15Five Perform drafts the written part of a review and leaves every rating to the person writing it

15Five Perform runs review rounds, 360 feedback, goals and talent reviews. Its AI drafts the written answers in a review, and the person writing the review chooses every rating. Perform costs $11 per user per month on a yearly plan. The meeting notetaker, the manager coach and pay tools cost extra. 15Five renews the contract on its own, and you cannot cut seats during the term.

By Ashish Manchanda Published 16 Oct 2026 Last updated 16 Oct 2026

Should you buy 15Five Perform?

In one line

Perform runs reviews, 360 feedback, goals and talent reviews. Its AI drafts the written answers in a review. The person writing the review chooses every rating.

Buy it if

You want AI to draft the written part of reviews while people keep every rating. You want list prices on the website. You want an admin to control the AI by person and by group.

Do not buy it if

You cannot accept 15Five’s ban on using AI output about a person in employment decisions. Your reviews feed pay and promotion. You need to cut paid seats part way through a year. You need each employee to opt out of the meeting notetaker.

Price

Perform costs $11 per user per month, billed annually. Kona Notetaker adds $2 per employee per month. Kona Coach adds $19 per manager per month.

What 15Five Perform does in a review round

Perform covers performance reviews, 360 feedback and talent reviews. In a 360 review, several colleagues each give feedback on one employee. One review round can mix four review types. Different departments or roles can run different rounds. An admin can build and launch a round in under 15 minutes. Perform also includes goals and objectives and key results (OKRs).

A formula sets the rating, not the AI. Performance Ratings+ combines the self review score and the manager review score into one number for each person. The default setup sorts that number into three levels. Calibration is the meeting where people compare manager ratings and discuss gaps. They can adjust answers, but nobody edits a rating directly. It updates by itself when an answer changes.

AI-Assisted Reviews began as an opt-in beta on 9 June 2026 and left beta on 17 September 2026. It collects evidence about each person and drafts answers to the written questions in a review. It also gives the manager a guide for the review conversation. It does not answer rating questions. The writer approves every draft, and the AI never submits a review. Managers preview and check a review before they submit it. Peer and upward reviews can sit in the same round but get no AI drafting. Reviews that start automatically from milestones, which 15Five calls Lifecycle Reviews, get none either.

The AI can also draw evidence from the work tools a company connects. These include Slack, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Salesforce and Kona meeting notes. Connecting a tool is optional. A company, HR or IT admin does it. 15Five does not keep raw content from connected tools past 30 days. The AI follows the permissions people already have. It filters out private calendar events. 15Five also supports Cursor, a coding tool. Its use for each person and each day syncs now. Putting that data into AI-assisted reviews is rolling out next. A review may then draw on how much a person uses a coding tool.

After the review, the manager gets a conversation guide. The guide includes an AI review summary that the manager can edit. The summary is for the manager only. The employee does not receive it. The guide can create a development plan. It cannot create a performance improvement plan. An optional section asks managers about promotion readiness and pay eligibility. The employee cannot see those answers. Perform links review data to pay and promotion decisions.

Amaya is an AI assistant for HR admins only. It answers questions about people data in plain language. It reads the rating answers and the written answers in reviews. It can pull out themes, sentiment and example quotes from the written answers. 15Five Agents are AI assistants that run set tasks on data in 15Five. Three are available today. One is Focus Brief, a private coaching brief sent to employees and managers every week or every two weeks.

A connection feature called MCP lets a person’s own AI tool read the 15Five data that person can already see. It cannot write to reviews or submit check-ins. An admin turns it on, and it costs nothing extra in Perform.

Check the AI settings before the first round. New rounds created on or after 17 September 2026 have AI on by default. Rounds that were draft, upcoming or active before that date stay on the older review experience by default. Two settings must be on for a round to offer AI drafting. One is AI-Assisted Reviews under Feature Settings. The other is Performance Reviews AI under Agents Hub. A separate main switch turns off every AI tool for every user. An admin can also limit drafting to chosen people or groups.

If 15Five is one of several you are weighing, start with the performance management software guide. The 33-product comparison puts prices and AI terms in one table.

What 15Five Perform does well

The AI does not pick a rating

The AI does not select, suggest or calculate a rating. The writer picks every rating on the default templates and approves every draft.

An admin can limit who gets AI

Drafting can go to everyone, to everyone except chosen people or groups, or to chosen people or groups only. Company-level instructions shape what the AI stresses in drafts.

Calibration can be cut by group

Calibration can filter people by department, location, job level, salary band or any custom people attribute. HR admins can also see demographic attributes. The filters help spot equity patterns in ratings.

The security audits include the AI

15Five holds SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 security reports, with the AI in scope for the 2026 audit. Data sits in US data centres compliant with ISO 27001. Its outside AI companies may not train on customer data. The customer keeps ownership of inputs and is assigned the outputs.

