$0
Buyer price
Free to search and compare
Report
Should I Use Capterra?
Software discovery and review marketplace (Gartner-owned)
Depends
DependsFine as a free starting point to shortlist software — never as your only source, since listings and reviews are pay-influenced.
Free software directory, decent for shortlisting — but rankings are pay-influenced and reviews are gift-card incentivized.
Confidence: Medium
$2,999/yr
Vendor benchmark
G2 Starter tier, closest rival
$100 gift card
Reviewer incentive
Per Reddit reports (dated)
Acquired
Ownership
Gartner-owned listing site
Value for money
4
Free for buyers; vendors pay for leads
Ease of use
4
Users praise breadth and search
Feature depth
3
Huge directory; ranking quality varies
Support quality
2
BBB and Trustpilot complaints exist
Security posture
3
No public incidents found; policy published
Pros
- Free for buyers to search, compare, and read reviews¹
- Massive coverage: reviews across 15k+ companies, 1000+ categories
- Claims to verify reviewers before publishing
- Widely used lead-gen channel for B2B SaaS marketers
Cons
Gotchas
- highGift-card incentives for reviewers create a conflict of interest in ratings⁵
- highListings are ad-funded; sponsored placements skew what you see first⁷
- mediumAs a buyer, your contact details become vendor sales leads
- mediumVendors report PPC lead-quality concerns; pricing not transparently published
Best for
- Buyers building a first software shortlist
- Small businesses comparing category options
- B2B SaaS vendors collecting verified reviews
- Marketers wanting inbound software leads
Not for
- Anyone wanting neutral, ad-free rankings
- Vendors expecting cheap, high-quality leads
- Buyers needing security vetting of products
- Teams who distrust incentivized reviews
Pricing
Buyer
$0
- Search categories
- Compare products
- Read verified reviews
Vendor
Free basic listing; paid placement is quote-based
- PPC/CPM lead programs
- Comparable rival G2 Starter: $2,999/yr
Security
No known public vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed.
What users say
Buyers find it useful for discovery, but vendor-side reviews and lead quality draw criticism.
“You should be using capterra. It's absurd. $100 amazon dollars a month”
“No, it is not.”
Alternatives
Compare Capterra with each alternative.
G2
Bigger review graph; also ad-funded, so same skepticism applies
Capterra vs G2TrustRadius
Deeper, longer-form reviews for serious buyer research
Capterra vs TrustRadiusAlternativeTo
Community-driven, no pay-to-play placements
Reddit peer threads
Unpaid, unfiltered opinions from actual users
Capterra vs Reddit peer threadsFull analysis
Based on 30+ public sources; many review snippets were truncated, so ratings figures could not be confirmed.
Sources
- Capterra: Find The Right Softwarecapterra.comofficial
review
- Capterra Reviews | Trustpilottrustpilot.comreview
review
- Capterra $100 gift card thread | Redditreddit.comreview
- Capterra vendor pricing vs G2 (Blastra)blastra.ionews
- Capterra Ads playbook (COSEOM)coseom.comnews
- Capterra company profile (Tracxn)tracxn.comnews
- Capterra Privacy Policycapterra.comsecurity
- Is Capterra Safe? (Nudge Security)nudgesecurity.comsecurity
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