Updated November 5, 2026

B2B market research companies come in five types: full-service agencies, sample and panel providers, expert networks, research platforms and analyst firms. The best one depends on the job. Pick an agency when you need a managed, multi-country or advanced-method study. Pick a panel when you have researchers and need respondents. Pick an expert network for a handful of deep calls. Pick a platform when your own team needs answers from B2B buyers this week.

Most "top B2B market research companies" lists are written by one of the companies on the list, rank themselves first and give no criteria. This one is also written by a company on the list (Wynter), so here is how we kept it honest: every fact below comes from the company's own website or a named third party, checked on November 5, 2026. The only exceptions are the turnaround times for Emporia Research and CleverX, which come from our own evaluation of those services. Where a company doesn't publish a number, we say so instead of guessing. And we say where agencies beat us.

How we picked these 10

We started from the companies a buyer actually sees when looking for B2B research help:

• The Google and Bing top 10 for "B2B market research companies"
• Greenbook's directory of B2B market research firms

This guide covers every kind of company you can hire or buy from, agencies included. If you only want software your team runs itself, see our guide to B2B market research tools.

We kept companies built for B2B audiences, removed duplicates and grouped them by type. We left out general sample suppliers whose panels are mostly consumers (more on that below). We didn't score the rest on a single scale, because a panel provider and a strategy agency aren't competing for the same job. Instead, each company gets a "best for" based on what it publishes about itself.

The short answer

The five types of B2B market research companies

Of the 10 companies below, only Wynter and CleverX publish full price lists. Emporia publishes prices for its startup plans. Everyone else quotes per project.

The 10 companies, compared

They're grouped by type, not ranked.

B2B International: best for multi-country, fully managed B2B studies

B2B International was founded in 1998 and has been part of dentsu's B2B agency gyro since 2018. It says it has run more than 4,000 B2B research programs, works with 900+ brands and covers 145+ countries, with offices across the UK, Europe, the US and Asia-Pacific. Services cover brand and communication research, segmentation, customer experience, pricing and concept testing (B2B International, ppc.land on the dentsu acquisition).

• Pricing: Projects start at $10,000, billed at $150 to $199 an hour, according to its Clutch listing.
• Turnaround: Not published.
• Pick it if you need one study across many countries and languages, with an agency designing, fielding and reporting it.

Cascade Insights: best for win-loss and interview-led B2B research

Cascade Insights focuses on B2B companies, especially B2B tech, and lists brand and message research, buyer personas, buying criteria, competitive landscape and win-loss research among its services. Named clients include Google, Microsoft and GE (Cascade Insights).

• Pricing: Not published.
• Turnaround: Not published.
• Pick it if you want an agency to run win-loss or in-depth interview programs with your own customers and lost deals.

Hanover Research: best for ongoing research on a fixed annual fee

Hanover sells research as an annual fixed-fee subscription instead of per project. It reports 200+ analysts, more than 1,000 client organizations and over a million surveys deployed a year, across corporate, higher education and K-12 clients. Corporate focus areas include B2B manufacturing, building products and software (Hanover Research).

• Pricing: Annual fixed fee, amount not published.
• Turnaround: Not published.
• Pick it if you have a steady stream of research questions and want an outside team on retainer.

NewtonX: best for managed studies with verified senior professionals

NewtonX recruits verified business professionals for custom surveys and interviews, plus AI-moderated research and synthetic personas. Its published cases include a survey of 160 verified senior leaders for Ogilvy and 470 verified product designers for Figma, with delivery times from three days to two weeks (NewtonX).

• Pricing: Custom quote per project, not a subscription. A NewtonX job listing describes contracts and projects from $10,000 to $500,000+ (NewtonX job listing). When we asked NewtonX for a quote in December 2023, it set a $5,000 minimum per project and quoted $165 per participant for a 10-minute survey.
• Turnaround: Three days to two weeks in its published cases.
• Pick it if you need a research partner to recruit a specialized senior audience and run the study for you. Here's our Wynter vs NewtonX comparison.

