When we say every feature is free on livepoll.io, people reasonably want to see the list. Not the sanitized marketing version. A real list of what other audience polling tools charge for, what their free tiers cap, and what livepoll.io gives you without a credit card.
This post is that list.
If you are evaluating polling tools for your classroom, your training workshop, your conference Q&A, or your weekly team meeting, and you want something concrete to forward to a colleague or to the person making the purchasing decision — this is the page. We have provided a direct feature-by-feature comparison between what the audience polling industry typically charges for and what livepoll.io includes on the free tier.
Two things to keep in mind as you read.
First, we are not writing this to belittle anyone. The other polling tools are legitimate products built by real teams, and many of them have strong engineering behind them. This post is not about who is better or worse. It is about what you actually get for your money, what you can get for zero dollars instead when you use livepoll.io.
Second, the pricing and feature limits below are accurate as of April 2026. The polling market changes pricing frequently. If you read this a year from now, spot-check the numbers — they may have shifted.
If you are wondering how livepoll.io can afford to give all of this away for free, we answered that question in its own post: Why Everything Is Free (And Why That's Not a Trick). Short version: narrow ads shown to participants on the join screen and public results page, never to presenters, never during a live session.
The pattern
Audience polling tools almost universally follow a standard pricing template. A small number of features live on the free tier, just enough for you to try the product in a real session. The features you actually need — the ones that turn a static survey into a live engagement tool — usually cost between $10 and $20 per month per presenter.
The features that require either a paid tier or a very tight free-tier cap are remarkably consistent across the industry:
- Word clouds for open-response questions
- Quiz with scoring and a leaderboard
- PDF and CSV export
- More than a small number of participants per session, typically capped at 50 or 100
- Q&A moderation tools
- Results history and analytics beyond the last session
These are not exotic features. They are the features you need on a regular basis to run a good polling session that's useful. The industry has settled on pricing these specific features as the upgrade hook because presenters hit them fast and predictably.
Here is what the comparison looks like.
The full comparison
| What you want to do | On other polling tools | livepoll.io |
|---|---|---|
| Run a word cloud for 300 people | Paywalled on some tools ($12–$25/mo); free on others only within caps as low as 25 participants | Free, up to 1,000 participants |
| Run a quiz with a leaderboard for 50 students | Paywalled on some tools ($14–$19/mo); free on others only within caps of 10–25 participants | Free, up to 1,000 participants |
| Ask more than 5 poll questions in a single session | Free tiers typically cap at 2–5 questions | Unlimited questions per session |
| Run a session with more than 100 participants | Free tier caps range from 10 to 100, depending on the tool | Free, up to 1,000 |
| Export session results to PDF or CSV | Requires paid tier on most tools | Free |
| Moderate an open Q&A (approve questions before display) | Requires paid tier on most tools | Free |
| Use AI to draft a session from a prompt | Rare on free tiers; paid add-on when available | Free, with fair-use limits |
| Run more than 5 sessions in a month | Usually free, but some tools cap at 3–5 | Unlimited sessions |
| Access session results from more than a few weeks ago | Often time-limited on free tiers | Free, no time limit |
| Let participants join without creating accounts | Usually free | Free |
| Collect anonymous participant responses | Usually free | Free |
| Replace the polling tool's branding with yours entirely | Paid tier on most tools ($10–$49/mo) | $49/month (White Label) |
Prices and feature limits in this table are accurate as of April 2026. The polling market changes pricing frequently — spot-check competitor pricing before making a decision.
The $49/month White Label option on livepoll.io replaces our branding with yours — your logo, your colors, your domain. It does not add or remove a single polling feature. Every other feature in this table remains free whether you pay for White Label or not.
Why word clouds keep ending up behind the paid tier
Word clouds are one of the most commonly restricted features in audience polling. Some tools have made them paid features outright. Others technically allow them on free tiers but limit the poll count or participant count so severely that a real session runs out of room. Either way, running a word cloud for a classroom or an audience of any real size usually requires paying.
The reason word clouds are such a common paid feature is simple: presenters want them. In classrooms, word clouds turn a quiet class into an engaged one — ask "what did you learn today?" and watch the answers materialize in real time. In training sessions, they show the themes of an open-response warm-up faster than any other question format. In conferences, they give the audience a way to share ideas that does not require raising a hand.
Every presenter who has used a word cloud once wants to use one again. The tools that figured this out moved the feature to their paid tier.
We have decided not to do this. Word clouds will always be free on livepoll.io, no account tier required, with the same 1,000-participant limit as any other question type. Ask the question once, ask it a thousand times — the feature does not move.
