LaunchDarkly Pricing: Is it Worth The Cost?

You’re likely wondering if LaunchDarkly’s plans are really worth your investment. 

In this brief article, we’ll give you a full overview of LaunchDarkly’s pricing to help you decide.

We’ll cover:

• What is LaunchDarkly?
• How much each of its plans cost
• Key differences between each plan
• Whether LaunchDarkly is worth it or not
• How and why Eppo emerges as the better option

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What is LaunchDarkly?

LaunchDarkly is a feature management platform that allows development teams to safely deliver and control software releases. It lets customers enable or disable certain features for specific users without deploying new code and without impacting the entire user base. 

It’s core features include:

• Standard feature flags: Create on/off toggles for new features within your code for controlled rollouts.
• Advanced flag types: In addition to standard on/off toggles, LaunchDarkly offers more complex flag types like percentage rolls, multivariate flags, and combinations for more granular control.
• Audit logging: Track all changes made to feature flags for improved control and security.
• A/B testing: Run experiments by showing different app versions to different users, helping you gather data on which version performs better.
• Targeted user experiences: Deliver specific features or experiences to targeted user segments.
• Client-side and server-side SDKs: Integrate LaunchDarkly with various programming languages using both client and server-side SDKs for smooth feature management. 
• Environments: Organize your feature flags into different environments (development, staging, production, etc.) for better management.

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LaunchDarkly pricing: How much does it cost?

Let’s put each of LaunchDarkly’s plans under the lens. We’ll analyze their prices and which specific features you’re getting in each. 

Starter

Pricing billed monthly: $10 per seat / per month

Pricing billed annually: $8.33 per seat / per month

The features included are:

• 5000 feature flags per project (more can be requested free of charge)
• 300 environments per project (more can be requested free of charge)
• 1 project (every project has its own unique set of environments and feature flags)
• Access to all SDKs (.NET, Javascript, Apex, Java, Cloudflare, etc.)
• Access to server-side MAU
• Access to 1K client-side MAU
• Individual targeting + targeting rules
• Live events (real-time insight into events the user’s app is sending to LaunchDarkly)
• Compare flags
• Limited integrations
• Release pipelines (up to 20 per project)
• Multi-factor authentication
• SSO/SAML (Available to add to plan for $10 per seat / per month)
• Audit log for flag and segment changes (30-day)
• Relay Proxy (small Go application that runs on the user’s infrastructure)
• Contact Support
• First reply SLA (2 business days)

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Pro

Pricing billed monthly (five seat min.): $20 per seat / per month (At least $100 / month)

Pricing billed annually (five seat min.): $16.67 per seat / per month (At least $83.35 / month)

The features included are everything from the Starter plan, plus:

• 300 projects per account (more can be requested free of charge)
• Experimentation (available to add to plan. Not included by default)
• 4000 segments per environment (more can be requested free of charge)
• SSO/SAML (Available to add to plan for $10 per seat / per month)
• Access to 10K client-side MAU
• Clone flags
• More integrations
• API access
• Flag approvals
• Unlimited audit log for flag and segment changes
• Audit log for account changes (30-day)
• First reply SLA (1 business day)

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Enterprise

Pricing billed monthly (25 seat min.): Contact sales

Pricing billed annually (25 seat min.): Contact sales

The features included are everything from the Starter and Pro plans, plus:

• Data Export (Available to add to plan. Not included by default.)
• Big and synced segments
• Bulk targeting
• Flag prerequisites
• Copy flag settings
• Code references
• All integrations
• Scheduled flag changes
• Require comments for flag changes
• Require flag approvals
• Flag triggers
• SSO/SAML included by default
• SCIM
• Audit log for account changes
• 1000 custom roles and permissions (more can be requested free of charge)
• Ability to create teams (100 per account and more can be requested free of charge)
• Team custom roles (50 per team and more can be requested free of charge)
• 200 service tokens (more can be requested free of charge)
• Relay Proxy Enterprise (Automatic configuration and offline mode)
• First reply SLA (4 business hours)
• Premium support
• Service SLA (99.9%)
• Dedicated Client Success Manager

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Is LaunchDarkly worth the cost?

For small to mid-size companies, LaunchDarkly can be worth the investment. If your company is just getting started with feature flags and wants an easy-to-use solution to help you release features to select users, you can get by with just the Starter plan.

However, that’s where LaunchDarkly’s cost vs. value advantages end. 

Businesses should carefully weigh these points before investing in LaunchDarkly:

• Data access denied: Companies paying top dollar for an Enterprise plan will be shocked to find data exports unavailable by default. This is particularly troubling for SaaS companies that rely heavily on data to optimize their offerings.
• Experimentation = extra cost: The fact that experimentation tools are only available as an add-on, even at the Pro and Enterprise levels, indicates that LaunchDarkly may not view experimentation as a core driver of growth and customer retention.
• Complexity creates costs: An alarming number of users have reported that setting up LaunchDarkly can be a frustrating and time-consuming process. For companies of all sizes, this initial hurdle represents a significant waste of resources and could delay time-to-value.
• Confusing terminology and UI: Several users, from companies big and small, mention the API responses and overall interface can be difficult to understand. For technical teams, this translates to wasted time deciphering the platform instead of focusing on development.
• Integration friction = wasted budget: The difficulty many users experience with integrations suggests a misalignment between where LaunchDarkly invests its development resources and what its user base actually needs.

This discrepancy forces businesses to pay more (in time, resources, or even third-party solutions) to bridge the gap.

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Eppo: The best LaunchDarkly alternative

If you’re on the fence about LaunchDarkly, you’ll be glad to know about Eppo.

Eppo is an experimentation-first platform that helps you manage and test features safely and with data you can trust. Here are only some ways that Eppo beats LaunchDarkly: 

• Comprehensive experimentation suite: Unlike LaunchDarkly, where experimentation tools are not included by default and only available as an add-on for Pro and Enterprise plans. Eppo is built with a strong focus on powering an experimentation culture.  
  
  Additionally, Eppo empowers teams to conduct sophisticated A/B tests, feature analyses, and more, without the need for additional purchases or plan upgrades.

• Data above all: Eppo places a strong emphasis on making data-driven decisions accessible. With features like contextual bandits and a bespoke statistics engine, Eppo goes beyond just feature flagging to empower developers and product designers alike.
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• Simplified integration and deployment: Eppo makes integration deployment processes easier. In contrast, LaunchDarkly requires navigating through various plans to access different sets of integration features.

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Book a Demo and Explore Eppo.