Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Calculator.
Paste your survey answers to the four Van Westendorp price questions and get the optimal price point, the acceptable price range and a price sensitivity chart. Free, no sign-up, and your data never leaves your browser.
What the Calculator Does
3 Steps to Your Price Range
What the Van Westendorp Method Is
The Price Sensitivity Meter was introduced in 1976 by the Dutch economist Peter van Westendorp. Instead of asking people the one question they cannot answer well ("what would you pay?"), it asks four questions about price thresholds. Each respondent gives four prices. Across many respondents, those answers form four curves, and where the curves cross you can read a range of prices that most people find acceptable.
It is popular because it is cheap to run: a short survey, no complex design, and results the same day. It is especially useful for new products where there is no sales history to learn from.
The four questions
Show a short description of the product before the questions, so everyone answers about the same thing. Ask for open number answers, not ranges.
How to Read the Chart
The calculator turns the answers into cumulative curves. "Too cheap" and "bargain" fall as the price rises: fewer people think a higher price is cheap. "Getting expensive" and "too expensive" rise with price. Two helper curves, "not a bargain" and "not expensive", are the opposites of the bargain and getting-expensive curves.
| Point | Where the curves cross | What it suggests |
|---|---|---|
| PMC, point of marginal cheapness | Too cheap × not a bargain | Below this, more people doubt the quality than see a bargain. The lower end of the acceptable range. |
| OPP, optimal price point | Too cheap × too expensive | The price where the fewest people reject it for being too cheap or too expensive. |
| IPP, indifference price point | Bargain × getting expensive | As many people see it as a bargain as see it as expensive; often close to the "normal" price in the market. |
| PME, point of marginal expensiveness | Too expensive × not expensive | Above this, too many people reject the price. The upper end of the acceptable range. |
Some textbooks define PMC and PME with slightly different curve pairs. This calculator uses the definitions in the table, which are among the most common.
Worked example
The sample data in the calculator is 40 fictional answers about a monthly subscription to a meal-planning app. Two respondents gave inconsistent answers (for example, a "too cheap" price higher than their "bargain" price) and are excluded, leaving 38. The results: PMC $13, OPP $16, IPP $21.50 and PME $33. The acceptable range is therefore roughly $13 to $33 a month. A launch price in the high teens sits near the optimal point; a premium tier can go toward the upper end only if it clearly offers more.
Running a Good Van Westendorp Survey
- Ask the right people. Answers from your target customers matter; answers from friends and colleagues mostly do not.
- Get enough answers. Many practitioners aim for at least 30 to 50 per segment. With fewer, the curves are jagged and the points move a lot.
- Segment when it matters. Students and companies answer differently. Run the calculator separately per segment rather than mixing them.
- Check consistency. A respondent should give too cheap ≤ bargain ≤ getting expensive ≤ too expensive. The calculator can exclude rows that break this order.
- Use one currency and one period. Monthly and yearly answers mixed in one dataset make the results meaningless.
Limits of the method
- It measures what people say, not what they do. Stated prices are often lower than real willingness to pay, and sometimes higher.
- It ignores competitors unless respondents have them in mind. Show the same context to everyone.
- It gives a range, not a demand curve. To estimate how many people would actually buy at each price, an extension (the Newton–Miller–Smith version) adds purchase-likelihood questions.
Treat the acceptable range as guard rails. Then decide inside it, using your costs, your positioning and your competitors.
From a Price Range to a Pricing Plan
A range answers "what price will not scare people away". It does not tell you how many tiers to have, what to put in each, or what revenue to expect. The Pricing Strategy tool does: describe your product and market, add your competitors and current numbers, and it recommends a pricing model with tiers, price ranges, psychology tips, a competitor benchmark, a revenue projection with its assumptions and a three-phase rollout. Put your Van Westendorp range in the description or numbers field so the recommendation stays inside it.
Related reading: pricing psychology, designing pricing tiers and how to raise prices.
Frequently Asked Questions
A survey method from 1976 by Dutch economist Peter van Westendorp. Respondents answer four questions about the price at which a product would be too cheap, a bargain, getting expensive and too expensive. Plotting the answers shows an acceptable price range and a few reference price points.
At what price would you consider the product so expensive that you would not consider buying it? At what price is it starting to get expensive, but you would still consider it? At what price is it a bargain, a great buy for the money? At what price is it so cheap that you would doubt its quality?
There is no fixed rule, but results from a handful of answers swing a lot. Many practitioners aim for at least 30 to 50 respondents per segment, and more if you want to compare segments.
OPP (optimal price point) is where as many people find the price too cheap as too expensive. IPP (indifference price point) is where as many find it a bargain as expensive. PMC and PME, the points of marginal cheapness and marginal expensiveness, mark the lower and upper ends of the acceptable price range.
No. The calculator runs entirely in your browser on allinnovativ.dev. Your answers are not sent to our server or stored.
Use the acceptable range as guard rails, not as the final price. Combine it with your costs, competitors and positioning to set tiers. The Pricing Strategy tool can turn that range into a full pricing plan.
The All Innovativ Van Westendorp Calculator is a free, browser-based Price Sensitivity Meter: paste survey answers to the four price questions (too cheap, bargain, getting expensive, too expensive) and it computes the optimal price point, indifference price point and acceptable price range, with a chart and CSV export.
It builds cumulative curves from the answers and finds the crossings: PMC (too cheap × not a bargain), OPP (too cheap × too expensive), IPP (bargain × getting expensive) and PME (too expensive × not expensive), using linear interpolation between observed prices. Rows where too cheap ≤ bargain ≤ getting expensive ≤ too expensive does not hold can be excluded. It accepts comma, semicolon, tab or space separated values and skips a header row. No data leaves the browser and no sign-up is needed. For turning the range into tiers and a revenue projection, All Innovativ offers the Pricing Strategy PRO tool.
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