Userbrain
Userbrain is an unmoderated remote user testing platform. Real testers from a 170,000-strong panel record themselves thinking aloud on your website, mobile app or prototype, while its AI writes the tasks, transcribes the sessions and surfaces recurring usability themes.
What is Userbrain?
Userbrain is a remote, unmoderated user testing platform published by Userbrain GmbH in Graz, Austria. Its principle is deliberately narrow: real people use your product on their own, in their own environment, and think aloud while they do it. Each tester returns a screen and audio recording of five to twenty minutes. You can draw those people from Userbrain's panel, which the company states holds more than 170,000 quality-assured testers, or invite your own users through a shareable test link.
What you can put in front of them is broad: live websites, sites still in development, password-protected pages, competitors' sites, any prototype with a public link, and native iOS and Android apps on phone or tablet. The site frames the workflow in three steps: create the test, find the right people, get the insights.
The AI layer is what the company positions itself on, claiming that unlike other tools, our AI actually creates and analyzes, not just assists. It writes tasks and questions from a short description of your product. It transcribes speech to text, produces timestamped notes and clips carrying labels and sentiment, and generates AI Insights covering recurring themes, patterns, usability problems, positive feedback and suggestions, alongside summaries with metrics such as time on task, success rate and demographics. Ask Userbrain answers questions about your tests in plain language, returning linked clips, quotes and timestamps. A newer MCP integration connects the same material to ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor or any MCP-compatible client.
Speed is the second claim, and the company publishes it as figures: 97.43% of tests are completed within 24 hours, 92.16% within 12 hours and 85.42% within 4 hours. A 100% satisfaction guarantee replaces any panel tester you are not happy with at no extra cost.
The company was founded by Markus Pirker, Mathias Placho, Stefan Rössler and Andreas Riedmüller, who came out of the UX agency Simplease. It also runs the German-language UX Heroes podcast and publishes an online book on user testing. The site displays a customer rating of 4.5 on G2, from 33 reviews according to its own structured data.
What it does
- Generate a complete test, tasks and follow-up questions included, from a short description of your product
- Recruit from a panel of more than 170,000 testers by country, age range, gender, language and device, with screener questions
- Invite your own users into a test through a single shareable link
- Collect five to twenty minute screen and audio recordings of people thinking aloud in their normal environment
- Read automatic transcripts alongside timestamped AI notes and clips carrying labels and sentiment
- Ask questions about your tests in plain language and get answers backed by linked clips, quotes and timestamps
- Export videos as mp4 and comments or reports as CSV, and schedule recurring tests in one click
When to use Userbrain / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Userbrain is the right fit.
When to use Userbrain
- UX and product teams that want feedback from real users every week without recruiting participants or moderating sessions themselves
- Product managers and founders who need to validate an idea or a flow within a day rather than within a sprint
- Designers testing clickable prototypes made in Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch, InVision, Framer, Axure or Balsamiq before a line of code is written
- Agencies that must show a client the evidence behind a recommendation, as Move Elevator reports winning pitches with Userbrain videos
- Teams with no dedicated researcher, since Userbrain states that you don't need to be a UX expert to run a test
When not to use Userbrain
- Researchers who need moderated, facilitated interviews, as Userbrain deliberately does unmoderated testing only, with no facilitator and no scheduling
- Studies built on very narrow demographic or professional screeners, which the site warns take longer to match and for which it points to User Interviews or TestingTime
- Teams testing in languages other than English, German or Spanish, the only three the panel covers
- Budgets that cannot absorb the panel fee of USD 45 per tester per session, charged on top of the subscription
- Anyone expecting the free plan to be enough for analysis, since it caps at three test setups a month and one seat, with no transcripts and no AI insights
How to use Userbrain
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Sign up, which the site advertises at 60 seconds and without a credit card
- Create a test setup from a ready-made template, write the tasks by hand, or use Auto-create with AI by describing your product
- Add questions around the tasks, from rating scales to written answers and redirects
- Choose where the testers come from: the Userbrain panel at USD 45 per tester per session, or your own users through a shareable link
- Target the panel by country, age range, gender, language and device, and add screener questions to filter the audience
- Launch the test and wait for the recordings, 97.43% of which arrive within 24 hours
- Watch the videos and read the transcripts, the AI notes and clips and the automatic test report
- Ask Userbrain follow-up questions in plain language to dig into what the sessions showed
- Share the findings: unlimited guests can watch, clip and comment, and links or mp4 and CSV exports go out by email, message or Slack
