How we make this list: we compare pricing pages, product documentation and public user reviews. Ratings come from G2, Capterra or Trustpilot, with the date we checked them.
Key takeaways
- Zoom Webinars scales to 50,000 attendees and Webex Events to 100,000, the two biggest ceilings in mainstream platforms.
- Microsoft Teams town halls reach 10,000 attendees inside the Microsoft 365 most companies already pay for.
- A large meeting and a large webinar are different products. Meetings let everyone speak; webinars broadcast to a managed audience, and the pricing reflects that.
- Google Meet tops out at 1,000 participants on its highest plans, which covers most company meetings but not public events.
- Livestorm and BigBlueButton cover the other ends of the market: per attendee marketing webinars, and free self hosted classrooms.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Best for | Starting price | Free plan |
|---|
 Zoom | Large meetings and webinars up to 50,000 | $14.16 per user per month | Yes |
 Microsoft Teams | Town halls inside Microsoft 365 | $4 per user per month | Yes |
 Webex | Enterprise events up to 100,000 attendees | $12 per user per month | Yes |
 Google Meet | Simple large meetings up to 1,000 | $7 per user per month | Yes |
 GoTo Webinar | Corporate training webinars up to 3,000 | $59 per month | No |
 Livestorm | Marketing webinars priced per attendee | See website | Yes |
 Adobe Connect | Structured virtual classrooms | $190 per host per year | No |
 BigBlueButton | Free self hosted classes and meetings | Free | Yes |
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#1
Zoom
Best for: Large meetings and webinars up to 50,000
Visit zoom.com
Starting price$14.16 per user per month
Free planYes
Zoom is the default for a reason: attendees need no training, the stream is steady at scale, and the product line covers the whole range. Ordinary meetings hold 100 people on Pro, 300 on Business, and 1,000 with an add on. Zoom Webinars takes over from there and scales to 50,000 attendees with registration, rehearsal mode, and managed Q&A.
The cost shape is the thing to plan. A Workplace Pro licence is listed at $14.16 per user per month billed annually, and Webinars adds a separate fee, cited at $66.67 per month billed annually, priced by attendee tier. Companies that run one big event a quarter should price the per event options before committing to annual tiers. For most large group work, Zoom is the safe pair of hands.
What we like- Zoom Webinars scales to 50,000 attendees
- Meetings reach 1,000 with the large meeting add on
- The interface every attendee already knows
- Strong webinar tooling: registration, practice sessions, and reports
Watch out for- Webinars are a separate purchase on top of a Workplace licence, cited at $66.67 per month billed annually
- Free meetings cap at 40 minutes and 100 people
- Add ons stack up: large meetings, webinars, events
- Chat and phone extras push the bill further
#2Microsoft Teams
Best for: Town halls inside Microsoft 3654.4/5 on
G2 (19,330 reviews, checked Oct 2026)
Visit microsoft.com
Starting price$4 per user per month
Free planYes
Teams is the large group platform most big companies already have. A standard meeting covers the daily work, Teams webinars add registration and hold 1,000 attendees, and town halls broadcast company wide announcements to 10,000 people with produced video and moderated questions. All of it sits inside the Microsoft 365 subscription, which is why IT departments reach for it first.
The catches are licensing detail and polish. Standalone Teams Essentials is listed at $4 per user per month, while webinar capable Microsoft 365 plans are priced higher, and the top town hall features need Teams Premium. Attendees from outside the company sometimes fight the app and browser handoff. If your company is a Microsoft house, those are acceptable trades for a broadcast tool you already own.
What we like- Town halls stream to 10,000 attendees on premium tiers
- Webinars hold 1,000 with registration built in
- Included in the Microsoft 365 plans companies already own
- Chat, files, and meetings live in one app
Watch out for- Webinar and town hall features sit on specific plans, with the best of them needing Teams Premium
- Attendee experience is heavier than Zoom's
- Admin settings are sprawling
- External guest handling takes configuration
#3Webex
Best for: Enterprise events up to 100,000 attendees4.2/5 on
G2 (18,925 reviews, checked Oct 2026)
Visit webex.com
Starting price$12 per user per month
Free planYes
Cisco's Webex is the enterprise events heavyweight. Webex Meetings handles daily work from $12 per user per month, Webex Webinars covers 1,000 attendees on its entry licence, and Webex Events reaches 100,000, the ceiling virtual conferences and investor events need. Its security, compliance, and global telephony depth are why regulated industries and governments stay with it.
