A session refers to one recorded interaction with a participant, whether it’s moderated or unmoderated. In general, one recording with one participant counts as one session. There are some exceptions to this in order to allow for reconnects etc, but if you record multiple distinct sessions with the same participant, each recording is treated as a separate session.

Previewing or testing your setup doesn’t count toward your session limit. The system is designed to be generous about not counting restarts and very short recordings, so you will find that some brief or interrupted sessions don’t end up reducing your session balance.

Sessions expire when your trial ends or when your contract term concludes. If you ever feel a session was counted by mistake (for example, if it was interrupted or too short to be usable), just let us know, we’ll gladly credit additional sessions to your account, no questions asked.

Moderated sessions enable you to engage with participants live, observe behaviors in real time, and ask follow-up questions as needed. They’re well suited for interviews, discovery, and usability studies.

Unmoderated sessions, by contrast, allow participants to complete tasks independently using instructions you define. Ideal for scaling prototype, website and native app tests without scheduling live calls.

Moderated studies are valuable when you need to explore motivations, validate concepts in depth, or uncover nuanced usability issues.

Unmoderated sessions are better when you want rapid feedback on prototypes or workflows and prefer asynchronous collection of insights.

Our participant panel is powered by User Interviews, giving you access to a large, diverse pool of vetted participants across both consumer and professional segments. You’ll benefit from:

• Fast, reliable recruitment. One hour median time to first match with a 98% positive session feedback.
• A network of over 6 million participants spanning a wide range of demographics and job roles
• Detailed screeners and custom quotas to precisely target your audience
• Verified participant profiles with exceptionally low no-show rates.

Whether you’re running quick usability tests or in-depth interviews with specialized professionals, you can scale your research confidently and efficiently.

On paid plans, this indicates how many participant recruitment fees are bundled with your subscription.

There are three parts to Recruit pricing:
1. Recruitment fee (what you pay us for recruiting a participant that shows up and do what they have agreed to)
2. Incentives (what you pay the participant for showing up and doing what they have agreed to)
3. Incentive processing fee (what you pay for incentive distribution).

Whenever you buy a participant package, or when we say “participants included” this covers the recruitment fee. Incentives are managed separately and paid at the time of recruitment. A 6% incentive management fee applies when incentives are distributed through Lookback.

Additional sessions and panel participants can be purchased on any paid plan. You can find the full breakdown in the pricing table above. There is always a minimum purchase of 10 sessions/participants. You can also get more sessions and participants by upgrading your plan.

All plans, including the free trial, provide access to Lookback’s core research toolkit:

• Run all available moderated and unmoderated research methods
• Conduct stakeholder interviews and set research goals
• Review and annotate recordings in the integrated video player
• Use AI-assisted analysis with Eureka
• Create and tag shareable Findings and Reels
• Store unlimited session recordings
• Invite observers to watch live sessions and comment
• Access chat-based support for your team

Please note: export functionality is only available on paid plans.

Collaborators are team members with full access to conduct (moderate) research, view all sessions, generate highlights, and manage projects. They can create studies end-to-end.

Guests are temporary viewers of live or recorded content that collaborators elect to share with them. They can make notes and findings and chat with each other in live sessions.

Observers (available on Enterprise Plan only) are a dedicated logged in guest account type designed for stakeholders who only need visibility into sessions. They can watch live research and comment on recordings but don’t have permissions to create projects or run studies themselves.

When you upgrade, you’ll enter your payment details and pay upfront for your selected plan. There are no hidden fees. Additional charges apply only if you recruit extra participants or purchase more sessions beyond what’s included.

No, Lookback only offers plans with annual commitments. However, many of our customers use the Freelance plan as a “project by project” solution that in essence works as a flexible and affordable solution for less continuous research needs.

We support invoicing and purchase orders on the Enterprise plan. If you’re interested, please contact enterprise@lookback.io

We sure are! Read about our GDPR compliance here.

We will provide your team all the information needed to determine if Lookback meets your security requirements.

If you cancel your subscription, you won’t be able to access your sessions from the dashboard without a valid plan. We retain recordings for 90 days if you’ve been on a paid plan, and 30 days if you’ve only used a trial. After that period, sessions are permanently deleted. If you resubscribe before deletion, you’ll regain access automatically. Paid customers can also sign up for an archive plan to preserve recordings long-term (please contact support for details).

The trial runs for 60 days and includes up to 5 sessions (moderated or unmoderated), so you can evaluate Lookback in your workflow. When your trial ends, access to your sessions will pause until you activate a subscription. We retain your recordings for 30 days post-trial to give you time to upgrade without losing data.

You’ll have access to all of Lookback’s great features with the exception of exporting sessions and launching Recruit Rounds.

No, participant recruitment isn’t available during the free trial. However, you can still invite and schedule your own participants at no cost. You can also play around with the Recruit features and explore panel criteria and screeners. If you need to run an end to end test of Recruit please reach out to support.

The trial includes up to 5 sessions. If you reach that limit, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan to continue conducting sessions.

Yes, if you’d like more time to complete your evaluation, just reach out to our team. We’re happy to extend your trial so you can test all 5 sessions thoroughly before making a decision.