- Schedule the test to run again automatically on a paid plan, or connect Userbrain to ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor through MCP
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Speed backed by published figures: 97.43% of tests finish within 24 hours, 92.16% within 12 hours and 85.42% within 4 hours
- A panel of more than 170,000 testers whose incentives are included in the per-session price, with free replacement of any tester you are not satisfied with
- A permanent free plan and a 14-day Pro trial with two Userbrain testers included, neither of which asks for a credit card
- Fifteen seats from the Pro plan onwards and unlimited guests on every plan, so watching, clipping and commenting costs nothing extra
- An explicit commitment that customer data is not used to train any AI models outside your own testing
- Unusually transparent privacy documentation, with 21 subprocessors named one by one with address, purpose and legal basis, and a DPA including EU Model Clauses on request
- A European publisher: an Austrian company under Austrian law and the courts of Graz, with two-factor authentication included from the free plan
Cons
- The USD 49 per month headline assumes an annual commitment of USD 588; billed monthly the Pro plan is USD 59, and the yearly toggle is switched on by default on the pricing page
- Panel testers are not included in any subscription: USD 45 per tester per session is charged on top
- The free plan excludes transcripts, AI Insights, reports and automated tests, and limits you to three test setups a month, five of your own testers and one seat
- Panel testing is available in English, German and Spanish only
- Unmoderated testing only, with no facilitated interviews, and very specific screening criteria are pushed towards third-party platforms
- Legal documents are out of step: the privacy policy dates from 10 March 2026, but the terms from 28 June 2022 and the GDPR page from 1 June 2018
- No published security certification such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2, no security page, and no verifiable API documentation despite the announced MCP integration
Pricing & Plans
Userbrain operates on a freemium model. A permanent free plan is available at no cost, limited to three test setups per month, five of your own testers per month and a single seat, without transcripts or AI analysis. The lowest paid entry point is the Pro plan at USD 59.00 per month billed monthly, or USD 49.00 per month when billed annually, that is USD 588.00 per year. Enterprise pricing is quoted on request. Panel testers are charged separately at USD 45.00 per tester per session, tester incentives included, and are not part of any subscription; tester packages of 3, 5, 10, 20 or 30 per month are available on Pro with annual billing, and any overage is either an upgrade or a unit purchase at the same USD 45.00. A 14-day free trial of the Pro plan includes two Userbrain testers and requires no credit card. Invoicing is in advance on a monthly or annual cycle with automatic renewal; upgrades are prorated and downgrades take effect at the following cycle, while unused quota expires at the end of the term except for separately purchased Credits. Payment is accepted by credit card or PayPal.
- 3 test setups per month
- 5 of your own testers per month
- 1 seat
- unlimited guests and two-factor authentication
- but no transcripts
- no AI analysis and only partial MCP
- unlimited test setups
- 100 of your own testers per month
- 15 seats
- unlimited transcripts
- AI Insights
- AI notes and clips
- reports
- automated tests
- unlimited seats
- custom DPA
- custom security reviews and custom data retention policies
- Userbrain panel testers
- an add-on to any plan — USD 45 per tester per session with tester incentives included
- or packages of 3
- 5
- 10
- 20 or 30 testers per month on Pro with annual billing
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Userbrain handles your data.
GDPR overview
Userbrain publishes a dedicated GDPR page, last updated on 1 June 2018 and reachable only through the sitemap, stating that it has diligently ensured its practices are compliant with the GDPR. It describes itself as a data processor acting for its customers. A customer Data Processing Agreement including the EU Model Clauses is supplied on request to support@userbrain.com, against the account email, name, company, address and country. All data is encrypted in transit, and the company commits to notifying customers promptly of an incident. Access and portability through a machine-readable export, erasure and rectification are all covered. The privacy policy invokes both the GDPR and the Austrian Data Protection Act, and the AI features page states the AI features are fully GDPR compliant. Being established in Austria, the company needs no Article 27 representative. Enterprise plans add custom DPAs, security reviews and retention policies.
Who owns the data?
Userbrain GmbH, Frauengasse 7, 8010 Graz, Austria, is the declared controller in a privacy policy last updated on 10 March 2026. It collects user data (email, postal address, phone number, name, employer, gender), log files, usage data, payment information, and task data meaning the test videos, audio and transcripts. The terms keep exclusive title to the service with Userbrain and its licensors, but explicitly except the content provided by users, which they call User Content. The GDPR page lets customers and testers alike export their account data in a machine-readable format and have every trace erased, test videos included. Users remain responsible for any third-party personal data they obtain, publish or share through Userbrain.
