The short answer
Pick G2 if you sell to mid market or enterprise buyers, have customers willing to leave detailed reviews, and can carry an annual subscription reported to start near $3,000. Pick Capterra if you sell to small businesses, want to pay only for clicks, and can absorb a roughly $500 a month floor at $2 to $10 a click. Below about $2,000 annual contract value neither auction pays back, and a flat fee listing is the cheaper way to get an indexed page in front of buyers.
The two pricing models, side by side
This is the part that decides the answer, and it has nothing to do with which site looks nicer. G2 sells access: an annual subscription that unlocks sponsored placement, competitor comparison pages, review campaign tooling and, at the top tiers, buyer intent data about who has been reading your category. You pay the same whether anybody clicks or not. Capterra sells traffic: you bid in a second price auction for position inside a category page and pay when someone clicks through to your site.
Subscription risk and click risk are different animals. An annual contract is a fixed loss if the category is quiet, but the cost per lead improves as your review count climbs. A click budget scales down when you pause it, but the price per click only goes up as more competitors join the auction, and you are buying the same traffic forever without accumulating an asset.
| What you are comparing | G2 | Capterra |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Annual subscription | Pay per click, second price auction |
| Reported entry cost | Around $3,000 for a first year, renewals higher | $2 minimum bid, roughly $500 a month budget floor |
| Typical real cost | Packages with review campaigns or intent data run into five figures | $2 to $10 a click, over $20 in CRM, ERP and similar |
| Commitment | A year, signed after a sales call | Monthly budget you can pause, no contract |
| Buyer profile | Mid market and enterprise, committee purchases | Small business, often a single decision maker |
| What you keep if you stop paying | The free profile and the reviews you collected | The free profile, and traffic drops to organic position |
| Owner | G2 | G2, since 5 February 2026 |
| SoftwareHome, for comparison | $49 one-time listing live on submit, $299 a week featured, prices published, no contract | |
Figures are publicly reported ranges from vendor accounts and platform documentation, not rate cards. Both platforms quote individually, so treat these as a starting point and get the number in writing.
Work out your cost per trial before the sales call
The honest way to compare a subscription against an auction is to convert both into cost per trial, then compare that against your annual contract value. Take Capterra first, because the math is visible. At a $6 average click and a 2 percent click to trial rate, that is 50 clicks per trial, or about $300. If a third of trials become customers, you are paying roughly $900 to acquire one. That works at $6,000 a year contracts and is a disaster at $600.
G2 is harder because the cost is fixed. Divide the annual price by the number of qualified leads the sales rep projects, then halve it, because their projection assumes you collect reviews at a pace most teams do not manage. A $3,000 plan that genuinely produces 40 category-qualified leads is $75 a lead, which is cheap. The same plan producing 8 leads is $375 a lead, which is not.
Before you commit to either number, it is worth seeing what your direct competitors are already spending elsewhere. If three of them are running heavy paid campaigns in the same category, you can usually pull up their live ads and landing pages and read the positioning they are paying to defend. That tells you more about how contested the category auction will be than any rep will.
What the February 2026 acquisition actually changed
G2 bought Capterra, GetApp and Software Advice from Gartner on 5 February 2026 for a reported $110 million, and runs them as G2 Digital Markets. In practice, not much has merged yet. Separate dashboards, separate sales teams, separate pricing. You can still buy one without the other, and the two auctions do not yet share a budget.
What it changed is the leverage. Playing the two off against each other used to be a real negotiating tactic, and it is now a conversation between two teams at the same company. It also thinned the field: GetApp and Software Advice stopped being independent options on the same day. If your plan was to spread budget across four review sites to avoid depending on one, three of those four now have one owner. That is the practical argument for keeping at least one listing somewhere outside the group, which is what our rundown of G2 alternatives for small SaaS vendors goes through in detail.
When to pay G2
G2 earns its price in categories where buying software is a committee decision and somebody has to justify the choice internally. A Grid position and thirty detailed reviews is the document that survives a procurement review. If your average contract is five figures, one closed deal pays for the year, and the profile keeps working between renewals.
It does not earn its price if you cannot get reviews. The subscription buys placement, not credibility, and a sponsored listing with four reviews next to a competitor with two hundred performs badly no matter what you paid. Before signing, count how many customers you could realistically ask this quarter. Under fifteen, spend the first year collecting reviews on the free profile and buy the subscription when you have something to promote.
When to pay Capterra
Capterra works when the buyer is one person with a budget and a problem, the category is well defined, and your landing page converts cold traffic. Scheduling, field service, salon booking, small business accounting: these are categories where someone searches, opens four tabs and picks one that afternoon. Paying $6 to be one of those four tabs is a fair trade.
Two things sink it. The first is a category where enterprise vendors bid the click price past $20 and you are buying the same traffic at a loss to stay visible. The second is sending paid clicks to a generic homepage. If you are paying per click, the click has to land on a page built for that category with the pricing visible, or the auction is just an expensive way to raise your bounce rate.
The option most teams skip
There is a third answer that does not involve either auction: be listed, indexed and comparable without paying for position. Every review site, including both of these, accepts a claimed profile at no charge, and those profiles rank. Add a handful of curated directories with flat pricing and you have coverage across the pages buyers actually read, for a fraction of one month of clicks.
That is what a $49 listing on SoftwareHome buys: a product page with your own description, your category, a link to your site, and a place in the comparison and alternatives pages people reach when they are unhappy with a tool they already pay for. It is not a substitute for G2 in an enterprise category. It is a sensible way to find out whether directory traffic converts for you at all before anyone asks for a signature. Our guide to software directory submission covers the rest of the list and the order to work through it, and Capterra alternatives for SaaS vendors is the page to read if the click bill is the thing keeping you up.
G2 and Capterra questions vendors ask
Is G2 or Capterra better for vendors?
G2 suits mid market and enterprise software where buyers read a lot of reviews before a committee decides. Capterra suits small business categories where one owner picks a tool in an afternoon. The deciding factor is rarely the brand, it is whether your average deal size can absorb a $3,000 a year subscription or a $500 a month click bill.
How much does G2 cost for vendors?
G2 sells annual subscriptions rather than clicks. Founders consistently report entry plans starting near $3,000 for a first year with renewals stepping up from there, and the packages that include review campaigns or buyer intent data running well into five figures. G2 does not publish a rate card, so the number comes from a sales call.
How much does Capterra cost per click?
Capterra runs a second price auction with a reported $2 minimum bid and a budget floor around $500 a month. Real cost per click usually lands between $2 and $10, and competitive categories such as CRM, ERP and project management can push past $20. You pay one cent more than the bid below you, not your maximum.
Does G2 own Capterra?
Yes. G2 completed the purchase of Capterra, GetApp and Software Advice from Gartner on 5 February 2026 for a reported $110 million, and now operates them as G2 Digital Markets. The dashboards, sales teams and pricing are still separate, so for now you are buying two products from one owner.
Can you list on G2 and Capterra without paying?
Yes, both accept a claimed vendor profile at no charge and both will show your product in category listings and collect reviews. What payment buys is position: sponsored placement above the organic results on G2, and paid click positions at the top of a Capterra category page.
Is Capterra worth it for a small SaaS company?
Only if your annual contract value clears roughly $2,000 and you can trace signups back to the listing. At a $6 click and a 2 percent trial rate you are paying about $300 per trial before anyone buys. Under that deal size the arithmetic rarely works, and a flat fee listing is the cheaper test.