Emporia Research: best for verified B2B respondents for your own surveys

Emporia recruits B2B and healthcare professionals and validates them with real-time LinkedIn checks, work-email domain analysis and synthetic identity detection. It covers professionals across 140+ industries, works pay as you go with no annual contract or minimum spend, and offers both do-it-yourself and managed projects (Emporia Research).

• Pricing: Startup plans start at $1,000 for 3 interviews or 15 survey responses (Emporia for startups). A 2026 review put typical rates at $50 to $90 per survey response and $250 to $700 per interview, incentives included (Dupple).
• Turnaround: Typical B2B projects take 5 to 7 business days, and hard-to-reach audiences 10 to 14.
• Pick it if you design your own surveys or interviews and need hard-to-reach professionals verified properly.

GLG: best for a few deep calls with senior experts

GLG has run expert calls for 25+ years for financial services, consulting, corporate and legal clients. It also offers surveys, sample sourcing, events and AI-moderated interviews in 10 languages (GLG).

• Pricing: Not published. A 2026 comparison of expert networks put GLG's indicative pricing at about $1,350 per call hour, and GLG also sells subscriptions (Woozle Research).
• Turnaround: Not published for expert calls.
• Pick it if you need three to five conversations with rare experts, not a survey of a market.

Qualtrics: best for enterprise survey software across every team

Qualtrics is enterprise survey and experience management software, not a panel company. It doesn't run its own human panel: respondents come from third-party panel suppliers, such as PureSpectrum, while its synthetic panels are built in-house (Qualtrics support docs, Qualtrics Audiences). Panels over $15,000 can't be bought online and go through an account executive. It supports advanced methods like conjoint and MaxDiff.

• Pricing: Custom quote. The median software contract is about $30,000 a year, with a range of roughly $7,000 to $138,000 (Vendr, 323 purchases, February 2026). Panel responses cost extra.
• Turnaround: Depends on audience feasibility. Panels stay open for up to 20 days.
• Pick it if you want customer, employee and market research on one enterprise contract and have researchers to run it. Here's our Wynter vs Qualtrics comparison.

CleverX: best for product and UX teams recruiting participants

CleverX recruits participants for surveys, interviews and product tests. It lists 10M+ participants, but only thousands of those are B2B professionals; the rest are consumers (CleverX, our CleverX evaluation).

• Pricing: Published. $50 per B2B survey response, $250 per B2B interview with a human moderator and $10 per consumer survey response, with participant incentives billed on top. The Pro platform costs $149 per user per month (CleverX pricing).
• Turnaround: Niche B2B audiences need a manual feasibility check before launch and take 1 to 3 weeks.
• Pick it if you're a product or UX team running your own studies. Here's our Wynter vs CleverX comparison.

Wynter: best for marketing teams running their own B2B buyer research

This is us. Wynter is a market research platform for B2B tech marketers with a panel of 86,000+ verified B2B professionals across the US, Canada and the European Union, most of them in North America. Every participant is verified through LinkedIn and work email at signup, checking name, title, employer, seniority, industry and company size (how we verify). You set the questions and the audience by job title, seniority, company size, industry and region, and get results in 12 to 48 hours. Studies include ICP surveys, message tests, preference tests, brand tracking and interviews.

• Pricing: Published. Pay-as-you-go tests start at $899, and annual plans start at $20,000 a year (pricing). An annual plan isn't a price per study: you prebuy credits ($20,000 buys 20,000 credits) and spend them on any mix of research over the next 12 months. Brand tracking costs about $15,000 for one wave a year or $25,000 for two (brand tracking).
• Turnaround: 12 to 48 hours for most studies.
• Pick it if you're a B2B tech marketer who needs buyers' answers before a launch, a rewrite or a positioning decision, in North America or Europe.
• Skip it if your audience is outside tech, you need markets beyond North America and Europe, or you need win-loss research with your own lost deals.

Forrester and Gartner: best for analyst credibility

Forrester and Gartner are analyst firms, not survey shops. Forrester Consulting sells commissioned, data-driven studies that are produced independently from its research, plus advisory sessions and workshops (Forrester Consulting). Buyers usually commission them for thought leadership with an analyst brand on it.