The price of that depth shows in the Webinars line: comparison sources cite $2,700 per licence per year, before any event scale. Webex is not where a small team runs a monthly webinar. It is where a multinational runs its results day, its partner summit, and its all hands on one contracted platform.
What we like- Webex Events scales to 100,000 attendees, the highest ceiling here
- Strong security and compliance record
- Webex Webinars holds 1,000 on its entry plan
- Global phone dial in and translation features suit multinationals
Watch out for- Webex Webinars is priced per licence per year, cited at $2,700, a different league from meeting plans
- Interface feels denser than Zoom's
- The product line naming confuses buyers
- Best features cluster on enterprise agreements
#4Google Meet
Best for: Simple large meetings up to 1,0004.6/5 on
G2 (4 reviews, checked Oct 2026)
Visit meet.google.com
Starting price$7 per user per month
Free planYes
Google Meet is the simple option, and simple scales further than people expect. Inside Google Workspace, Meet runs meetings of 100 people on the entry plan and up to 1,000 participants with in domain live streaming on the highest tiers, which covers all hands meetings for most companies on earth. There is no registration desk, no plug in, and no attendee training.
Where Meet stops is the produced event. It lacks the deep webinar machinery of Zoom and Webex: fewer registration options, thinner audience management, and no 10,000 seat product. Companies that live in Google Workspace and hold big internal meetings rather than public events will find Meet covers them at no extra licence cost.
What we like- Nothing to install, joining from a browser just works
- Included with Google Workspace from $7 per user per month
- Higher plans reach 1,000 participants with live streaming to wider audiences
- Clean interface with captions and noise cancellation
Watch out for- 1,000 participant ceiling is the lowest of the big four
- Webinar style controls are thinner than Zoom or Webex
- Recording and advanced features need higher Workspace tiers
- No true event product at 10,000 plus scale
#5GoTo Webinar
Best for: Corporate training webinars up to 3,0004.2/5 on
G2 (804 reviews, checked Oct 2026)
Visit goto.com
Starting price$59 per month
Free planNo
GoTo Webinar has run corporate webinars for longer than most rivals have existed. Its plans start at a cited $59 per month billed annually and climb to 3,000 attendees, with the features training teams actually use: rehearsal mode, polls, attention indicators, certificates, and recorded sessions that can run as simulated live events for staff in other time zones.
It will not win a design award, and GoTo Meeting for daily calls is a separate product at its own price. But for an HR or compliance team that must deliver the same session to 2,000 employees and prove attendance, GoTo Webinar is a proven, plain tool that does the job without drama.
What we like- Long running webinar product with a steady reliability record
- Plans reach 3,000 attendees on the Complete tier
- Pre recorded and simulated live webinars for training libraries
- Polls, surveys, and certificates suit compliance training
Watch out for- No free plan
- Interface looks dated next to newer rivals
- Registration branding options are limited
- The meeting and webinar products are separate purchases
#6Livestorm
Best for: Marketing webinars priced per attendee4.4/5 on
G2 (1,740 reviews, checked Oct 2026)
Visit livestorm.co
Starting priceSee website
Free planYes
Livestorm prices webinars the way marketers think: by the attendee. You buy attendee credits, run events from the browser with registration pages and automated reminders, and push attendance data to your CRM. Events scale to 3,000 attendees on the bigger plans, and a small free plan lets a team test the format.
That model rewards teams with seasonal events and punishes anyone who misjudges a launch audience, because credits are consumed by attendance. Livestorm's engagement tools, polls, chat, and on screen calls to action, are built for pipeline webinars rather than town halls. For a marketing team whose webinars feed sales, it is the specialist worth trialling beside the general platforms.
