Fider vs Canny
Canny is free up to 25 tracked users, and a tracked user is anyone who posts, votes or comments. Past that, Pro starts at $79/mo billed yearly and keeps climbing with the number of people who give you feedback. Fider is an open-source feedback board with voting, threaded comments and a public roadmap, running on your own server for a flat $3/mo with no user meter.
Fider vs Canny: The Verdict
Canny is the better product and the pricing model is the whole argument. It captures feedback automatically out of Intercom, Zendesk, Gong and sales calls, deduplicates it with its Autopilot AI, and pushes it into Jira, Linear or ClickUp. If that pipeline is what you are buying, Fider is not a substitute. What is worth understanding before you commit is the meter: Canny charges by tracked users, meaning anyone who has ever voted or commented, and the free plan stops at 25 of them. Success on a public board is exactly what pushes you past that line, and Canny states that if you exceed your limit without setting a spend limit, it upgrades you to the next tier and charges the difference. Fider does one job and does not count anyone: a public board where users post ideas, vote, comment and watch the roadmap, for $3/mo with unlimited voters. Two honest catches. Fider signs people in by emailing them a link, so it does nothing until you point it at an SMTP sender, about ten minutes of work. And it has no AI, no integrations, no changelog and no help center.
Last updated: 2026-08-07Quick Comparison
| Feature | Canny | Fider |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free to 25 tracked users, then Pro from $79/mo billed yearly | $3/mo flat ($36/yr) |
| What the price scales with | Tracked users: anyone who posts, votes or comments | Nothing. One pod, any number of voters |
| Free tier | 25 tracked users, 5 managers | Not applicable. The software is free, you pay for the pod |
| Going over the limit | Auto-upgrade to the next tier and a prorated charge, unless you set a spend limit | Nothing happens. There is no limit to cross |
| Manager or admin seats | 5 on Free, 10 on Pro, custom on Business | Unlimited admins |
| Public voting board | Yes | Yes |
| Public roadmap | Yes | Yes, driven by post status |
| Threaded comments and tags | Yes | Yes |
| AI feedback capture and deduplication | Yes, Autopilot on every plan | No |
| Integrations | Intercom, Zendesk, Jira, Linear, ClickUp, HubSpot, Salesforce and more | A REST API and webhooks. Wire it up yourself |
| SSO | Okta, OIDC, Entra ID and OneLogin on Business | Any custom OAuth2 provider, plus Google, Facebook and GitHub |
| Where the feedback lives | Canny cloud | PostgreSQL 16 on a pod you own |
| License | Proprietary subscription | AGPL-3.0, about 4,400 GitHub stars |
Where Canny Gets Expensive
Trade-offs to weigh before committing.
You Are Billed for Your Users, Not Your Team
A tracked user is anyone associated with feedback: someone who created a post, or voted, or left a comment. The free plan covers 25 of them. That is a metric you do not control, because it goes up every time the board works.
Crossing the Line Upgrades You Automatically
Canny says that if you have not set a monthly spend limit and you pass your tracked-user limit, it moves you to the next tier and charges you a prorated amount. Setting a spend limit avoids the surprise, but then it simply stops tracking new users, which means it stops recording feedback.
Pro Starts at $79 and Is Billed Yearly
The listed $79/mo Pro price is the starting point at the low end of the tracked-user slider and assumes annual billing. Monthly billing costs more, since the yearly commitment is what buys the 20% discount.
The Roadmap Is Your Best Customer Data, Held Elsewhere
Every idea, vote, comment and email address on the board is the clearest signal you have about what to build next. On Canny that list lives in their cloud and you rent access to it.
Why Self-Host with Fider?
What you get when you pick this stack.
Unlimited Voters on a $3 Pod
Fider does not count tracked users, admins, posts or votes. The same $3/mo Launch pod (1 vCPU, 512 MB RAM, 10 GB storage) runs a board for a side project and a board for a funded product identically.
A Board That Cannot Bill You for Succeeding
The whole point of a public feedback portal is to get more people posting on it. Self-hosted, that growth costs nothing extra, so you can link it from your docs, your app and your release notes without watching a counter.
PostgreSQL 16 Already Wired Up
The InstaPods image ships Fider with PostgreSQL 16 installed, tuned for a small pod and connected. There is no external database to provision and no connection string to configure.
Sign-In Without a Seat Count
Fider signs people in with an emailed link, and also supports Google, Facebook, GitHub and any custom OAuth2 provider. None of them add a per-user charge, and SSO is not held back for a higher tier.
Real Cost Comparison
A public feedback board that 200 customers have voted or commented on, run by a three-person product team.
- Canny Free: 25 tracked users, 5 managers
- 200 people who voted or commented puts you well past that
- Canny Pro: from $79/mo billed yearly, 100+ tracked users, 10 managers
- Exceed your tier with no spend limit set and Canny upgrades you automatically
- InstaPods Launch plan: $3/mo
- Fider: free and open source (AGPL-3.0)
- PostgreSQL 16 bundled in the image
- Unlimited voters, posts, comments and admins
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Canny cost in 2026?
Canny lists a Free plan with 25 tracked users and 5 managers, Pro starting at $79/mo billed yearly with 100+ tracked users and 10 managers, and Business at custom pricing for 5,000+ tracked users with SSO and CRM integrations. Paying yearly saves up to 20%, so monthly billing costs more. Prices read from canny.io on 7 August 2026.
What exactly is a tracked user?
In Canny's own words, a tracked user is someone who has given feedback, whether by creating a post or by voting or commenting on one. That means your price is set by how many customers engage with the board rather than by how many people on your team use it. Fider has no equivalent concept: voters, commenters and admins are all unlimited.
Is Fider a real Canny alternative?
For the board and the roadmap, yes. You get a public portal where users post ideas, vote, comment in threads and follow status changes, with tags and admin moderation. What you do not get is Canny's Autopilot AI, its automatic feedback capture from support and sales tools, its Jira and Linear integrations, or a changelog and help center. If the board itself is what you want, Fider covers it for $3/mo.
Do I need an SMTP server to run Fider?
Yes, and this is the one thing that catches people out. Fider signs users in by emailing them a link and sends notification mail when posts change status, so with no mail sender configured nobody can log in. Set EMAIL_NOREPLY, EMAIL_SMTP_HOST, EMAIL_SMTP_PORT, EMAIL_SMTP_USERNAME and EMAIL_SMTP_PASSWORD in the pod environment and point them at any transactional mail provider. Free tiers from the usual providers are plenty for a feedback board.
Can I move my Canny posts to Fider?
Not with a one-click importer. Canny can export your posts and Fider has an API you can push them through, but vote counts and voter identities do not map cleanly between two different data models. The practical route is to freeze the old board as read-only, launch the new one, and link the archive from your roadmap page for a release cycle.
Will a $3 pod handle a busy public board?
Yes. Voting and commenting are light database writes and the read path caches well, so the $3/mo Launch plan (1 vCPU, 512 MB RAM, 10 GB storage) is sized for a normal product board. If you are pushing heavy traffic or storing a lot of attachments, move the pod up to the $7/mo Build plan (2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 25 GB storage) without touching the install.
Run your own feedback board for $3/mo
Instant launch with PostgreSQL 16, HTTPS and backups already configured. Unlimited voters, no tracked-user meter.
Deploy Fider