Moveworks Pricing Explained (2025): Costs, Hidden Fees, and Workativ Alternative

Pricing transparency is a key deciding factor when choosing an AI platform for employee support. As HR and IT teams scale automation, understanding the true cost of ownership—not just features—has become essential.

Moveworks is a well-known enterprise AI assistant for HR and IT automation. However, its quote-based, enterprise-focused pricing model often results in high and unpredictable costs once employee count, integrations, rollout complexity, and ongoing optimization are factored in. Many customers report six-figure annual commitments, making budgeting and ROI forecasting difficult.

Following its acquisition by ServiceNow, additional concerns have emerged around license cost increases, vendor lock-in, slower feature delivery, and reduced pricing flexibility.

In contrast, Workativ offers transparent, session-based pricing with clearly defined plans—eliminating surprise AI usage bills and long-term lock-ins. This makes Workativ a cost-effective alternative for organizations seeking predictable pricing, faster time-to-value, and measurable ROI.

This guide breaks down Moveworks pricing, explains why it’s expensive, and compares it with Workativ’s pricing model.

If you are interested in learning what the Moveworks acquisition has on the user experience, you can read our blog.

Moveworks is an enterprise AI assistant designed to automate employee support across HR, IT, and workplace operations. It acts as an employee-facing AI layer that unifies knowledge from multiple systems and automates tasks end-to-end—such as password resets, software access, HR policy questions, and service requests—directly within tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Positioned as an enterprise AI agent platform, Moveworks combines conversational AI, workflow automation, and integrations with systems like ServiceNow, Workday, Okta, and internal knowledge bases to reduce ticket volume and improve employee experience.

Who typically buys Moveworks?

Moveworks primarily serves large, global enterprises with thousands of employees and complex internal workflows. According to G2 market data, its customer base is heavily skewed toward enterprise organizations, reflecting both its deep capabilities and its premium, enterprise-oriented pricing model.

When evaluating enterprise AI platforms for employee support automation, pricing is often the biggest unknown. While many tools advertise flexibility and scalability, the actual cost at production scale can look very different from the initial pitch. This is especially true for Moveworks, a widely adopted AI assistant for HR and IT teams.

Moveworks does not follow a self-serve or publicly tiered pricing structure. Instead, it operates on a quote-based enterprise pricing model, where costs are determined through sales-led ROI assessments and tailored packages. While this approach works for large enterprises with dedicated procurement teams, it often makes pricing opaque, hard to benchmark, and difficult to predict for fast-scaling organizations.

Moveworks pricing model: what’s officially shared

Moveworks positions its pricing as fully custom. There are no published “Starter,” “Team,” or “Business” plans. Every customer engagement begins with a pricing conversation that factors in:

• Total employee count covered by the AI assistant

• Departments automated (IT, HR, Finance, Facilities, Workplace)

• Depth of integrations across ITSM, HRIS, IAM, and internal knowledge systems

• Security, governance, and compliance requirements

• Contract length, which is often multi-year

This model inherently targets large, global enterprises, but it also means buyers don’t have clear cost visibility until late in the sales cycle.

What the market reveals about Moveworks pricing

Although Moveworks doesn’t publish pricing, third-party data provides important context.

On Amazon Web Services Marketplace, Moveworks is listed at approximately $150 per user per year for a defined employee band under an annual contract. At enterprise scale, this alone can push annual costs well into six figures.

Further reinforcing this, deal intelligence from Vendr indicates that the median annual spend for Moveworks customers typically falls in the six-figure range. For organizations with 5,000–20,000 employees, this often translates to $100,000–$500,000+ per year, before accounting for services and ongoing optimization.

The real cost drivers behind Moveworks

Moveworks pricing tends to increase quickly as organizations scale usage:

• Employee count and user bands: Pricing expands with workforce size, even if only a portion of employees actively use the assistant.

• Integration depth and automation scope: Connecting systems like ServiceNow, Workday, Okta, Azure AD, and internal knowledge repositories adds both licensing and services costs.

• Enterprise security and governance needs: Requirements such as SSO, audit controls, compliance reviews, and global rollout support typically push customers into higher-priced enterprise agreements.

• Professional services dependency: Deployment, change management, workflow customization, and knowledge tuning often require paid services, significantly increasing total spend.

Hidden costs enterprises often overlook

Beyond the license fee, many organizations encounter additional costs over time:

• Long rollout timelines that consume internal IT and HR resources

• Ongoing admin and maintenance overhead

• Continuous optimization as policies, workflows, and knowledge evolve

• Limited flexibility to scale down usage due to rigid enterprise contracts

Together, these factors drive a much higher total cost of ownership (TCO) than the initial quote suggests.

How the ServiceNow acquisition may impact pricing and value

The acquisition of Moveworks by ServiceNow marks a major shift in how the platform is likely to be priced, packaged, and evolved going forward. While acquisitions are often positioned as “accelerators of innovation,” enterprise software history suggests they frequently introduce pricing pressure, slower agility, and increased vendor lock-in—especially for customers outside the acquirer’s core ecosystem.