Support and exports

Every customer gets dedicated human support. Review results export as CSV, XLSX or PDF.

One customer reports a 70% cut in review setup

UW Credit Union, a 15Five customer, reports a 70% cut in review setup. Ask for references from companies like yours. 15Five also raised a $52M Series C in July 2022. It bought Emplify in 2021 and Kona in January 2025.

Where 15Five stops, and what you agree to when you sign

Read these before the demo. Start with the AI limits, the meeting notetaker and the renewal.

15Five forbids using its AI output about a person in employment decisions

15Five forbids using its generative AI output about a person for purposes with legal or material impact. Employment decisions are included. 15Five requires a person to review AI output. It also warns that output may be wrong and is not a sole source of truth. Perform links review data to pay and promotion. Ask 15Five to explain in writing how these terms apply to an AI-drafted review.

The meeting notetaker has no standing opt-out for employees

Kona Notetaker, which 15Five also calls Meeting Assistant, joins one-to-one meetings with exactly two people on the invite. It appears as a visible participant, and any participant can pause it. Employees have no standing personal opt-out. Transcripts are kept for 30 days and then deleted. Nobody can read them in the app or through the MCP connection. In Google Meet and Teams, Kona asks in the meeting chat for permission to record when captions are off. It then records the call to make a transcript. Kona keeps only the transcript, not the recording.

Kona Coach rates each manager’s urgency for support

Kona Coach turns meeting data into engagement scores, feedback trends and manager effectiveness measures. A table of managers gives each one an urgency of high, medium or low. The urgency comes from AI analysis of how much support the manager needs. Another report scores each manager on leadership behaviours in one-to-one meetings. Your managers’ own meetings become data about them. Ask 15Five whether managers are told about the urgency level.

Some AI settings switch on by themselves

For eligible customers with AI-Assisted Reviews on, the Agents Hub setting for 15Five Agents turns on automatically. The Context Layer is 15Five’s store of people and performance context for its AI. 15Five requires the customer to opt in to Agents and the Context Layer. 15Five can charge for these features later. It gives at least 45 days’ written notice before fees first apply in a renewal term. Missing the notice date for non-renewal after a pricing notice counts as accepting the fees.

You renew on your own and cannot cut seats mid-term

15Five renews the agreement automatically unless either side gives 30 days’ notice. Renewed services cost the vendor’s current price on the renewal date. Seats cannot be reduced during the term. Payments are in US dollars, non-refundable and non-cancellable. 15Five can change service descriptions and pricing at any time without notice. 15Five can also decline to renew on 30 days’ notice. At renewal, 15Five’s latest terms replace the earlier ones unless you agree otherwise in the order form.

Liability, uptime and disputes

15Five’s liability is capped at what you paid in the 12 months before the claim. Claims for breach of confidentiality or of the data contract are capped at $500,000. 15Five does not promise that access is uninterrupted, secure or error free. 15Five runs a public status page. Maintenance runs every Saturday from 06:00 to 06:30 UTC. Disputes go to binding arbitration in San Francisco County. Unpaid amounts earn interest at the higher of 1.5% per month, compounded monthly, or the highest rate the law allows.

Your data helps 15Five

Customers and users grant 15Five a perpetual, irrevocable licence to analyse anonymised usage data. 15Five can combine it with other customers’ data into one dataset. It also reserves a right to use AI content to develop and improve its own materials. It does not use AI content to train third-party models. You get ten days after notice of a new outside data company to object in writing.

The link to your main HR system has limits

The HRIS Connector, 15Five’s link to your HR information system, syncs employee data every 24 hours at 1 AM UTC. Only one HR system link can be active at a time. ADP Canada is not supported. Oracle HCM and Paycom have no built-in connector. They can connect through SFTP, a one-way secure file transfer into 15Five. Demographic attributes are on by default for customers who use the HRIS Connector.

Security features depend on the plan

Single sign-on, where staff sign in with the company’s own login, is included with some plans. Other plans can buy it as an add-on. Security events are logged for all accounts but only open to view on some plans. Sensitive personal data, which data protection law calls special categories (health details are one example), needs an extra contract addendum.

What 15Five Perform costs, with the add-ons

15Five publishes its prices. Every per-user and per-manager price is billed annually.

