on entry plan. canny no, featurebase yes, userjot yes, frill yes, spirby yes.
  • drag-and-drop roadmap reorder. canny yes, featurebase yes, userjot yes, frill no, spirby yes.

ai features

canny ships ai post summarization and ai-generated insights on its higher tiers. featurebase has ai features on pro and above. userjot ships ai post deduplication. frill does not have ai features.

spirby ships zero ai features in v1. our reasoning is documented in the project's claude.md and on the about page: ai gets added when it's objectively better than reading the post, not as a marketing checkbox. that may be a year out, may be never.

if "ai-powered roadmap clustering" is a buying criterion, none of the indie tools (including us) will fit. canny and featurebase will.

the honest pitch

we're biased. we built spirby. so the spirby column on every table looks favorable, and you should account for that.

here's the honest pitch:

  • if you're an enterprise team with budget, integrations, and a procurement department, pick canny. it's the safe choice and the largest support team.
  • if you want a strong middle option with a real ai story, pick featurebase. it's the closest to canny in capability for a third of the price.
  • if you want indie pricing with read-api access and good ux, pick userjot.
  • if you want the cheapest viable feedback board and no api, pick frill.
  • if you're an indie saas team with one engineer who can call an http endpoint, pick spirby.

we built the tool we wanted on the third saas we shipped. we think the venn intersection of "indie team," "real api," and "no growth tax" is underserved. if that's you, start a 14-day trial and tell us where we get it wrong.