Trakstar Perform runs review rounds, and its AI summarises notes without setting a rating

Trakstar Perform, owned by Mitratech, runs review rounds, 360 feedback, goals and succession planning. Its AI summarises notes and tidies wording. Pricing is a quote based on headcount, charged per seat and paid yearly in advance. The contract renews on its own.

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

Should you buy Trakstar Perform?

In one line

Trakstar Perform runs review rounds, 360 feedback, goals and succession planning. Its AI summarises notes and tidies wording. Mitratech owns it.

Buy it if

You want one product for reviews and 360 feedback, with set-up help included. Your main HR system is one that Perform links to. You are happy to get a price as a quote. You want an administrator to keep the AI off until you are ready.

Do not buy it if

You need a published price list. Pricing is custom and based on headcount, so a figure comes as a quote. You want to be able to leave close to the renewal date. It renews unless you give 60 days’ written notice. You need support outside US Eastern Time office hours and do not want to pay extra for it.

Price

Pricing is custom and based on headcount. The fee is per seat and paid annually in advance.

What Trakstar Perform does in a review round

Trakstar Perform guides a company through a review round. A round runs from planning and goal setting to completion and archive. Managers score competencies, which are the skills and behaviours expected in a role. Reviews can be annual, quarterly, project-based or 90-day. There are unlimited templates and more than 100 competencies.

Administrators create their own rating scales. The number of levels in a scale cannot change after it is created. Settle the number of levels before you set up. The overall score comes from the scale values, the weights of the form sections and the score format. Formats include numeric, reversed, percentage, hidden and range only. Self-review is optional. Comments can be optional, required or off for each template, section or element.

If approvals are on, a finished review goes to an approver. The approver can send it back for changes. One-off reviews can be created for a single employee, such as a new hire review. A Future Review lets managers and employees start planning the next round while the current one is still open.

Perform also runs 360 feedback, which gathers views from several people who work with the employee. Raters can be managers, peers, direct reports and people outside the company. The feedback can run at any time or inside a review round. Managers can make rater feedback anonymous.

Goals can be specific and measurable, metric-based or cascading. Cascading means goals link from the company to teams to people. Goals can belong to a person, a team or the company, and they tie into reviews. Managers can also send check-in surveys to record their regular conversations with employees.

Succession planning places people on a nine-box grid, which charts performance against potential. Performance comes from the review’s competencies. The manager rates potential during the review. Employees never see that rating. The grid places people automatically from the two scores. Only administrators can see the grid report.

Reports cover performance rankings, rating spread over time, rater bias and trends. The Performance Ranking Report ranks employees by score. Many organisations use it to analyse results, not as a strict ranking. The Rater Bias Report finds raters who may be consistently more lenient or strict than others. Managers can use it for coaching and calibration talks. Calibration means leaders compare ratings across managers.

Perform has two AI features. Summarize reads the notes on a competency or goal and returns a short summary of the key themes. Refine reworks text a person has already written. It fixes spelling and grammar, changes the tone, or makes the text shorter or longer.

Perform is one of four Trakstar products. The others are Learn, Hire and Insights. Perform connects to Learn on request, and a candidate marked as hired in Hire can be added to Perform. Mitratech bought Trakstar in April 2023. The contracting company is Mitratech Trakstar, Inc.

For the wider market, read our guide to performance management software. To see Trakstar next to its rivals, open the comparison.

What Trakstar Perform does well

The AI has no hand in ratings

The AI summary has no connection to scoring and does not assign or influence a rating. Refine cannot change a rating, score or completion status. The AI gives no recommendations on promotions, hiring, terminations, bonus eligibility or performance improvement plans. Guardrails in the AI instructions enforce this.

The administrator holds the AI switch

AI features are off by default. A super administrator can turn them on or off at any time and sets them separately for managers and employees. A notice appears each time a summary or rewrite is made. Trakstar keeps a log of AI use, including what went into the model and the summaries it produced.

Your notes do not train the AI

Notes and review content are never used to train outside AI systems. Data handled by the AI stays inside Perform. Mitratech teams reviewed the AI model’s privacy and security. Refine screens requests for inappropriate content and masks sensitive personal information in its results.