Reuse rights
Test recordings, comments and reports are the customer's own User Content: they can be watched, clipped, shared by link and exported as mp4 videos or CSV files without asking Userbrain for permission. Userbrain itself processes the material for the purposes its privacy policy lists, among them hosting and backend infrastructure, analytics, payments, live chat, contact and user database management, heat mapping and session recording, tag management, infrastructure monitoring and behavioural remarketing, under Article 6(1)(a), (b), (c) and (f) GDPR. Section 10 names 21 subprocessors with their registered name and address, including DigitalOcean, Amazon Web Services EMEA, OpenAI, Stripe, PayPal, Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity, Sentry, Mailchimp and Dovetail. Transfers reach the United States and Australia, and the site states that customer data is not used to train any AI models outside your own testing.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Userbrain does not declare where customer data is physically stored. Its privacy policy names two providers under hosting and backend infrastructure, DigitalOcean LLC at 101 Avenue of the Americas in New York and Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL in Luxembourg, but these are contracting entities and transfer clauses rather than datacentre locations; the DigitalOcean entry carries a transfer-to-third-countries mention of the USA. The data these providers handle includes user data, log files, usage data, payment information and task data, meaning the test videos, audio and transcripts. OpenAI, the declared AI subprocessor, operates servers outside the EU including in the United States. Dovetail Research Pty Ltd sits in Australia, which has no adequacy decision and is covered by standard contractual clauses, whereas Typeform states it stores and processes within the European Union with standard clauses for any transfer. Userbrain commits that all data is encrypted in transit. A DNS lookup on 2 September 2026 resolved the apex domain to a DigitalOcean address in Frankfurt, Germany, with www pointing to a Netlify host, but that describes the marketing website rather than the testing platform.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Userbrain.
- The advertised price is not the bill: the USD 49 per month shown by default is an annual commitment, the monthly rate is USD 59, and no panel tester is included, so ten sessions add USD 450 to the month
- Automated synthesis invites over-trust: themes, sentiment labels and AI summaries are generated, and taking them as conclusions rather than as pointers into the recordings can lead a team to act on a pattern that watching the sessions would not confirm
- Recordings capture real people's screens and voices, and the privacy policy makes the customer responsible for any third-party personal data obtained, published or shared through Userbrain
- Data crosses borders to the United States, through DigitalOcean and OpenAI, and to Australia through Dovetail, which has no adequacy decision; the site states that refusing these transfers means not using the services concerned, so there is no selective opt-out
- Public claims do not all line up with the site's own pages: its machine-readable file advertises case studies from Lush, Red Bull, Spotify, Shopify, Stanford and MIT that the customers page does not carry, and announces a 2015 founding while the Austrian commercial register records the company's entry on 7 July 2018
- The paperwork has aged unevenly, with terms from 2022 and a GDPR page from 2018 against a privacy policy revised in March 2026, and no ISO 27001, SOC 2 or security page is published to back the security claims
- Relying on one method narrows what you hear: the tool covers unmoderated testing only, the panel speaks English, German and Spanish, and very specific screening is handed off to third-party platforms
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Very low. Userbrain is a web product with nothing to install, and sign-up is advertised at 60 seconds without a credit card. Testing a website needs only a URL and testing a prototype only a public link. Ready-made templates by sector and AI generation of tasks from a product description mean you can launch without writing a script, and the site states that you don't need to be a UX expert. Panel testers install the Userbrain Recorder app themselves, so nothing is deployed on your side. The MCP integration is optional and simply connects to a compatible client.
Deployment
Apps stores
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Userbrain
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Userbrain.
Frequently asked questions
Who are the Userbrain testers?
What exactly do I get back from a tester?
Is there a free plan?
How much does the paid plan cost, and are testers included?
Is there a free trial?
Can I test prototypes and mobile apps?
How quickly do results come back?
Is my data used to train AI models, and can I get a DPA?
Which languages does the panel cover, and can I connect Userbrain to an AI assistant?
Should you pick Userbrain?
Userbrain does one thing and says so plainly: unmoderated user testing, run quickly and cleanly. That focus is its main argument. Instead of scheduling interviews, you write or generate a handful of tasks, pick people from a panel the company puts above 170,000 testers or send a link to your own users, and watch the recordings come back, 97.43% of them within a day according to its published figures. The AI layer then does more than annotate: it writes the tasks, transcribes, clips, labels sentiment, surfaces themes and answers questions about the material in plain language, including from ChatGPT, Claude or Cursor through MCP.
Read the pricing carefully. The USD 49 per month on display assumes an annual commitment; billed monthly, Pro is USD 59. More importantly, no panel tester is included in any subscription. Each session costs USD 45 on top, and that line, rather than the subscription, will decide your real budget.
On data the posture is better documented than most: an Austrian publisher under Austrian law, 21 subprocessors named individually with address, purpose and legal basis, a DPA with EU Model Clauses on request, and an explicit commitment not to train AI models on your testing data. The reservations sit on the paperwork and the perimeter rather than the intent, with terms last updated in 2022 and a GDPR page from 2018 against a privacy policy revised in March 2026, no published security certification, no verifiable API documentation, and transfers to the United States and Australia that cannot be declined selectively.
For a UX or product team that wants continuous evidence from real users without hiring a researcher or running sessions, Userbrain is a strong and honest fit. For moderated research, hard-to-reach profiles, or panel languages beyond English, German and Spanish, look elsewhere.
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