15Five vs Lattice: Which One to Pick in 2026?

15Five vs Lattice at a glance

Tool	Best for	Starting price	Free tier	External rating
15Five	50-500-employee teams building a weekly check-in culture	$4/user/mo (Engage), $11/user/mo (Perform)	No (demo only, no self-serve trial)	G2 4.6/5 (1,900 reviews)
Lattice	100-1,000-employee companies that need calibration and module depth	$8/seat/mo (Performance module), $4,000 annual minimum	No (demo only)	G2 4.7/5 (4,062 reviews)

Feature comparison by criteria

What 15Five and Lattice charge per employee

Neither vendor lets you sign up with a credit card. Both sell through a demo, and both price per seat with modules that stack on top of a base tier. Here is what each one actually publishes as of our last check.

15Five starts at Engage at $4/user/mo (surveys only, eNPS, heat maps). Most buyers land on Perform at $11/user/mo, which is where OKRs, 360 feedback, and formal reviews actually live. Total Platform at $16/user/mo adds manager training microlearnings and an HR dashboard. On top of that sit add-ons: Kona Meeting Assistant at $2/employee/mo and a Compensation add-on at $9-11/user/mo. There is no published annual minimum.

Lattice starts at Performance at $8/seat/mo, but carries a $4,000 annual minimum, so a 30-person company pays that floor even though the per-seat math looks like $2,880/year. Goals is a separate $8/seat/mo module. Engagement (pulse surveys) is $4/seat/mo. Compensation is $6/seat/mo. A team running all four modules lands at $26/seat/mo before volume discounts, per our internal best performance management pricing pass.

The structural difference matters more than the sticker price. 15Five bundles OKRs, reviews, and 360 feedback into one Perform tier. Lattice sells the same functional pieces as separate modules, which is cheaper for a company that only needs Performance and never touches Goals or Compensation, and more expensive for one that eventually wants all four.

What 5, 25, and 100 seats actually cost per year

15Five Perform is a flat $11/user/mo with no floor. Lattice Performance is $8/seat/mo, but the $4,000 annual minimum only stops mattering once seat count crosses roughly 42.

At 5 and 25 employees, Lattice’s minimum makes 15Five the cheaper option even though Lattice’s per-seat rate is lower. The crossover happens right around 42 seats, where $8/seat finally clears the $4,000 floor. Past that point, Lattice’s lower per-seat price starts winning, and the gap widens as headcount grows, assuming you stay on the single Performance module for both.

Add modules and the math flips again. A 100-employee company running Lattice Performance plus Goals plus Compensation ($22/seat/mo) pays $26,400/year, well above 15Five’s Total Platform tier ($16/user/mo, $19,200/year) for a comparable feature set.

Which tier gates the feature you actually need

The module structure is where buyers get surprised after the demo call ends.

SSO/SAML. Lattice includes SSO on all tiers. 15Five gates it behind Perform and above, so if you only buy the $4/user Engage tier for surveys, you do not get SSO. Any team past 50 employees needing SSO for IT compliance should budget for 15Five Perform, not Engage.

Compensation management. Neither tool bundles this into its base tier. Lattice sells it as a $6/seat/mo module. 15Five sells it as a $9-11/user/mo add-on. If comp review is a launch requirement, neither vendor’s entry price is the real price you will pay.

Manager coaching. 15Five’s Kona add-on ($2/employee/mo for the meeting assistant, plus $19/manager/mo for Kona Coach and $49/manager/mo for content) can add real cost for a manager-heavy org. Lattice’s AI-assisted review drafting ships inside the base Performance module, no separate line item.

Calibration tooling. This is Lattice-only in practice. 15Five does not offer a comparable multi-group calibration workflow with bulk access controls and shareable calibration views. If calibrated ratings across managers are a compliance or fairness requirement, this alone can decide the purchase.

Where 15Five wins

The weekly check-in habit. 15Five’s core loop is a short weekly written check-in that managers can scan in minutes. Reviewers consistently say this turns performance conversations into a routine instead of a once-a-year scramble, and formal reviews draw on months of documented context rather than starting cold.

Manager adoption speed. Because the format feels like a natural work rhythm rather than HR admin, managers on 15Five tend to actually use the tool without repeated nudging from HR. That adoption curve is the single biggest predictor of whether a performance tool sticks past year one.

Transparent, floor-free pricing. No $4,000 minimum. A 10-person team on 15Five Perform pays $1,320/year, full stop. That is the kind of predictable math a startup ops lead can put in a budget spreadsheet without a sales call.

Kona coaching prompts. The real-time coaching nudges during 1-on-1s are one of the few AI features in this category reviewers describe as genuinely useful rather than a summarization layer bolted on for the sake of an AI checkbox.

Where Lattice wins

Calibration depth. Lattice lets you configure multiple calibration groups, apply access controls in bulk, and share calibration views with stakeholders directly. This is the deepest calibration feature set we found in the category, and it is the reason Lattice shows up disproportionately often at the 100-500-employee band where calibration meetings are a quarterly ritual.