Summaries are not kept

A manager’s summary is visible only to that manager, during that session. It is not saved to the employee record or the review history. Employees can summarise the notes and feedback from peers, the manager and their own self-assessment before they write their self-review.

It links to many HR systems

Perform syncs employee data from Workday, BambooHR, Paylocity, UKG Pro, Ceridian Dayforce, Paycor, ADP Workforce Now and ADP Enterprise. Workday, Paycor and ADP sync nightly. TriNet connects through a file feed. Slack and Microsoft Teams send notifications and reminders. Reviews can be completed in a mobile browser, with no app to install.

Set-up help is included

Dedicated onboarding, set-up and training are included. An implementation team does the set-up, with a launch aimed at weeks, not months. Unlimited storage and reporting are included in the price.

One customer reports a much shorter review round

Redwire has more than 200 employees. It reports an average of 145 days per annual review round before Trakstar. It reports 46 days in year one and 31 in year two. Ask for references from companies like yours. Trakstar customers include Axon, with 11 to 50 employees, and Bausch Health, with more than 10,000.

Where Trakstar stops, and what the contract locks in

Read these before the demo. The renewal, the price rule, the data location and the exit terms matter most.

The contract renews on its own

The contract renews automatically, each time for a term as long as the first one. To stop a renewal, either side gives written notice at least 60 days before the term ends. Fees are non-refundable, except when you end the contract for the vendor’s uncured material breach. In that case you get a pro-rated refund of prepaid fees.

The price can change each year

The vendor may change the subscription fee for the next contract year on at least 75 days’ notice. Fees are fixed within a contract year. Seats added during the term are invoiced at the then-current fee. The vendor can charge interest on late invoices at 12 percent a year or the legal maximum, whichever is lower.

The vendor can change the terms

The vendor may change the agreement at any time. It does so by posting a notice on its website or emailing the client. Mitratech also publishes a separate Trakstar Addendum. Ask which documents apply to your order form.

The uptime promise has limits, and support follows US Eastern Time

The vendor commits to diligent, commercially reasonable efforts toward 99.5% availability, with exceptions. If it misses 99.5% in three months in a row, you may end the contract. Standard support runs 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM Eastern Time, Monday to Friday. Your own administrator is the one who contacts support. Support that differs from standard is an extra service at fees to be negotiated.

Liability is capped, and disputes go to arbitration

The vendor’s total liability is capped at the subscription fee you paid for the contract year of the claim. Delaware law governs the terms. Disputes go to binding arbitration run by the American Arbitration Association. Before the other side may end the contract, a party has 30 days to fix a non-monetary breach. It has 10 days to fix a monetary one.

Data sits in the United States

Customer personal data is processed and stored on servers in the United States. All Trakstar products run on Amazon Web Services. Outside companies called sub-processors may store and process the data. The vendor may change that list on notice, and you have 10 days to object. Trakstar applies a data processing addendum (DPA) to customers under UK and EU data protection law, known as GDPR. Under the DPA, the customer must carry cyber liability insurance for any personal data breach.

Your data can feed the vendor’s benchmarks

The client authorises the vendor to collect anonymised service information. The vendor may combine it with other clients’ data. It may use it for analysis and its Insights benchmark reports. Where California’s privacy law (CCPA) permits, the vendor may also anonymise personal information. It may use that for its own research and development.

Leaving takes work

After the contract ends the vendor need not keep your data longer than 30 days and may delete it permanently. You must download it first. Administrators can export reviews in bulk as PDF files, and the download link lasts seven days. Perform also exports a spreadsheet file of active employee data. When the services end, the vendor deletes your personal data or returns it, at your choice.

Sign-on and file import need a request

Single sign-on, where staff use the company login, is an advanced feature you request from the vendor. It works with any sign-in provider that uses SAML 2.0, a common sign-in standard. Importing employees from a spreadsheet is also an advanced feature added on request. The ADP link needs an add-on from the ADP Marketplace. Workday and TalentReef sync one way into Perform. The file-feed set-up stage has taken as long as 2 to 3 weeks. Trakstar offers a programming interface (API) that lets a customer manage users and pull review data. The customer builds and maintains the link.

