When it comes to team alignment, objective tracking, and driving performance, the right performance management and OKR software can have a significant impact. Betterworks and WorkBoard are two leading platforms that help businesses align strategy and execution.

Both solutions provide unique capabilities in goal tracking, employee engagement, analytics, and performance insights. This comparison evaluates the advantages, disadvantages, and prices of each platform to help you make an informed decision.

Comparing Betterworks Vs WorkBoard: At A Glance

Features

Betterworks

WorkBoard

OKR Management

Flexible OKRs, confidence tracking, nudges, Slack software/Jira integrations for engagement and accountability

Outcome-focused OKRs with cross-functional visibility, workflow integrations, and best-practice templates

AI-Powered Analytics And Recommendation

Goal Assist, Feedback Assist, Conversation Assist, private LLM for security

AI Agents, Co-Author, smart scorecards, heatmaps, and coaching prompts for strategic execution

Performance Management

Continuous check-ins, calibration, AI evaluations, real-time insights, and templates

Real-time 1:1s, EPA sliders, AI impact summaries, and coaching suggestions 

Employee Engagement

Anonymous eNPS, D&I, pulse/event surveys, multilingual support, and heatmaps

Embedded EPA sliders in 1:1s, live recognition, and weekly emotional status updates

Progress Tracking

Manual/automated updates, milestone tracking, progress locks, status colors, nudges

Real-time updates, Heatmap View, cross-platform sync, smart scorecards, and task alignment

Pricing

Starts from $7/user/month 

*Pricing is subject to change

Starts from $20/month 

*The pricing has been sourced from third-party websites and is subject to change

What Is Betterworks?

Betterworks is a comprehensive performance management and objectives and key results (OKR) platform. It aligns employee goals with organizational strategy, promotes engagement, and drives accountability across the workforce.

The platform ensures transparency and cross-functional alignment, enabling teams to overcome challenges and stay focused on measurable business outcomes.

Unique Features Of Betterworks

  • Pulse Surveys: Enable real-time employee engagement tracking, including customizable pulse, eNPS, D&I surveys, anonymous feedback, AI-driven analytics, visual dashboards, benchmarking, and action-planning features
  • Employee Voice: Allows for open, two-way communication, sentiment analysis, subject recognition, anonymous feedback, and real-time crowd-sourced insights to guide management decisions
  • Succession Planning: Provides real-time views of bench strength, readiness levels, and development plans. It also allows for continuous collaboration, internal mobility, and proactive talent growth rather than annual evaluations

Pros And Cons

Pros

  • The recognition wall and scheduled conversations feature are valuable for enhancing engagement and collaboration
  • The ‘Conversations’ module is efficient and adaptable to the organization's structure
  • Supports clear goal setting with organizational and personal OKRs, along with scheduled one-on-one pulse conversations

Cons

  • The reporting feature is overly manual and basic, requiring multiple reports to extract simple performance insights
  • Some features, like ‘Feedback,’ are clunky, with a confusing UI and limited flexibility that delays user adoption

What Is WorkBoard?

WorkBoard is an OKR (Objectives and Key Results) and strategy execution software platform. It enables companies to align teams, track progress, and achieve measurable goals.

Founded in 2013, WorkBoard has established itself as a leading solution for large enterprises seeking to help bridge the gap between strategy and execution.

Unique Features Of WorkBoard

  • Certified OKR Coaches: Are trained to set high-integrity OKRs, support cross-functional alignment, facilitate outcomes-focused sessions, and improve team performance from the first quarter
  • Gen AI And Co-Author: Help teams create better OKRs, simplify collaboration, identify dependencies, generate automated progress reports, and streamline retros with theme clustering and action suggestions
  • Workstreams And Action Items: Allow teams to organize tasks on customizable boards, assign ownership and status, integrate actions within meetings, and link them directly to OKRs, boosting transparency, accountability, and collaboration

Pros And Cons

Pros

  • Scorecards help deliver tailored insights to each user, enabling more focused and effective decision-making
  • AI-generated team briefs provide concise, automated progress summaries that keep leadership informed with minimal effort
  • The responsive support team provides hands-on guidance and coaching to help organizations effectively adopt the OKR methodology

Cons

  • Some users complained that the OKR attainment percentages are complex to find and challenging to understand
  • The meeting components and their integration with workstreams feel underdeveloped and lack the strength needed for seamless use

Betterworks Vs WorkBoard: Key Features Comparison

1. OKR Management

Betterworks' OKR Management tools allow businesses to define and cascade flexible OKRs at all levels (company, team, and individual), providing real-time insights into progress, alignment, and stakeholder involvement.

Some of the key features include automated progress updates, collaborative feedback and nudges on goals, and confidence-level tracking. These provide insight into accountability and seamless integrations with applications like Slack and Jira software, streamlining goal updates without impacting routine workflows.

WorkBoard's OKR management toolkit helps businesses define ambitious, measurable Objectives and Key Results (usually 3-5 Objectives and 4-6 Key Results each), ensuring a clear emphasis on significant outcomes. The platform delivers real-time progress tracking, team visibility, and cross-functional alignment.

It incorporates best-practice guidelines, such as employing outcome-focused Key Results. It integrates with daily workflows and tools to keep OKRs at the forefront, preventing them from getting lost in spreadsheets or PowerPoint presentations.

Winner: Betterworks wins for its advanced OKR features, which drive engagement, accountability, and confidence tracking, as well as goal nudges that WorkBoard lacks.

2. AI-Powered Analytics And Recommendations

The AI-powered HR tools by Betterworks serve as an intelligent co-pilot, improving goal quality, feedback, and coaching via real-time recommendations. The Goal Assist module helps create clear, data-driven objectives; the Feedback Assist feature refines feedback tone and removes bias.