• Pricing: Custom engagement. Forrester's own January 2026 analysis models a custom thought leadership study plus a cohosted webinar at $200,000 in program fees, based on 2025 pricing (Forrester). The median Gartner contract is about $80,500 a year, with a range of roughly $27,000 to $280,000 (Vendr, 151 purchases, February 2026).
• Turnaround: Forrester's model assumes a 20-week project.
• Pick it if you need third-party credibility for a market claim. Don't use it to learn what your own ICP thinks of your homepage.

Comparison table

What B2B market research costs

Few companies publish prices, so here are the public data points we could verify, including contract data from the software-buying platform Vendr:

Maxio is the clearest example of the gap. Agencies quoted $100,000 to $240,000 for a brand awareness study of its ICP. Maxio ran it on Wynter for a little over $10,000, before a later price increase, and re-ran it a year later to measure the change.

Where an agency beats Wynter

We'd send you to an agency, a panel or an expert network in these cases:

• Markets beyond North America and Europe. Wynter's panel covers the US, Canada and the European Union. If you need Latin America, the Middle East or Asia-Pacific in the same study, B2B International covers 145+ countries.
• Audiences outside tech. If you sell to plant managers, chemists or hospital buyers, a full-service agency or a specialist panel like Emporia will reach them better than we will.
• Specific people, not a profile. Wynter targets by role, seniority, company size, industry and region. We can't find your lost deals, your churned customers, a competitor's customers or a list of named accounts. Agencies can recruit from your CRM, and win-loss specialists like Cascade Insights do this every day.
• Win-loss and large segmentation studies. Win-loss programs, conjoint and segmentation studies with thousands of respondents are agency or enterprise-platform work.
• Nobody on your team can run research. An agency designs, fields, analyzes and presents. Our higher plans include done-for-you projects, but if you want a strategy consultancy, hire one.
• You need an outside name on the finding. A board or an industry audience may trust a Forrester study more than one you ran yourself.

Where Wynter beats an agency

• You can launch today. Wynter is self-serve: you set up a study and launch it yourself, without scoping calls, procurement meetings or gatekeepers. There are no programming fees, setup fees or billable hours.
• Speed. Most Wynter studies return results in 12 to 48 hours. Forrester's own model of a custom study assumes a 20-week project, and none of the agencies above publish turnaround times. Even recruiting-only services take 5 to 14 business days for niche B2B audiences (Emporia).
• Cost. A test starts at $899, and a brand tracking wave costs about $15,000. Maxio's agency quotes for the same study were $100,000 to $240,000.
• Frequency. At those prices you can test before every launch, not once a year. In our survey of 100 B2B SaaS marketing leaders, 53% research people who aren't customers once a year or less (Wynter study).
• Transparent prices. Wynter publishes its full price list. Most agencies on this list only quote per project.
• The people deciding are the people learning. Which matters more than it sounds.

Why outsourced research often goes unused

In our study of 100 B2B SaaS marketing leaders, only 9% said their most recent significant marketing decision was mainly based on research with target buyers. 32% said it was mainly a leadership or gut call. Some described research that was "rejected by management as too complex" (Wynter study). A separate survey of marketing and product leaders found 40% of key decisions are made without reference to insights at all (Market Logic Software, 2024).

Peep Laja, Wynter's founder, puts it this way:

Research done outside the team is often wasted research. Leadership orders a study from a third-party vendor or an internal insights team, the research is presented, the team nods, and then ships on gut feel and the opinion of the highest-paid person in the room. People ignore research they didn't run themselves. Research from outside the team is someone else telling you your baby is ugly, which is easy to dismiss. The people who ran the study aren't in the room where decisions happen, so the group that decides treats it as one mildly interesting input among many, and nothing changes. Product teams figured this out a decade ago. In marketing and product marketing, outsourcing is still the default: someone else delivers the deck, and marketers still ship on gut. Marketers must experience the research firsthand. That's why we built Wynter for marketers, so they can run their own research. Only then do the insights live in the room where it happens and actually get implemented.

