Verdict: Canny is a strong feedback tool with the best automatic feedback capture in its class. Its weak spot is the bill. Price follows tracked users, and without a spend cap Canny moves you up a tier on its own. Stay if you live inside the free plan or lean on Autopilot. Leave if your user base is growing fast and you need a number you can budget a year ahead.
We make FeatureOS, a Canny competitor, so read this with that in mind. We tried to score Canny the way a buyer would, and every fact below comes from Canny's own pages, checked on 2026-11-10: canny.io, canny.io/pricing and the Canny help center. Where Canny's pages don't say something, we say that too.
This is a review, not a price guide or a list of alternatives. For those, see Canny pricing in 2026, Canny alternatives and affordable Canny alternatives.
Who should stay on Canny
Small teams that fit the free plan. Free gives you 25 tracked users, 5 managers and unlimited contributors, with no time limit (billing plans article). Canny's own pricing FAQ says most new teams find 25 tracked users enough at first. If that's you, nothing here is a reason to move.
Teams that run on Autopilot. Autopilot pulls feature requests out of support tickets and calls from Intercom, Zendesk, Freshdesk, Gong, Zoom and more, merges duplicates, and drafts Smart Replies and Comment Summaries (pricing page). It is included on every current plan, and Canny's help center says Autopilot credits are no longer capped on the Free and Pro plans for accounts that signed up or changed plans on or after May 9, 2025. If your feedback mostly arrives through support conversations, this saves real triage time.
B2B companies with a small active base. Canny's FAQ says that for B2B SaaS, "around 1-5% of total users become tracked users." A company with 2,000 customers might sit near 100 tracked users for a long time. Tracked-user pricing hurts much less when that number barely moves.
Teams that need Jira, Linear or Salesforce sync and have the budget. Pro adds PM integrations (Jira, ClickUp, Linear, Asana, GitHub, Azure DevOps). Business adds CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce) and SSO (Okta, OIDC, Entra ID, OneLogin).
Who should leave Canny
Products with a fast-growing or consumer user base. The more people vote, the more you pay. That's the deal with tracked users, and it gets worse if your product runs a public board for a large audience. Canny does offer custom tracked-user limits for high-volume B2C products, but that means a sales call and a custom quote.
Teams that need a fixed annual budget. If finance wants one number for the year, a bill that rises with engagement is hard to plan around. You can cap it, but the cap has a cost of its own (see Hidden limits below).
Teams with more than 10 people who need full admin access. Pro gives you 10 managers. Everyone else can be a Contributor, which is unlimited, but contributors don't hold the Owner or Manager role.
Teams on a legacy plan. If you signed up before May 9, 2025 and never changed plans, you may still be on Starter or Growth with metered Autopilot credits. Compare your current bill to the new plans before you decide anything else.
Canny scorecard
Our scores, 1 to 5, based on what Canny publishes today. Your weights will differ, so read the reason, not just the number.
| Criterion | Score | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Feedback capture | 5/5 | Autopilot pulls requests from support tools and calls, and credits are uncapped on current Free and Pro plans. |
| Core boards, roadmap, changelog | 4/5 | Portal, voting, roadmap and changelog are all there and mature; nothing unusual missing. |
| Integrations | 4/5 | Wide list, but PM integrations need Pro and CRM plus SSO need Business. |
| Free plan | 4/5 | 25 tracked users, 5 managers and Autopilot with no time limit is generous for a first board. |
| Admin seats | 3/5 | Unlimited contributors is good; 5 managers on Free and 10 on Pro is tight for larger product orgs. |
| Pricing predictability | 2/5 | Price follows tracked users, and without a spend cap Canny upgrades your tier automatically. |
Overall: 3.7 / 5. A well-built product with a pricing model that suits some companies and punishes others.
Hidden limits
None of these are secret. They are all on Canny's pages. They are just easy to miss on a first read of the pricing table.
1. Almost any interaction creates a tracked user
Canny's pricing FAQ defines a tracked user as "someone who has given feedback." Creating a post, voting or commenting counts, whether done by the user, an admin, or Autopilot. So when your support team logs a request for a customer, or Autopilot pulls one from a Zendesk ticket, that customer can count toward your limit. The better Autopilot works, the faster this number climbs.
2. Auto-upgrade without a spend cap
From the pricing FAQ: if you have no spend limit set, "we'll automatically upgrade you to the next tier once you exceed your limit," and you pay a prorated amount for the rest of the billing period. The help center confirms the price moves to the next tier and stays there until you cross the next limit (billing plans article). Pro starts at $79/month billed yearly for 100 tracked users, and the help center lists Pro tiers running into the thousands of dollars per month at higher user counts.
3. The spend cap stops tracking new feedback
You can set a monthly spend limit on paid plans. Once you hit it, Canny says it will "stop tracking feedback from new users." In plain terms: new customers who try to give feedback won't be counted until you raise the cap or the period resets. You trade a surprise bill for lost feedback. Pick which one you can live with before you set the cap.
4. Manager caps
Free allows 5 managers and Pro allows 10. Business has custom limits. Contributors are unlimited on every plan, so most teams can work around the cap, but check what the Contributor role can and can't do before you plan around it.
5. Autopilot depends on your plan's start date
Current Free and Pro plans have uncapped Autopilot. Legacy Starter and Growth plans still meter it in credits, at "1 Autopilot Credit = $0.10," with 1 credit per text conversation and 5 per audio call, and Autopilot pauses when credits run out (Autopilot credits article). Same product, different rules, depending on when you signed up.
6. Integrations sit behind tiers
Free covers feedback capture sources like Intercom, Zendesk and Slack. Sending requests to Jira, Linear or GitHub needs Pro. Salesforce, HubSpot and SSO need Business, which is custom-priced and billed yearly.
What Canny does well
To be fair: Canny says it has 100K+ registered companies and 15M+ feedback items captured (canny.io), and its customer list includes Ahrefs, CircleCI and ClickUp. It now ships an MCP server that lets Claude, ChatGPT and Copilot query your Canny data. Paid plans come with a 14-day trial of Pro or Business, with no credit card needed (trials article). The product is not the problem for most teams that leave. The pricing model is.
How FeatureOS differs
FeatureOS charges by seat bundle, not by tracked user, so the number of customers who vote doesn't change your bill.
| Plan | Monthly | Annual | Seats |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $60/mo | $600/yr | 5 |
| Growth | $120/mo | $1,200/yr | 10 |
| Business | $250/mo | $2,500/yr | 15 |
Extra seats are $15 each. There is no free plan, which is a real point in Canny's favor if you're tiny. You get a 14-day trial instead. Full details on our pricing page, and a feature-by-feature view in FeatureOS vs Canny.
If you're happy on Canny's free plan or your tracked-user count is flat, stay. If your board is growing and the bill grows with it, run the numbers in our affordable Canny alternatives breakdown first.