Product	List price	What to know
Perform	$11 per user per month	Includes AI-Assisted Performance Reviews, Amaya, 15Five Agents, objectives and key results, 360 feedback, a talent matrix and career paths
Total Platform	$16 per user per month	Includes AI-Assisted Reviews
Engage	$4 per user per month	A separate 15Five product
Kona Notetaker	$2 per employee per month	An add-on. It is in neither plan
Kona Coach	$19 per manager per month	An add-on for Perform or Total Platform
Compensation Base Package	$9 per user per month	Pay tools. A version with Mercer salary benchmarking is also sold
Content for managers	$49 per manager per month	Ask what the content covers
Live coaching	$399 per “credit”	Ask how much coaching one unit buys

Every figure assumes yearly billing at list price, before tax and discounts. For 100 people on Perform, the bill is 100 times $11 times 12 months. That is $13,200 a year. The notetaker for the same 100 people adds $2,400 a year. If 10 of those 100 are managers, Kona Coach adds $2,280 a year. Together they come to $17,880 a year.

Some add-ons may carry minimum requirements, which the account executive explains. Ask for every minimum in writing. 15Five can change pricing at any time without notice. So ask for the price you pay to sit in the order form.

To leave, download your data before the contract ends. You must use the product’s own export tools. Help after the contract ends costs extra. 15Five deletes customer personal data within 90 days of termination. It need not delete data held on back-up systems or data the law requires it to keep.

You could also run review steps with agents built on your own systems. We have mapped what that looks like. The HR Agent Map

What to ask 15Five before you sign

Which AI settings are on for our account on day one, and who on our side can change each one? Good answer: A written list of every AI setting with its default, and a named admin for each.
Can we keep the Agents Hub setting off until our admin turns it on? Good answer: Yes, and it is written in the order form.
How do your generative AI terms apply when an AI-drafted review feeds a pay or promotion decision? Good answer: A written answer we can hand to our legal team and, where we have one, our works council.
Can a manager see where every sentence of an AI draft came from? Good answer: Yes. Each sentence links to its source, or the draft marks the parts that have none.
Can an employee opt out of the notetaker, and which recording-consent laws apply where our managers work? Good answer: A per-person opt-out, and a written list of the places where the notetaker stays off.
When Kona records a call because captions are off, where does the recording go and how long is it kept? Good answer: A stated place and a deletion time, written into the contract.
Can we cut seats during the term, or at least cap the price rise at renewal? Good answer: A cap on the renewal increase, and the right to cut seats at renewal. Both are in the order form.
Will you limit the licence to analyse our usage data and combine it with other customers’ data? Good answer: Yes, with what is combined and for what use written in the order form.
What is the full price of everything we need, and which add-ons carry a minimum? Good answer: One written quote with each add-on and its minimum.
Which of our HR systems connect, and what happens if we run two? Good answer: A named system and a note on whether data flows one way or two. A plan for the second system.
Which demographic attributes arrive from our HR system by default, and who can see them? Good answer: A list of the attributes and the roles that can see each one.
What uptime figure and notice period will you put in our contract? Good answer: A written uptime figure and a notice period on the plan we are buying.
Does the plan we are buying include single sign-on and security event logs? Good answer: Both are in the plan, and the quote includes them.
What does help after the contract ends cost, and in what format does our data leave? Good answer: A fixed price, and a full export of reviews, ratings and feedback.

Alternatives to 15Five

PerformYard, Betterworks, Culture Amp, ClearCompany and Lattice also sell performance management software.

PerformYard costs $5 to $15 per person per month, depending on the plan and the number of employees. Onboarding and training carry no fees. Betterworks sells a Performance package at $8 per user per month. That package includes AI help so managers never start with a blank text box. Implementation is a one-time cost on top. Culture Amp quotes on request and bills annually. AI Coach comes with every plan.

ClearCompany has a Review Agent that drafts evidence-backed reviews from goals, one-to-one notes and shoutouts. Ask it for a price. Lattice sells Performance at $10 per seat per month. Its review drafts come with every Performance subscription at no extra cost. The minimum yearly agreement is $4,000.

Merlin is Risely’s AI coach, and it does a narrower job than 15Five. It runs no review rounds. Merlin coaches a manager who writes review feedback against the company’s own feedback standards. A manager can upload a draft they have already written. Merlin coaches them to bring it in line with those standards. Merlin also teaches best practice for constructive feedback. An admin sets the feedback standards in Risely. The manager still writes the feedback and chooses the rating, and Merlin coaches only the wording. Risely sells review-feedback coaching in its enterprise plan.

If you already pay for an HR system, check whether it runs reviews before you shop. You can also decide to buy no review tool this year.

More in this guide

The Performance management software guide
Compare the 33 researched products how each of the 33 researched performance management products runs reviews, what its AI does, what it costs and what its contract says.
Mid-market companies which performance management products suit a company of 200 to 2,000 people, what they cost and what to ask before signing.
Enterprise companies which performance management products suit a company of 2,000 people or more, what they cost, how the contracts run and what to ask.
Frontline and deskless teams how performance reviews reach staff who do not work at a desk, what that costs and what to ask vendors.