The product comparison holds up. In a 2023 survey of 603 product professionals by Maze and Atlassian, 64% said their organization has a democratized research culture, where designers, product managers and marketers run research, not only researchers (Research Live).

This isn't an argument against agencies. It's an argument for putting the decision owner inside the research. If you hire an agency, put the person who will make the call in the kickoff, the interviews and the readout, and write down before you start which decision the study will change.

Why big panel companies aren't on this list

When we started building Wynter, our plan was to buy respondents from panel companies rather than build our own panel. We ran B2B surveys through Cint, Lucid (now part of Cint) and Dynata. Too many of the "CMOs at tech companies" we paid for clearly weren't CMOs at tech companies. Anyone can type a job title into a signup form, and these panels largely take it at face value. We threw out most of what came back and built our own panel, with every member verified through LinkedIn and work email.

That's the pattern with most large panel companies: they're built for consumer research, and B2B is a filter on top of a consumer panel. Dynata, Cint and Centiment come up when people search for B2B research companies, so here's what their own sites say:

• Dynata is mainly a consumer panel. Its 2023 panel book describes nearly 70 million panelists, of which more than 3 million are business professionals, or about 4%.
• Cint is a sample marketplace that aggregates 800+ supply partners in 130 countries. Its homepage doesn't list B2B audiences, and response quality depends on which supplier your respondents come from (Cint). When we priced a survey of CMOs and marketing directors through Cint in 2018, it cost $18 per response. That had to cover Cint's margin, the supplier's margin and the respondent's incentive, for people who supposedly run marketing departments.
• Centiment sells survey responses from both consumer and B2B audiences in 100+ countries, and its site doesn't explain how job titles are verified (Centiment). A pricing page still live on its site prices a survey of IT decision makers at $8 per response: 300 responses, a survey of about six minutes (Centiment pricing). The median US IT manager earns $175,140 a year, about $84 an hour (BLS, May 2025). Six minutes of their time is worth about $8.40 at their own pay, and the $8 also has to cover the vendor's margin.

If you use a panel company for B2B work, ask exactly how job titles are verified, and screen hard.

Before you buy B2B survey responses, do the math

Survey fraud is widespread. When Rep Data tested six leading online sample sources in 2025, it flagged more than 30% of respondents as suspicious or outright fraudulent, and proprietary panels did no better than open exchanges. Some respondents attempted more than 1,000 surveys in 24 hours (Greenbook). B2B is a bigger target, because senior job titles pay the highest incentives, so they're the titles fraudsters claim.

The fastest check is simple arithmetic. Divide the quote by the number of completed responses. That's your cost per response, and the person answering only gets part of it after the vendor takes its cut. Then ask whether a real person in that role would stop working for that amount:

• What their time is worth. The median US marketing manager earns $166,790 a year, about $80 an hour (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025). Ten minutes of their time is worth about $13 at their own pay, before any vendor margin.
• What the market pays them. Respondent, a B2B recruiting marketplace, recommends incentives of $100 for entry-level professionals, $300 for directors and $600 for C-level executives for a remote research session (Respondent).

Rules of thumb:

• Under $10 per response for individual contributors: you're not getting real B2B professionals.
• Directors and executives cost far more. No real B2B executive answers surveys for $5 or $10. Their time is worth more, and they get far more invitations than they'll ever answer.
• If the price looks too good, ask how job titles are verified, what share of responses get removed for quality, and whether removed responses are replaced for free.

How to survey IT decision makers

This is the most common B2B audience request, and the hardest to fake-proof. IT titles pay high incentives, which attracts people claiming roles they don't hold.

• Verify before they answer, not after. Self-reported titles are where IT fraud starts. Wynter verifies every panelist through LinkedIn and work email at signup, and engineering and IT roles at tech companies are where our panel is strongest.
• Target by role and by what they own. "IT decision maker" is too broad. Narrow it to the role (CIO, IT director, security lead, DevOps manager), company size and industry.
• Add screener questions only a real IT buyer can answer, like which tools they manage, which budget they own or how many people report to them.
• Price the response, not the study. If a vendor quotes $10 a response for IT directors, see the section above.
• Ask the six questions below before you buy from anyone.

