IdeaScale publishes no price. Its pricing page offers custom subscriptions shaped to the features and scope a buyer needs, sorted by enterprise, government and education, and sends every visitor to a demo. Two public records fill the gap: the price lists IdeaScale printed until 2021, kept by the Internet Archive, and 83 purchases by US federal agencies recorded on USAspending.gov.
Together they show a product that cost $15 a month in 2009 and $2,500 a year for a small organization in 2016, and that federal agencies have bought since 2021 at a median of about $246,000 a year.
What did IdeaScale cost when it printed prices?
| Archive copy | What the pricing page showed |
|---|---|
| September 2009 | Basic at $15 a month and Corporate at $99, or $149 and $999 a year, with extra moderators at $99 a month each |
| January 2013 | $15 and $99 a month, and $208 a month for a plan billed at $2,500 a year |
| January 2015 | A free plan, and SMB at $2,500 a year for organizations of 500 employees or fewer |
| May 2017 | A free plan for up to 25 members, and Ideate at $2,500 a year for 100 members |
| April 2018 | Collect at $4,999, Engage at $12,999 and Develop at $34,999, each a year |
| January 2021 | Engage at $12,999, Evolve at $21,999, Advance at $34,999 and Transform from $64,999, priced on a two year subscription with a setup fee possible |
| May 2022 to now | No figures. Custom subscriptions, quoted after a demo |
Between 2017 and 2018 the entry price went from $2,500 to $4,999 a year, and by 2021 the cheapest printed plan was $12,999. In 2022 the figures came off the page.
What do US federal agencies pay for IdeaScale?
USAspending.gov lists 83 federal contracts that name IdeaScale, from August 2010 to September 2026, worth $16,372,982 in all, across 17 agencies. The largest buyers by count are the Department of Homeland Security with 18 contracts, Commerce with 12, and Health and Human Services and the Social Security Administration with 11 each. Since 2014, 55 of the 63 were bought through resellers on the General Services Administration's schedule rather than from IdeaScale directly.
Fifty four of the contracts cover a single year, which makes them comparable.
| One year contracts starting in | Contracts | Lowest | Median | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 to 2013 | 13 | $2,500 | $10,000 | $15,000 |
| 2014 to 2016 | 13 | $2,500 | $18,000 | $39,885 |
| 2017 to 2020 | 8 | $29,320 | $38,138 | $191,022 |
| 2021 to 2024 | 19 | $31,380 | $246,422 | $748,764 |
The newest, a year from 30 September 2026 for the Food and Drug Administration, is $495,729.
The $2,500 contracts match IdeaScale's own printed price. The Institute of Museum and Library Services paid $2,500 for a year of hosting in 2012, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation $2,500 for an "SMB subscription" in 2016. One figure, $14,658.97, recurs on five contracts between 2014 and 2016 at three agencies, two of them naming the Gov. Plus subscription, which looks like the schedule price for that plan.
How has one agency's IdeaScale bill grown?
The Social Security Administration has renewed IdeaScale every year since 2014, which makes it the clearest single price history in the record.
| Contract period | Obligated | What the contract names |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 2014 to Sep 2015 | $7,329.48 | Upgrade to the Gov. Plus subscription |
| Sep 2015 to Sep 2016 | $14,658.97 | Gov. Plus |
| Sep 2016 to Sep 2017 | $14,658.97 | Gov. Plus renewal |
| Jul 2017 to Jul 2018 | $29,319.90 | IdeaScale Enterprise |
| Aug 2018 to Jul 2019 | $32,251.89 | Enterprise renewal |
| Aug 2019 to Jul 2020 | $35,477.08 | Enterprise renewal |
| Aug 2020 to Jul 2021 | $37,250.93 | Renewal |
| Aug 2021 to Jul 2022 | $186,248.45 | Innovation management package |
| Aug 2022 to Jul 2023 | $204,873.30 | Enterprise renewal |
| Aug 2023 to Jul 2024 | $225,110.98 | Enterprise software maintenance renewal |
| Aug 2024 to Jan 2026 | $245,417.73 | License renewal, eighteen months |
Renewals rose 10 percent in 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2023, and 5 percent in 2020. The jump in 2021, from $37,251 to $186,248, came with the move to the innovation management package. The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency paid exactly the same $186,248.45 that September for a year of IdeaScale's enterprise innovation package, which suggests a schedule price rather than a negotiated one.
What does a federal contract include?
An amount on USAspending.gov is what the agency obligated, which can cover more than licenses: training, single sign on work, a FedRAMP authorised hosting instance on AWS GovCloud, or several programmes at once. The largest contracts run for years. The Transportation Security Administration obligated $1,761,484 for September 2021 to September 2024, and the Patent and Trademark Office $963,304 for March 2021 to March 2025, a renewal described as FedRAMP. A private company buying one programme starts from a different quote, and only IdeaScale's sales team gives it.
What does IdeaScale do for the money?
IdeaScale runs innovation programmes: campaigns that ask employees, customers or citizens for ideas on a challenge, voting and comments to refine them, workflows that move the best ideas through review stages, and reporting on participation and outcomes. Its customers include government agencies, universities and large companies, and its contracts with federal agencies name FedRAMP authorisation.
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.
VoteFirst sits at the small end of the same job: a public board where customers or colleagues post ideas, vote and see what was decided, at $9 a month for one project or $39 for unlimited projects and colleagues. It has no campaigns, stage gates, FedRAMP authorisation or innovation reporting, so an agency running a programme of that size is buying something else. The idea management tools in between are compared on their own page, with Ideanote's published prices and HYPE Boards' prices among them.
How was this read?
The archived price lists come from the Internet Archive's copies of ideascale.com/pricing taken in September 2009, January 2010, January 2011, January 2012, January 2013, January 2014, January 2015, March 2016, May 2017, April 2018, January 2019, May 2020, January 2021, May 2022, January 2023, February 2024, January 2025 and February 2026, and the live page was read on 4 October 2026. The contracts come from the USAspending.gov award search for "IdeaScale" across all contract types, read on 4 October 2026: 83 awards, every one of them naming IdeaScale in its description or as the recipient. A one year contract is one whose period of performance runs 330 to 400 days.
14 days, a card at signup, then $9 or $39 a month.