Most alternative pages start by explaining what is wrong with the other tool. This one starts by saying that if a changelog is what you need, Headway's free plan is probably the answer and you can stop reading.
The reason to look elsewhere is not that Headway is bad at changelogs. It is that a changelog is the last step of a loop, and if the earlier steps are missing you end up announcing into a room where nobody asked for anything.
Everything below was read on Headway's own site on 9 September 2026.
What are the alternatives to Headway?
Headway does changelogs and nothing else, and its free plan is genuinely hard to beat at that one job. Everything below does the other half, which is collecting the requests that come back after a release.
| Vendor | From | Billed per | Free plan | Trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trello | $5/user/mo | user | Yes | – |
| VoteFirst | $7.50/mo | plan | – | 14 days, card |
| Features.Vote | $7.50/mo | project | – | 14 days |
| Jira Product Discovery | $10/creator/mo | creator | 3 creators | – |
| LoopedIn | $12/mo | plan | 1 of each | – |
| WishKit | $12.50/mo | project | 5 requests | – |
| Sleekplan | $13/mo | workspace | 1 admin | 30 days, no card |
| Upvoty | $13.50/mo | project | – | 14 days |
| Noora | $14/mo | workspace | – | 7 days |
| Convas | $15/mo | tracked user | 25 users | – |
| FeedBear | $15/mo | project | – | 14 days |
| Supahub | $15/mo | workspace | 1 board | 10 days |
| ProductLift | $19/mo | workspace | – | 14 days |
| Productboard | $19/maker/mo | maker | 500 notes | – |
| Roadmunk | $19/creator/mo | creator | – | 14 days |
| Ducalis | $20/mo | changelog subscriber | 500 subs | – |
| Frill | $22/mo | workspace | – | 14 days |
| Fider | $25/mo | workspace | 250 items | – |
| Featurebase | $29/seat/mo | seat | 1 seat | – |
| Headway | $29/mo | plan | Yes | – |
| Nolt | $29/mo | board | – | – |
| UserJot | $29/mo | workspace | 2 boards | 14 days |
| Aha! Ideas | $39/user/mo | user | – | Yes |
| Savio | $39/mo | paid user | – | 14 days |
| Beamer | $49/mo | monthly active user | 1,000 MAU | – |
| Feature Upvote | $49/board/mo | board | – | 30 days |
| Rapidr | $49/mo | workspace | – | 14 days |
| Suggested | $49/mo | plan | – | 15 days |
| Gleap | $49/mo | plan | – | 14 days |
| FeatureOS | $50/mo | plan | – | 30 days, no card |
| Olvy | $60/mo | plan | 25 items | – |
| AnnounceKit | $39/mo | module | – | 15 days, no card |
| Canny | $79/mo | tracked user | 25 users | – |
| LaunchNotes | $249/mo | plan | – | 14 days |
| Pendo | Not published | monthly active user | Beta | – |
| ProdPad | Not published | module | – | 7 days |
| UserVoice | Not published | quoted | – | 30 days |
| airfocus | Not published | quoted | – | – |
| ProductPlan | Not published | quoted | – | – |
| Productroad | $9/mo | plan | 50 users | 14 days, no card |
| Quackback | $29/mo | plan | 1 board, 50 posts | 14 days, no card |
| ProdCamp | $99/mo | plan | 2 admins, 1 product | – |
| Harvestr | $65/editor/mo | editor | – | 14 days |
| Productlane | $29/user/mo | user | – | Yes |
| Ideanote | $6/user/mo | user | 10 users, 250 ideas | – |
| Craft.io | $19/editor/mo | editor | – | 14 days, no card |
| HYPE Boards | €79/mo | plan | – | 14 days, no card |
| Noticeable | $24/mo | plan | 1 project, watermarked | 14 days, no card |
Read on each vendor's own pricing page, with the billing switch on the yearly side wherever one is published. From is the cheapest paid rate per month. What each one includes, as well as what it costs, is on one page.
The same two products, line by line
Read on each vendor's own pages on the date in the row above. Not published means nobody could read it on the pages opened that day, never that the feature is absent.
What is Headway?
Headway is a changelog product and nothing else. It publishes release notes to a hosted page and an in app widget, and there is no board for customers to post on and no roadmap.
What does Headway cost?
Nothing, or twenty nine dollars a month.
The free plan carries unlimited changelogs, customisation of the public page and of the widget, custom categories and their attention badge. There is no seat count and no entry limit on it, which makes it one of the more generous free plans anywhere in this category.
Pro is twenty nine dollars a month, flat rather than per user. It adds whitelabelling, a custom domain, all the integrations, team management, scheduled publishing, a private changelog and the option to keep search engines off it. Headway's price history since 2017 shows it at that figure since 2018.