The ‘Conversation Assist’ facilitates performance talks, and the Feedback Summary provides brief insights into strengths and areas for improvement. All AI tools utilize a private large language model (LLM) to ensure security and transparency in decision-making.

WorkBoard's AI-powered analytics and recommendation tools, also known as ‘WorkBoardAI,’ enhance strategic execution by providing intelligent support throughout the goal-setting and performance cycle. Co-author and AI Agents enable teams to create OKRs, action plans, and executive summaries quickly and with clarity.

Real-time dependency detection and heatmaps highlight risks and roadblocks across teams, while smart scorecards and MBR summaries provide context-rich updates to management. Moreover, AI-generated coaching assists managers prepare for 1:1 meetings and identify team needs, making talks more focused and impactful.

Winner: WorkBoard moves ahead with broader AI capabilities, including risk detection, smart scorecards, and executive-ready strategic insights that are missing from Betterworks.

3. Performance Management

Betterworks' performance management module replaces annual evaluations with a continuous, integrated approach that includes goal monitoring, check-ins, feedback, and calibration. To help managers optimize their workflows, the platform offers organized 1:1s, AI-assisted evaluations, and customizable templates.

With real-time insights and integration with major HR systems, it keeps performance conversations ongoing and data-driven, helping businesses develop transparency, consistency, and employee growth.

WorkBoard's performance management features prioritize ongoing, real-time engagement through regular 1:1s, feedback, and AI-powered coaching. During one-on-one meetings, managers and employees share their perspectives to communicate their thoughts on engagement, performance, and alignment (EPA), facilitating more meaningful conversations.

The platform fosters a momentum-driven performance culture, replacing outdated annual evaluations with dynamic, coach-led interactions that drive performance. AI-powered products enhance performance evaluations by generating impact summaries, crafting conversation prompts, and identifying coaching opportunities directly within workflows, enabling managers to achieve fair, fact-based development and optimal results.

Winner: WorkBoard takes the lead with real-time EPA-based coaching and AI-driven insights, making performance conversations more dynamic, personalized, and action-oriented.

4. Employee Engagement

The employee engagement module, known as ‘Betterworks Engage,’ enables continuous listening and improvement through tools such as eNPS, D&I, pulse surveys, and event-triggered surveys. To collect diverse employee sentiments, the platform provides privacy-respecting, anonymous feedback, and multilingual assistance.

Advanced analytics visually represent trends, heat maps, and segments, providing managers with actionable insights and prescriptive action plans. Integrating peer and management feedback, multilingual assistance, and an insights toolkit promotes data-driven transparency and inclusivity.

WorkBoard's employee engagement approach extends beyond surveys to include engagement in everyday interactions. Managers and employees can identify and correct perception gaps in real-time with upgraded 1:1s, which include sliders that measure Engagement, Performance, and Alignment.

The software also includes live recognition badges during meetings and automatic weekly status updates that highlight accomplishments and emotions, encouraging a culture of appreciation, collaboration, and momentum.

Winner: Betterworks takes the lead here with advanced surveys, heatmap analytics, and anonymous feedback. Features missing in WorkBoard, which are primarily focused on real-time 1:1 interactions.

5. Progress Tracking

Betterworks' progress tracking module uses a sophisticated combination of manual and automated updates to ensure real-time visibility and accuracy. Users can track progress by clicking progress bars or milestones, and metric-based key results sync automatically.

The system offers tailored progress calculations (averaged across all metrics), which are based on matching metrics or manual input. It visually emphasizes target health using color-coded status indicators (green, yellow, and red). Admins can also lock progress at specified periods, specify scoring systems, and set up nudges or applause to maintain accountability.

WorkBoard Progress Tracking provides real-time visibility into OKRs, KPIs, and task execution across teams. Its Heatmap View provides a quick health overview, highlighting at-risk areas and enabling managers to delve into detail and take immediate action. Users can update key results using web, mobile, chat, or data connectors, as well as automated syncs from Jira and Excel to ensure accurate and up-to-date tracking.

The platform also monitors workstream progress concerning action items or milestones, and it uses smart scorecards and summary analytics to boost momentum and accountability.

Winner: WorkBoard wins for its heatmaps, cross-platform syncing, and smart scorecards, delivering real-time risk visibility and adaptive execution tracking that Betterworks lacks.

Betterworks Vs WorkBoard: Pricing Comparison

Betterworks provides tailored pricing tiers, Mid-Market and Enterprise, with pricing starting at approximately $7/user/month. These plans support a wide range of organizations, from growing mid-sized teams to large global enterprises. Each plan includes access to its core performance management tools, including OKRs, feedback, 1:1 conversations, recognition, engagement surveys, and AI-powered analytics, with pricing determined based on company size and feature needs.

Disclaimer: The pricing is subject to change.

On the other hand, WorkBoard's custom pricing model is tailored to an organization's complexity and usage. While exact pricing depends on deployment and feature selection, the entry-level tier is estimated to start at approximately $20/user/month.

Disclaimer: The pricing has been sourced from third-party websites and is subject to change.

Betterworks and WorkBoard are robust platforms for aligning goals, improving performance, and driving company outcomes; however, they serve distinct purposes.

Betterworks excels in continuous performance management, structured OKRs, and comprehensive employee engagement tools, making it an excellent choice for companies that prioritize employee development, transparency, and accountability. On the other hand, WorkBoard is designed for fast-paced strategy execution, with powerful AI capabilities, real-time risk detection, and extensive workflow integrations.

If you want to foster team alignment and engagement, Betterworks is the better option. However, if your focus is on accelerated execution and acquiring real-time visibility into outcomes, WorkBoard can be the perfect choice.