The Best Live Polling Apps in 2026, Compared
Prices and limits checked October 2026. Plans change often, so confirm on each vendor’s pricing page before you buy.
A quiet room is rarely an uninterested one. People just don’t like speaking up in front of colleagues. Live polling fixes that: everyone answers on their phone, and the results appear on screen. We compared five popular tools on the two things that matter most: features and price.
Features
| Mentimeter | Slido | Poll Everywhere | AhaSlides | Polstat | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Activities | Wide range, including scales and ranking | Polls, quizzes, Q&A, ranking | Polls, Q&A, word cloud | Multiple choice, open polls, word clouds, rating scales, Q&A, and more | 6: multiple choice, rating, word cloud, short text, long text, Q&A |
| Works with your slides | PowerPoint, Google Slides, Zoom, Teams, Webex | Zoom, Webex, Teams, PowerPoint, Google Slides | PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides | PowerPoint, Google Slides, Teams, Zoom | Runs straight from a PDF |
| Needs internet | Yes | Yes | Yes (participants can reply by SMS, but the presenter still needs a connection) | Yes | No |
| Where data lives | Vendor’s servers | Vendor’s servers | Vendor’s servers | Vendor’s servers | Presenter’s laptop |
Price and free tier
| Mentimeter | Slido | Poll Everywhere | AhaSlides | Polstat | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Permanent, 50 participants per month | Permanent, 100 participants and 3 polls per event | Permanent, small cap (about 25 to 40 participants) | Permanent, 50 participants, 5 quiz and 3 poll questions per presentation | 30-day trial, 50 participants |
| Cheapest paid plan | About $12 per month, billed yearly | $17.50 per month, billed yearly, up to 200 participants | About $10 per month, billed yearly | $7.95 per month, billed yearly, up to 100 participants | $79 per year, up to 300 participants |
| Lifetime license | No | No | No | No | Yes, $299 |
Watch the fine print on free tiers. Mentimeter’s cap is per month, Slido’s is per event, and AhaSlides’ is per presentation, so “50” and “100” don’t compare directly.
Which one fits your room?
- Mentimeter or AhaSlides if you want the widest mix of activity types.
- Slido if your team lives in Zoom, Teams, or Webex.
- Poll Everywhere if some participants will answer by text message.
- Polstat if your venue has weak internet, your answers are sensitive, or you’d rather pay once than every year.
The honest trade-offs
Cloud tools win on reach: remote audiences, integrations, and larger rooms. Polstat wins on privacy and independence: it runs on your laptop, works offline, and keeps your data with you. In return, it has fewer activity types, no permanent free plan, a ceiling of 300 participants, and the Wi-Fi quality in the room matters.
If your next session is in a hall with unreliable internet, or you simply don’t want participants’ answers on someone else’s server, try Polstat free for 30 days.