Why the participant limit matters more than it looks
The participant limit is the single most painful restriction on free tiers in the polling industry. A classroom, a training room, a conference session — whatever your context, you are running polls because there are people in a room.
When the limit on a free tier is 50 and you have a class of 60, the math is straightforward. Ten students cannot join. You either pay for the upgrade or ten students sit watching.
This is not a hypothetical. Teachers hit this regularly with a larger section, a combined period, a guest lecture. Corporate trainers hit it with workshops that were sized for a conference room and suddenly need to accommodate a joining team. Conference Q&A hits it whenever the session is better-attended than expected.
The industry's 10-to-100 participant cap on free tiers was engineered to be uncomfortable. The tools know the average mid-sized class, training session, or company all-hands lands right in that zone where presenters get blocked often enough to upgrade.
livepoll.io's free tier is 1,000 participants per session. Not 500. Not 250. One thousand. If you run a session with more than 1,000 people in the room, email hello@livepoll.io and we will work with you to make it happen — but for anything short of the largest conferences, you will not find the limit.
Why the quiz leaderboard is not a nice-to-have
Running a quiz without a leaderboard is like running a race without a finish line. Participants know they answered the questions, but the whole point of making it a quiz — the competitive energy, the immediate feedback, the reason people pay attention to the next question — is gone.
A leaderboard is what turns a knowledge check into an engagement event. In a classroom, it is the difference between students drifting and students on the edge of their seats. In a training session, it is the difference between a drill and a team-building moment. In a conference, it is the difference between a forgettable session and one people are still talking about at lunch.
Quiz leaderboards are unevenly available on free tiers. Some tools paywall them entirely on paid plans at $14 to $19 per month per presenter. Others include them on the free tier but limit the entire session to 10 to 25 participants — which means you get a leaderboard only if your classroom or team is that small. Neither approach works for a real session.
On livepoll.io, quizzes with full leaderboards are part of the free tier. Run an eight-question vocabulary quiz for a sixth-grade class, a twenty-question certification review for a corporate training workshop, or a rapid-fire trivia round for a team offsite — the leaderboard shows up at the end either way. No upgrade prompt. No branded banner. Just the result.
Why exports should not be paid
Exports are the feature that matters most to anyone using polling data after the session ends.
A teacher exporting a vocabulary quiz to a grade book. A trainer exporting a workshop poll to share with a client. A researcher exporting a Q&A session for analysis. A consultant exporting a workshop result to include in a deliverable. A conference organizer exporting feedback to send to speakers.
In all of these cases, the session is only half the work. The real value is the data after. Most polling tools paywall PDF and CSV export because they understand this — the presenter has already run the session, already captured the data, and now cannot get it out without paying.
livepoll.io treats exports as part of running a session, not as a separate product. Every session you run can be exported to PDF or CSV immediately after it ends, at no cost, with no upgrade gate.
This is also why we do not treat session history as a paid feature. Your previous sessions stay in your dashboard indefinitely, with the data intact. If you need to pull a poll result from six months ago to reference in a meeting, the export button is right there.
Who this is for
If you are the person who actually runs the session — teacher, trainer, facilitator, manager, conference organizer — the comparison above is the set of tradeoffs you are making every time you open a polling tool. The free tier on most tools is an invitation to upgrade. The free tier on livepoll.io is designed as the actual product.
If you are the person evaluating polling tools for a team or organization, this page is the comparison to send to the person making the purchasing decision. The summary is simple. The set of features typically priced between $120 and $240 per year per presenter on other tools is free on livepoll.io. For an organization running regular engagement sessions across a team, the annual savings is real money.
If you are already paying for a polling tool and wondering whether to switch — the feature set is the feature set. Export your existing polls, drop them into livepoll.io, run next week's session using our product, and see if anything is missing. If something we do not have is blocking you, email hello@livepoll.io and tell us — we track feature requests and ship regularly.
The receipt
Below is the summary.
Features that are typically paid on other polling tools: word clouds, quiz with leaderboard, Q&A upvoting, PDF and CSV export, custom themes, Q&A moderation, meaningful participant capacity, meaningful question capacity.
livepoll.io price for all of the above: zero dollars, zero credit card, zero account required for participants.
The one paid option on livepoll.io: White Label at $49 per month, for teams that want to hide our branding entirely. Every polling feature remains identical whether you pay or not. SSO / SAML is also available at $99 per month for enterprise IT deployments, but most users will never need it.
This is the list. Bookmark this page if you ever need to justify why you are not renewing a polling subscription. Send it to a colleague who is about to renew theirs.
Or better yet — start a session on livepoll.io and see for yourself. No credit card. No account. No paywall at the end.