1) License costs are likely to increase

ServiceNow is known for premium, suite-based enterprise pricing. As Moveworks becomes integrated into the ServiceNow portfolio, pricing is likely to:

• Shift toward bundled SKUs tied to ServiceNow modules

• Move further away from standalone negotiation flexibility

• Increase at renewal as Moveworks is positioned as a “strategic add-on” rather than an independent platform

For customers not already standardized on ServiceNow, this can mean paying enterprise-grade prices simply to maintain access to Moveworks’ existing capabilities.

2) Reduced pricing flexibility and tougher renewals

Post-acquisition, pricing negotiations typically become:

• More rigid, with less room for custom concessions

• Procurement-heavy, aligned to ServiceNow’s global commercial framework

• Renewal-driven, where switching costs are higher and leverage shifts away from the buyer

This often results in higher long-term spend, even if year-one pricing appears manageable.

3) Vendor lock-in risk increases significantly

As Moveworks becomes more tightly coupled with ServiceNow:

• Integrations may prioritize ServiceNow-native workflows

• Cross-platform portability can diminish over time

• Customers may feel pressure to adopt additional ServiceNow products to unlock full value

This creates a classic ecosystem lock-in, where replacing Moveworks later becomes both technically and financially expensive.

4) Slower, time-sensitive feature delivery

Large platform consolidations typically slow innovation in the short to medium term. Moveworks’ roadmap may be affected by:

• Platform alignment requirements

• Security and compliance standardization

• Internal prioritization of ServiceNow-wide initiatives

As a result, feature releases, UX improvements, and niche enhancements may take longer—especially for customers whose needs fall outside ServiceNow’s primary roadmap.

5) User experience and agility may suffer

During deep platform integration:

• UI consistency and workflows can change

• Admin and configuration complexity may increase

• Customers may experience temporary friction as systems are unified

For teams that value speed, flexibility, and rapid iteration, this can negatively impact both adoption and ROI.

What this means for buyers

For enterprises already deeply invested in ServiceNow, the acquisition may feel like a natural extension. But for everyone else, it introduces higher pricing risk, reduced independence, and long-term strategic dependency.

This is why many organizations are reassessing their employee support AI strategy—looking for platforms that offer transparent pricing, faster innovation cycles, and freedom from ecosystem lock-in, without sacrificing automation depth or enterprise readiness.

At its core, Moveworks serves as a centralized AI layer for employee support, helping large organizations reduce ticket volume and automate repetitive HR and IT requests. Its feature set is built to handle enterprise-scale complexity rather than lightweight, self-serve use cases.

1. Employee-facing AI assistant – Provides a conversational interface inside Slack and Microsoft Teams to resolve HR and IT requests in real time.

2. Unified knowledge access – Pulls answers from multiple enterprise systems and internal knowledge bases to deliver contextual responses.

3. Workflow automation – Automates common employee tasks such as password resets, access requests, and ticket creation.

4. Enterprise integrations – Connects with ITSM, HRIS, IAM, and collaboration tools to support complex enterprise workflows.

5. Human-in-the-loop support – Escalates unresolved issues to human agents while preserving full conversation context.

6. Security and compliance – Supports SSO, governance, and enterprise-grade security requirements for regulated environments.

Why this matters for pricing

While these features deliver strong value at scale, they are optimized for large, complex organizations. The depth of integrations, governance requirements, and automation scope directly contribute to longer deployments, higher services dependency, and ultimately a higher total cost of ownership compared to more lightweight or transparently priced alternatives.

What’s missing in Moveworks’ feature set (and why it matters)

While Moveworks is strong in enterprise-scale automation, several critical gaps emerge when teams look beyond initial deployment and focus on agility, cost efficiency, and long-term ROI. These gaps often surface only after implementation when switching costs are already high.

1. Pricing and usage visibility – Limited transparency into real-time usage, cost drivers, and ROI metrics.

2. True no-code agility – Advanced workflow changes often require vendor involvement rather than business-user configuration.

3. Advanced analytics – Lacks deep insights like sentiment analysis, cost-per-resolution, and workflow performance trends.

4. Broad omnichannel reach – Strong in Slack and Teams but limited beyond internal employee-facing channels.

5. Low services dependency – Ongoing reliance on professional services increases long-term cost and reduces internal control.

6. Platform neutrality – Post–ServiceNow acquisition, flexibility outside the ServiceNow ecosystem may be constrained.

Like many enterprise AI platforms, Moveworks delivers strong automation value—but its pricing approach introduces clear trade-offs that buyers should carefully evaluate before committing.

Pros:

• Enterprise-grade capability alignment: Pricing reflects Moveworks’ ability to support large-scale HR and IT automation across complex enterprise environments.

• Deep integration coverage: The cost includes connectivity with major enterprise systems such as ITSM, HRIS, IAM, and collaboration platforms, reducing tool sprawl.

• Security and compliance readiness: Moveworks supports enterprise requirements like SSO, auditability, and compliance (e.g., SOC 2, GDPR), which are often mandatory for large organizations.

• Global scalability: The platform is designed to handle high employee volumes and multi-region deployments, aligning with global enterprise needs.

