Free A/B testing tool: why choose it over VWO and Optimizely?

Updated on September 28, 2026 — Comparison of free A/B testing tool solutions versus VWO and Optimizely.

Summary

• Why free services have disappeared from the A/B testing market
• What VWO, Optimizely and AB Tasty really cost today
• BlastOptimize, 100% free: what's actually included
• Where is the limit, honestly?
• Functional comparison, beyond just price
• For whom a free A/B testing tool is sufficient — and for whom not
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Key takeaways

$574 per month. That's the price VWO users are reporting on independent comparison sites like Capterra and TrustRadius for typical use—a far cry from the free service the company long offered. Optimizely, on the other hand, starts at around $36,000 per year with a mandatory annual commitment. And this timing is no coincidence: since Google Optimize shut down in September 2023, finding a truly free A/B testing tool has become difficult in the professional market.

This article examines the real numbers behind each free A/B testing tool, not just the marketing claims. It also answers the rarely asked question: where's the catch, if any, when a tool claims to be 100% free?

Why free services have disappeared from the A/B testing market

Google Optimize has long been the default answer to the question "how to do A/B testing without a budget". Its closure, effective in September 2023, left a void that publishers in the sector have not sought to fill in the same way: instead of offering a consumer alternative, most have positioned their offerings on corporate budgets, with quote-based, non-public pricing, often negotiated on a case-by-case basis.

The result, documented by several independent analyses of the sector, is a market where the median price of a subscription is around $256 per month, with an almost total void in the $15-49 per month range — a range that is nevertheless natural for a small structure that occasionally tests a few pages. On the forums and communities that follow this topicThe disappearance of VWO's historic free plan regularly comes up as a symbol of this shift: a price jump that weighs heavily on a small business that only tests a handful of pages.

This gap isn't unique to France, but it's felt particularly acutely there. The French economy includes a significant proportion of very small businesses (TPEs) and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in e-commerce and digital services—businesses for which a $36,000 annual budget dedicated solely to A/B testing is a difficult expense to justify, even when the principle of conversion rate optimization is well understood and desired by the team. It's precisely this market segment, underserved since 2023, that motivated BlastOptimize's decision to offer a completely free service rather than a simple time-limited trial.

What VWO, Optimizely and AB Tasty really cost today

Here are the most reliable figures publicly available, as most publishers do not have official pricing schedules:

• VWO — a discovery plan exists but paid plans (Growth, Pro, Enterprise) plans start at $299 per month, according to user reports, and can reach $574 per month or more depending on the tested traffic volume. Billing is based on usage, with no publicly available price list.
• Optimizely — no public price. Estimates based on actual contracts they place the minimum commitment at around $36,000 per year, with mandatory annual contracts.
• AB Tasty — quote only, no public price list. Reported estimates are around $60,000 per year for standard professional use.

These figures are not official prices—none of the three publishers disclose them publicly, which in itself reveals their chosen pricing strategy. They are estimates reconstructed from user feedback and specialized comparison sites, and should be considered as orders of magnitude rather than exact quotes.

Are there any truly free A/B testing tools available from other vendors?

There are a few exceptions to this silence on pricing. Some newer tools, such as product analytics platforms that include experimentation features, offer a free tier—but with usage-based billing (based on the number of events or visitors tracked) that can quickly escalate once traffic exceeds a modest threshold. While the free tier is genuine at the start, it remains conditional on limited usage, which changes the game as soon as a site exceeds a few tens of thousands of monthly visitors.

This near-universal lack of public pricing isn't unique to A/B testing; it's a common practice in B2B software for large companies, where each contract is negotiated individually based on volume, commitment period, and expected level of support. The problem for a small business is that this opacity makes any cost comparison virtually impossible before a sales conversation has begun—a significant obstacle in itself, regardless of the final price.

BlastOptimize, 100% free: what's actually included

Faced with this landscape, BlastOptimize has made the opposite choice: a single, completely free plan, requiring no credit card to sign up and with no time-limited trial period. Specifically, this unique plan includes unlimited projects, a no-code visual editor for modifying text, colors, and layouts, split URL testing, detailed real-time statistics, exports and integrations, and support in French.

One technical detail deserves mention, as it distinguishes this offering from a simple entry-level tool: a single tracking script covers all tested areas, and anti-flicker technology ensures a instant display variants — a technical point that many tools, free or paid, do not handle correctly, with a direct impact on the reliability of the measured results.

Where is the limit, honestly?

An article that presents a free tool without ever mentioning its limitations isn't very informative. Here's the most concrete limitation, and BlastOptimize's own comparison pages against its competitors document it: BlastOptimize doesn't offer multivariate testing. On this specific point, the site's official comparison charts give AB Tasty and Kameleoon an advantage.

This is not a minor detail, but it is not a problem for the majority of use cases either. As we detail in our article on the choice between A/B testing and multivariate testingThe multivariate format only becomes truly useful with high traffic and advanced experimentation—a threshold that most teams specifically looking for a free tool haven't yet reached. In other words, the limit exists, but it rarely affects the audience that most needs a free tool to get started.