Goal cascading at scale. Company-to-team-to-individual OKR cascading holds up better on Lattice as headcount grows. 15Five’s goal tooling is solid but reviewers note it gets shallower past roughly 5-6 levels of org hierarchy; Lattice pushes that ceiling further out.

Named enterprise logos. Lattice’s customer base, which it puts at 5,000+ companies including GoCardless, Weave, and LiveRamp, skews toward growth-stage tech and mid-market companies, the exact profile most likely to need calibration and compensation review working together.

The higher G2 rating. Lattice sits at 4.7/5 across roughly 4,062 reviews, the highest rating among the platforms in our performance management roundup , and the review volume alone signals a mature, well-adopted product.

Where 15Five and Lattice are a wash

Do not let these decide the purchase. Both tools are functionally equivalent here:

• SOC 2 Type II and GDPR. Both are compliant; neither claims HIPAA certification.
• 360-degree feedback. Both support peer and upward feedback cycles tied into formal reviews.
• Mobile access. Both have functional web apps; neither is mobile-first, and most usage happens on desktop.
• Slack and calendar integrations. Both integrate cleanly with Slack, Google Calendar, and Outlook for check-in and 1:1 reminders.
• No self-serve free trial. Both require a demo before you can evaluate with real data.

What 15Five and Lattice reviewers actually report

15Five averages 4.6/5 across roughly 1,900 G2 reviews . The consistent praise is the weekly check-in format and responsive customer support. The consistent complaint is question fatigue over time and shallower OKR cascade once an org grows past a handful of hierarchy levels. Full sourced ratings, funding, and compliance detail live on our 15Five profile .

Lattice averages 4.7/5 across roughly 4,062 G2 reviews per our May 2026 pricing and ratings pass, the highest rating in the performance-management category we track. Users consistently cite the calibration workflow and company-to-individual goal cascading as the features that kept them past the first renewal. The recurring gripe is module creep, where Performance plus Goals plus Engagement plus Compensation adds up fast against the $4,000 annual floor.

Security and compliance side by side

Neither tool is the right pick for a healthcare buyer that needs a BAA. Both clear standard SOC 2 and GDPR review without friction, which covers the large majority of SaaS and tech company buyers reading this comparison.

Switching cost and what you keep if you leave

Both vendors let you export review history, goal data, and survey results, generally via CSV download or API access on higher tiers. Neither publishes a dedicated one-click competitor migration tool, which is normal for this category since review templates and goal hierarchies are configured, not just imported.

The real lock-in is cultural, not technical. Once a company has a year of weekly check-ins on 15Five, or a calibrated review history on Lattice, switching means rebuilding that context in a new tool’s format. Budget 3-4 weeks for a mid-size migration, most of it going into template and hierarchy rework rather than moving raw records.

Contract terms lean annual for both. Neither publishes month-to-month self-serve pricing; both require a sales conversation to leave a trial-and-cancel option open, which is worth asking about directly before signing.

Vendor viability

15Five has raised roughly $94 million since 2011 per Crunchbase, most recently a $52 million Series C in 2022. It reports more than 3,500 customers and several hundred thousand users. The company cycled through three CEO changes between January 2024 and July 2025 before founder David Hassell returned to the role, a leadership churn pattern worth asking about directly in a sales process.

Lattice reports 5,000+ customers including GoCardless, Weave, Huge, Bark, and LiveRamp, skewing toward growth-stage tech and mid-market accounts. Its G2 review volume (roughly 4,062, versus 15Five’s roughly 1,900) suggests a larger active install base, which generally correlates with a more mature support org and steadier product velocity, though review count alone is not proof of financial health.

Who should pick which

Which one we’d actually deploy

Pick 15Five if you are under 150 employees, especially under 50, and you want predictable per-user pricing without a $4,000 floor working against you. The weekly check-in habit is the real differentiator, and it drives the kind of manager adoption that determines whether a performance tool survives past its first renewal.

Pick Lattice once calibration meetings become a real HR ritual, typically somewhere past 100 employees, or once reviews need to feed compensation decisions directly. The module-stacking cost is real, but so is the calibration depth that justifies it at that scale.

The honest middle ground is this: if you are a 60-120 person company debating between them, the weekly-cadence question decides it. If your managers already talk to their reports every week informally, 15Five just gives that a structure. If they do not, and you are trying to force the habit with software, Lattice’s more formal review-cycle model will fit the culture you actually have.

Both sit alongside seven other tools in our roundup of the best performance management software , including Culture Amp for engagement-first teams and Leapsome for EU-headquartered companies.

Affiliate disclosure: Topickz may earn a commission when readers click links to 15Five or Lattice and become paying customers. This does not affect our ratings or recommendations. Ratings and pricing for 15Five reflect our live-verified 15Five company profile (accessed August 1, 2026). Ratings and pricing for Lattice are carried from our May 25, 2026 best performance management software research pass; a live G2/vendor-pricing re-check for Lattice specifically is a noted research gap and will be refreshed on our next freshness cycle. See our methodology and full disclosures .

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