Van Westendorp price sensitivity calculator
Van Westendorp asks four questions about price and reads the intersections. Enter the median answers from your respondents to get the range of acceptable prices, the optimal price point, and the point of indifference.
Enter your four medians
The four questions
- At what price would this be so cheap you would question its quality?
- At what price would this be a bargain, a great buy for the money?
- At what price does this start to seem expensive, so you would have to think about it?
- At what price is this too expensive to consider?
Ask them in that order, open ended, to a screened sample of real buyers. Plot the cumulative distributions and read the intersections.
What each intersection means
| Point | Intersection | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Point of marginal cheapness | Too cheap x Expensive | Lower bound. Below this, quality doubts cost you sales. |
| Point of marginal expensiveness | Bargain x Too expensive | Upper bound. Above this, you lose buyers on price. |
| Optimal price point | Too cheap x Too expensive | Resistance to price is at its lowest. |
| Indifference price point | Bargain x Expensive | Often close to the market price or the price of the leading brand. |
Read this before you use the number
Van Westendorp measures stated price perception, not willingness to pay under real constraints. It is a good starting range and a bad final answer. Three limits worth knowing:
- No volume. It tells you what price is acceptable, not how many people will buy at it. Revenue optimisation needs a different instrument.
- No competitive context unless you build it into the stimulus. Buyers price relative to alternatives.
- Stated, not revealed. People are not accurate forecasters of their own behaviour under budget pressure.
Use it alongside trade-off work and qualitative probing on why a number felt high or low. That combination is what our pricing research runs, and the reasoning behind each number ends up in the verbatim library rather than being lost.
This calculator uses your four medians for a quick approximation. A proper analysis plots full cumulative curves across all respondents, which is what you get in a real study.
Frequently asked questions
What is Van Westendorp price sensitivity?
A pricing research method that asks four open-ended questions about price perception, then reads the intersections of the resulting cumulative curves to find an acceptable price range and an optimal price point.
What are the four Van Westendorp questions?
At what price is it so cheap you would question quality, at what price is it a bargain, at what price does it start to seem expensive, and at what price is it too expensive to consider.
What is the optimal price point?
The intersection of the too cheap and too expensive curves, where the total proportion of people rejecting the price on either quality or affordability grounds is lowest.
How many respondents do I need?
At least 100 screened category buyers for a stable read, and more if you want to cut by segment. Precision matters here because you are reading curve intersections.
Does Van Westendorp tell me revenue?
No. It gives you an acceptable price range, not a demand curve. For revenue optimisation you need volume estimates, which requires a different instrument.
Is this calculator free?
Yes. No signup, nothing stored, calculation runs in your browser.
Need the real answer, not just the math?
This tool tells you how many people to talk to. Gather goes and talks to them, then keeps what they said in a model your whole team can query.
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