The AI works only on the text it is given

Refine cannot read notes, goals, prior reviews, ratings or 360 feedback, and it has no box for free-text instructions. Summarize appears only when the notes hold at least 20 words. It reads every note on the competency or goal, including notes from peers and the employee. Trakstar’s AI FAQ lets a user review, edit or discard a summary. Its manager guide puts it differently. The summary cannot be edited, but parts can be copied into the comments field. Ask which applies to your account.

What Trakstar Perform costs

Pricing is custom and based on headcount. Ask Trakstar for a written quote. Use the table to see what is included, what can change and what costs extra.

Item	Price or term	What to know
Subscription	Custom, based on headcount	Fee is per seat, paid yearly in advance. Get the quote in writing.
Included	Unlimited storage, reporting, onboarding, set-up and training	Included in the price.
Seats added mid-term	The then-current fee	Invoiced at the fee in force on the day you add them.
Leavers	Not counted	Terminated employees keep their records and do not count toward licensing costs.
Next year’s fee	May change	The vendor must give at least 75 days’ notice. Fees are fixed within a contract year.
Different support	Fees to be negotiated	This applies to support that differs from standard in kind or amount.
Refunds	After an uncured breach only	A pro-rated refund of prepaid fees applies if you end the contract for the vendor’s material, uncured breach.
Late payment	Interest	The lesser of 12 percent a year or the legal maximum.

The fee is per seat, so count your active employees before you ask for a quote. Leavers do not count toward the fee.

Trakstar also sells an all-in-one suite with performance, hiring, engagement and learning. Ask which of these your quote covers.

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 Trakstar before you sign

What is the price per seat for our headcount, and what is fixed in writing for the whole term? Good answer: A per-seat price in the order form and a cap on the yearly rise.
Will you remind us before the 60-day notice deadline, and can the renewal term be shorter than the first term? Good answer: A written reminder well ahead of the deadline and a one-year renewal option.
Which AI features are switched on for our account on day one? Good answer: None until our administrator turns them on, confirmed in writing.
Can a user edit an AI summary in our account? Good answer: A written answer that covers both the AI FAQ and the manager guide.
Where is the AI log kept, and for how long? Good answer: A stated place and a deletion time.
Will you remove the right to use our anonymised data for Insights benchmarks? Good answer: Yes, or a written description of exactly what you collect and why.
If we have staff in the UK or EU, which data contract and transfer terms apply? Good answer: A signed data contract and a named list of sub-processors.
What uptime figure will our order form carry, and which support hours cover our time zones? Good answer: A fixed figure and support hours that match when our managers work.
Is single sign-on in our quote, and who builds the link to our HR system? Good answer: Both are in the quote, with the set-up time stated.
Which of our HR systems link to Perform, and does data flow one way or both ways? Good answer: A named link, a sync schedule and the direction of flow in writing.
In what format does our data leave, and can we keep access past the 30 days? Good answer: A full export of reviews, ratings and feedback, with extra time agreed in writing.
Can you give us references from companies with our headcount? Good answer: Three named customers we can call.

Alternatives to Trakstar

PerformYard, 15Five, Betterworks, Lattice and Culture Amp also sell performance management software.

PerformYard costs $5 to $15 per person per month. It adds no fees for onboarding or training. Links to HR systems and single sign-on come with every plan.

15Five costs $11 per user per month for Perform, billed annually. 15Five also offers AI-Assisted Reviews, which gather evidence and draft answers to open-text questions. It sits in the Total Platform and Perform & Goals packages. Ask which one matches the $11 plan.

Betterworks costs $8 per user per month for its Performance package. Implementation is a one-time cost on top. Signature Support costs extra.

Lattice costs $10 per seat per month for Performance. The minimum annual agreement is $4,000.

Culture Amp Perform is priced by quote, based on the number of employees, the product and the service tier. Its AI Coach helps managers draft reviews, and managers set the final ratings.

If you already have an HR system, check whether it can run review rounds before you pay for another product. Not buying anything this year is also a valid choice.

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.