That last one is worth pausing on, because it runs the opposite way to most tools. Their free changelog is a public page that search engines can read, and paying is what buys you the ability to hide it. Several tools in this category have that backwards.
The version of this argument worth having is the one you run yourself, and a trial takes 14 days and a card.
What this costs
Lite
$9 /mo
Pro
$39 /mo
Lifetime
$999 once
Fourteen day trial of Pro, card asked for at signup. Nothing here counts the people who vote, so the bill does not move when the board starts working. The long version, with what happens if you stop paying.
Does Headway do feature requests or a roadmap?
No, and they never suggest otherwise.
Headway's marketing site is a single page, since the pricing link is an anchor on it and the pricing path returns a four oh four, and not one of the words vote, voting, upvote, roadmap, feature request, feedback or board appears on it anywhere.
That is the clearest possible statement of scope rather than a criticism, and it is why this comparison is not a feature table.
Headway is a changelog. VoteFirst is a board that produces a changelog as a consequence. Those are different purchases and the query that brought you here does not distinguish them.
Does Headway have a public roadmap, single sign on and an API?
Headway's own pages read on 14 September 2026 never use the word roadmap, because the product is a changelog and nothing else. Single sign on is not published anywhere on Headway's own pages read on 14 September 2026, so nobody could read whether it exists.
The Headway API is on the free plan, which is unusual in a category that treats an API as the thing you upgrade for.
Headway does not weight votes by revenue, because Headway has no voting to weight. VoteFirst publishes a public roadmap with a Denied column on every plan, and signs a voter in with a token from your own application on the thirty nine dollar plan rather than with SAML.
Is there a free Headway alternative?
Yes, and Headway is one of them. What matters is what its free tier does not cover rather than the price. Headway's free tier carries unlimited changelogs, and Beamer's runs to a thousand monthly active users with one teammate.
Both were read on their own pages on 14 September 2026, and both are announcement tools rather than places customers ask for things. VoteFirst is not one of them. There is no free plan here, only a fourteen day trial that asks for a card at signup.
Is Headway worth it, and when should you stay on it?
When the announcement is the whole job.
If you already know what to build, if requests reach you through support or sales or your own head, and if what you want is a well made public page and an in product widget saying what shipped, Headway free does that and charges you nothing.
Moving to a nine dollar tool to get the same thing would be a worse deal.
Stay too if you need a custom domain and a team on the cheapest possible terms. Twenty nine dollars flat for whitelabelling, a domain and team management is less than VoteFirst charges for the plan that carries a custom domain.
What does VoteFirst do that Headway does not?
The three steps before the announcement.
People can ask. A public board where anybody can post a request and vote on one, with no account needed at any point. That is the product, and the changelog is downstream of it rather than beside it.
The entries make themselves. A release on VoteFirst is a container for requests that reached your Completed column, so the changelog entry is built out of work you already tracked. There is no second document to keep in sync, which is the actual reason changelogs lapse rather than a lack of formatting.
The people who asked get told. Publishing a release emails the voters on the requests inside it, and that message names the thing that specific person asked for. It lands differently from an announcement to everybody.
One limit on that last one. Only voters who were signed in get the email, because an anonymous voter has no address to send to.
Anonymous voting is the reason VoteFirst's vote counts are worth reading and it is also the reason a share of your voters cannot be told directly. Both halves are true and you should know both before you rely on it.
14 days, a card at signup, then $9 or $39 a month.
What does Headway do that VoteFirst does not?
Two things at least, and one of them may matter to you more than everything above.
Scheduled publishing. Write it now, have it go out later. VoteFirst does not have that.
A free plan. VoteFirst starts at nine dollars. Theirs starts at nothing, with no seat count.
What moving actually involves
There is no importer for Headway on VoteFirst's side; the board import reads only Canny and Featurebase.
Voters and the revenue behind them come in from a CSV or from a billing connection, which is the part the weighting needs. The requests themselves are rebuilt by hand or by a script against the API, and the vote counts start again.
The five steps, with the endpoint each one uses, are written out in full, and they are the same five whatever you are leaving.
What does VoteFirst cost?
Nine dollars a month, and thirty nine if you want a custom domain or colleagues.
The nine dollar plan is one project and one person, and it carries the board, the roadmap page, the changelog and the widgets. Thirty nine adds more projects, the API, a custom domain and team members, with no count on the team.
Neither plan meters the people who vote or the people who read the changelog. Both figures are published and a card is required for the fourteen day trial.
If you are weighing several of these, the real billing unit of every tool in the category is on one page, and the changelog tools are compared separately on what each one actually delivers.