Cons:

• Opaque, quote-based pricing : Lack of public pricing makes cost benchmarking difficult and forces buyers into lengthy sales cycles.

• High total cost of ownership : G2 reviews and deal data frequently flag Moveworks as expensive, with six-figure annual contracts common once services and scale are included.

• Limited cost predictability : Pricing tied to employee count, integrations, and scope makes it hard to forecast spend as usage evolves.

• Services-heavy dependency : Advanced automation and optimization often require ongoing professional services, increasing long-term costs.

• Enterprise lock-in risk : Multi-year contracts and tighter alignment with ServiceNow post-acquisition reduce flexibility if business needs change.

Moveworks pricing is best suited to large enterprises that can absorb the high upfront and ongoing costs. For teams prioritizing transparency, flexibility, and predictable ROI, the pricing model can feel restrictive and expensive over time.

Unlike enterprise platforms that rely on opaque quotes and long sales cycles, Workativ follows a clear, published, session-based pricing model—making costs easy to understand, forecast, and scale.

Workativ openly lists its plans:

• Magic plan ($0) – Includes a generous number of sessions with core employee support capabilities, ideal for pilots and early adoption.

• Business plan ($349/month) – Comes with higher session limits, advanced integrations, analytics, and automation features needed for production use.

• Enterprise plan (custom) – Designed for large organizations requiring compliance, RBAC, SSO, and tailored deployment, without forcing unnecessary long-term lock-ins.

The key difference lies in how costs scale. Workativ prices by sessions, not employee count or opaque enterprise bundles. This means organizations pay based on actual usage rather than total workforce size—avoiding inflated costs when only a subset of employees actively use the AI agent.

Why session-based pricing delivers better cost predictability

With Workativ, teams can:

• Budget confidently by aligning spend directly with usage

• Scale gradually as adoption grows, without renegotiating contracts

• Avoid surprise renewals driven by workforce growth or bundled add-ons

• See faster ROI thanks to lower upfront costs and quicker deployment

In contrast to quote-based, six-figure enterprise contracts, Workativ’s transparent pricing model enables HR and IT teams to move faster, control spend, and expand automation without financial uncertainty—making it a practical choice for organizations focused on efficiency and measurable ROI.

When evaluating Moveworks versus Workativ, the real difference isn’t just features—it’s how quickly each platform delivers value relative to cost. Below is a practical, outcome-driven comparison that explains why many teams consider Workativ one of the best Moveworks alternatives.

Time-to-value: deployment and iteration speed

Moveworks deployments are typically enterprise-led and services-heavy, requiring long onboarding cycles and vendor involvement before reaching full automation. In contrast, Workativ emphasizes rapid setup with no-code configuration, allowing HR and IT teams to launch, test, and iterate workflows quickly—delivering measurable value in weeks rather than months.

Cost impact: Faster deployment reduces services spend and accelerates ROI with Workativ.

HR and IT automation breadth

Moveworks focuses primarily on large-scale IT and HR issue resolution within enterprise ecosystems. Workativ covers the same core HR and IT use cases while extending into end-to-end task automation (approvals, updates, follow-ups) using built-in integrations—without requiring deep platform customization.

Cost impact: Broader automation at lower tiers means fewer add-ons and less dependency on professional services.

Analytics and operational visibility

Moveworks provides basic resolution and deflection metrics, but deeper insights often require additional tooling or manual analysis. Workativ includes built-in analytics such as usage trends, performance tracking, and operational insights across plans—giving teams clear visibility into ROI and efficiency.

Cost impact: Better analytics help teams optimize automation and justify spend without added tools or consulting.

Governance and security posture

Both platforms support enterprise security standards, but Workativ delivers clear security capabilities across pricing tiers, with options for RBAC, compliance controls, and roadmap-aligned SSO—without forcing early upgrades to expensive enterprise contracts.

Cost impact: Organizations avoid overpaying for security features they don’t immediately need.

Omnichannel deployment

Moveworks is strongest within internal collaboration tools like Slack and Teams. Workativ supports these channels while also enabling broader omnichannel deployment, including ITSM and support platforms—making it easier to extend automation without switching tools.

Cost impact: One platform covers more channels, reducing the need for multiple licenses.

Moveworks delivers strong enterprise automation but at a high, services-driven cost. Workativ focuses on faster time-to-value, transparent pricing, and broader functionality per dollar spent—making it a compelling alternative for teams that want measurable ROI without enterprise pricing complexity.

Choosing the right employee support automation platform ultimately depends on your scale, budget strategy, and appetite for complexity.

• Choose Moveworks if you are a large, global enterprise with a strong procurement function, high tolerance for long sales cycles, and a broader consolidation strategy—especially if you are already deeply invested in enterprise platforms like ServiceNow.

• Choose Workativ for transparent pricing, predictable budgeting, and faster deployment. Workativ is ideal for organizations focused on measurable ROI, cost control, and rapid automation across HR and IT—without committing to six-figure contracts or long-term lock-ins.

For most teams seeking a modern employee support automation platform with clear pricing and faster time-to-value, Workativ offers a more practical and financially predictable path forward.

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