Beyond this feature, the product's official pages don't explicitly state any limits on traffic volume or the number of tests—a policy that remains to be seen how it will hold up over time, as is the case with any free offering from a company still new to the market. This transparency is commendable, but it's also a reality to keep in mind: pricing policies, whether free or paid, can always evolve as a company grows. The best practice remains the same regardless of the tool chosen: never build a critical technical dependency without first verifying the ease of exporting your data and test history should the situation change.

Functional comparison, beyond just price

Price is never the only criterion to consider. Of the eight criteria used in industry comparisons (price, free trial, visual editor, split URL testing, multivariate testing, instant display, tracking and reporting, French support), here's what emerges from an independent analysis of these elements:

• No-code visual editor — available from BlastOptimize, VWO and AB Tasty; Optimizely also offers it but with a more technical, developer-oriented learning curve.
• Split URL testing — available from BlastOptimize; often as an option or not publicly disclosed by players with opaque pricing.
• Multivariate test — a strong point of AB Tasty and Kameleoon, absent in BlastOptimize at this stage.
• Instant display (anti-flicker) — a technical criterion that all serious publishers on the market address, but with implementations of uneven quality.
• Support in French — a real differentiator for a French team that does not necessarily have the technical English required to communicate with support based abroad.

The honest assessment: for standard A/B testing and split URL testing needs, the functional gap with paid solutions remains limited. The gap widens only in advanced use cases—multivariate testing, fine behavioral targeting, large-scale multi-team governance.

Speed ​​of implementation: another advantage of a free A/B testing tool

One point deserves to be added to this picture, often overlooked in comparisons that focus solely on visible features: the speed of adoption. A tool costing tens of thousands of dollars per year typically comes with extensive sales and technical support, which lengthens the time between subscription and the first actual test launch. A free tool, without contract negotiations or prior budget approval, often allows for launching a first test on the very day of registration—a tangible advantage for a team that simply wants to verify whether A/B testing brings value before investing more time or money in the process.

For whom a free A/B testing tool is sufficient — and for whom not

A free tool is particularly suitable for a team starting its testing program, managing moderate traffic, or primarily testing simple hypotheses (button color, call-to-action text, free shipping threshold) without needing to cross-reference multiple variables simultaneously. This is exactly the profile detailed in our guide to 7 A/B testing ideas for e-commercewhere almost all of the proposed hypotheses are tested very well in classical A/B.

Conversely, an organization that has already built a mature experimentation practice, with regular needs for multivariate testing or a requirement for formalized contractual support (SLA, dedicated support), will find more value in an enterprise offering—free or paid. This isn't a question of company size per se, but rather the maturity of the testing program, a concept we develop in our... CRO glossary.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is there no longer a free A/B testing tool since Google Optimize?

Google Optimize shut down in September 2023 without a direct free successor from Google. Since then, market players have positioned their offerings around enterprise budgets, leaving a gap for small businesses that neither have the resources nor the need for a tool costing hundreds or thousands of euros per month.

How much do VWO, Optimizely and AB Tasty cost today?

Pricing is not publicly available from most publishers. Estimates reported by users and specialized comparison sites place VWO at $299 to $574 per month depending on volume, Optimizely at $36,000 per year with an annual commitment, and AB Tasty at around $60,000 per year with a quote.

Can a free tool perform multivariate testing?

Not necessarily. It's often the most advanced feature that free or entry-level tools don't offer, due to the lack of statistical computing infrastructure that this format requires. However, classic A/B testing and split URL testing remain widely available.

What limitations should be checked before choosing a free tool?

The volume of traffic or visitors tested (some free tools cap this number), advanced features such as multivariate testing or fine behavioral targeting, and the availability of support in your language.

Is a free tool suitable for all sizes of businesses?

It is particularly suitable for teams starting their testing program or managing moderate traffic. An organization with complex multivariate testing needs, multi-team governance, or dedicated contractual support will more naturally gravitate towards an enterprise offering, whether free or paid.

Key takeaways

Since the closure of Google Optimize, the A/B testing market has largely closed in on enterprise pricing—$299 to $574 per month at VWO, and tens of thousands of dollars per year at Optimizely and AB Tasty. This isn't marketing hype: these are the figures reported by users themselves on independent comparison sites.

A truly comprehensive free A/B testing tool like BlastOptimize fills part of this gap, with one important limitation to be aware of: no native multivariate testing at this stage, a feature that is only really needed by teams already well-versed in their testing practices. For everyone else—the majority of teams starting out or testing a reasonable number of hypotheses—the functional difference compared to paid solutions remains minimal.

You can view the details of the BlastOptimize offer directly, or compare point by point with AB Tasty And Kameleoon before making a decision. And if you're already testing with a tight budget, our visual editor and our analytics dashboard remain accessible from the first test, without any commitment to negotiate — the best way to know if CRO brings you value is still to try it without any barriers to entry.