Six questions to ask any B2B research company

1. How do you verify job title and employer? "Respondents self-report" isn't verification. Ask for the method: LinkedIn checks, work-email domains, third-party databases.
2. How many people matching my exact audience do you have? Ask for a count for your role, seniority and company size, not the total panel size.
3. What will it cost all-in? Recruiting fee, incentives, platform fees, analysis and re-fielding if quality checks fail.
4. How long from approval to results? Get a date, not "it depends."
5. Who owns the questionnaire and the raw data? You should get both.
6. What happens to bad responses? Ask whether they're replaced at no cost and how fraud is detected.

For the full vetting checklist, see our guide to B2B research panels.

FAQ

What are the best B2B market research companies? It depends on the job. For managed multi-country studies, B2B International. For win-loss and interview programs, Cascade Insights. For verified B2B respondents for your own surveys, Emporia Research. For managed studies with senior professionals, NewtonX. For expert calls, GLG. For marketing teams that want to run their own B2B buyer research in 12 to 48 hours, Wynter.

How much does B2B market research cost? Published data points range from about €750 per B2B interview through an agency to $100,000 to $240,000 in agency quotes for a B2B brand awareness study, and about $200,000 for a commissioned Forrester study. Self-serve platforms cost less: a Wynter test starts at $899, and a brand tracking wave costs about $15,000.

What's the difference between a B2B market research agency and a research platform? An agency designs, runs and reports a custom study for you, priced per project. A research platform gives your own team software and a participant panel so you run studies yourself, usually faster and cheaper, with you doing the design and analysis.

How much should a B2B survey response cost? Do the math: divide the quote by the number of completed responses. Under $10 per response for individual contributors means you aren't getting real B2B professionals. Directors and executives cost far more, because a real executive doesn't answer surveys for $5 or $10.

How do you survey IT decision makers? Use a panel that verifies job titles and employers before anyone answers. Wynter verifies every panelist through LinkedIn and work email, and IT and engineering roles at tech companies are its strongest audience. Then add screener questions only real IT buyers can answer. Ask the provider how many respondents match your exact role, seniority and company size before you launch.

How do B2B research companies verify respondents? Methods vary. Wynter verifies each participant through LinkedIn and work email at signup, checking name, title, employer, seniority, industry and company size. Emporia Research checks LinkedIn and work-email domains in real time. Ask every vendor for its method before you buy.

Should we hire an agency or run B2B research ourselves? Hire an agency for studies across many countries, audiences outside tech, advanced methods like conjoint or segmentation, or when nobody on your team can run research. Run it yourself when the questions are about your buyers, messaging and positioning and you need answers this week, because research the decision makers run themselves is more likely to be used.

Related guides

B2B market research tools · Market research platforms for B2B · B2B research panels · Primary market research · Market research survey questions · B2B market research

Sources

• Company facts from each company's own website, checked November 5, 2026: B2B International, Cascade Insights, Hanover Research, Emporia Research, NewtonX, GLG, Qualtrics, CleverX, Forrester Consulting, Cint
• Dynata, Americas panel book, 2023
• ppc.land, Dentsu acquires B2B International, now part of gyro, October 2018
• Wynter, How B2B Marketing Leaders Make Decisions, October 2026 (n=100)
• Market Logic Software, survey of marketing and product leaders, November 2024
• Research Live, Maze and Atlassian continuous research report, January 2023 (n=603)
• IntoTheMinds, How much does market research cost?, February 2025
• Vendr contract data for Qualtrics and Gartner, February 2026; Qualtrics, online panels support docs
• Rep Data via Greenbook, The pervasive threat of tech-enabled fraud in survey research, August 2025; US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Advertising, promotions and marketing managers, May 2025 data; Respondent, incentive guidance
• Forrester, Total Economic Impact of custom thought leadership, January 2026
• Clutch: B2B International; NewtonX job listing; Dupple: Emporia Research review, 2026; Woozle Research: expert network comparison, 2026
• Wynter, Maxio case study
• Centiment pricing examples, checked November 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics, computer and information systems managers, May 2025