What we like- Browser based, attendees download nothing
- Priced per attendee, so quiet months cost less
- Events up to 3,000 attendees on higher plans
- Registration pages, reminders, and CRM links built for marketing teams
Watch out for- Per attendee credit maths needs care before a big launch
- No native HubSpot integration, it relies on connectors
- Attendee and host caps vary by plan in ways that need reading
- Less suited to internal all hands use
Starting price$190 per host per year
Free planNo
Adobe Connect is the odd one out, deliberately. Where the others broadcast, Connect teaches. Its rooms are persistent: an instructor arranges content pods, whiteboards, polls, and breakout spaces once, and the room is waiting, set up, at every session. Training organisations and universities use it for classes where the layout is part of the method.
Capacity is the trade. A room holds about 100 people, a few hundred on enterprise arrangements, so Connect does not belong in a stadium event shortlist. At a cited $190 per host per year it assumes a host who teaches weekly. For structured virtual classrooms, nothing else here is built the same way.
What we like- Persistent rooms you design once and reuse: layouts, pods, and content stay in place
- The strongest tool here for structured training and classrooms
- Breakout rooms and preparation areas suit instructors
- Runs to about 100 per room, more on enterprise setups
Watch out for- No free plan
- Rooms are smaller than webinar platforms, this is a classroom, not a stadium
- Interface has a learning curve for hosts
- Pricing per host per year assumes regular teaching
Starting priceFree
Free planYes
BigBlueButton is the open source meeting platform built for education. Schools and universities run it on their own servers or through hosting providers, often inside Moodle, and get a classroom with whiteboard, polls, breakouts, and recordings for the cost of the server alone. For public institutions and nonprofits, that economics is decisive.
The limit is operations. There is no support desk, updates are yours to apply, and a room holds a few hundred people on sensibly sized hosting, not tens of thousands. BigBlueButton asks for a technically capable owner. In return it removes licence fees from large group teaching entirely, which is why it closes this list.
What we like- Free and open source, you pay only for hosting
- Built for teaching: whiteboard, polling, breakout rooms, and shared notes
- Integrates with Moodle and other learning systems
- No per attendee or per host fees at any size you can host
Watch out for- You must run or rent a server, there is no vendor to call
- Practical rooms run to a few hundred participants with tuned hosting
- Polish and mobile apps lag the commercial platforms
- Scaling to thousands needs real engineering
How we chose
We compared the platforms that appear on enterprise and education shortlists for large sessions, using vendor pricing pages and September to October 2026 comparison data from Livestorm, Learning Revolution, and Fireflies. The deciding facts were published attendee ceilings, whether the large scale product is a meeting, a webinar, or an event tier, and what the entry price really buys. We kept one open source option and one per attendee priced option because both change the buying maths. We left out social live apps and streaming only services such as YouTube Live, which broadcast without meeting controls, registration, or attendee management.
Decide whether your large group talks or watches. An interactive meeting of 300 needs microphones, breakouts, and moderation. A broadcast to 10,000 needs registration, a produced stream, and moderated questions, and nobody's camera but the panel's. Buying a meeting tool for a broadcast, or the reverse, is the classic mistake in this category, and the products are priced and licensed differently for a reason.
Then check the attendee's path in. At scale, the best platform is the one people can join from a calendar invite in one click, in a browser, on a phone, without an install or an account. Test with your least technical audience group before the real event. Finally, rehearse the failure modes: a presenter drops, a poll misfires, attendance doubles the plan's tier. Every platform here handles success. The differences show up in the practice session and the support line, which is why serious event teams run both before the day.
Frequently asked questions
What platform handles the largest meetings?
On published figures, Webex Events reaches 100,000 attendees and Zoom Webinars reaches 50,000, the two largest ceilings in mainstream business platforms. Microsoft Teams town halls reach 10,000. Those top tiers are broadcast products, with the audience watching and asking questions through moderated tools rather than speaking freely, which is the right design at that size.
What is the difference between a large meeting and a webinar?
In a meeting, participants can usually speak, share, and appear on camera, and the practical limit is a few hundred to 1,000 people. A webinar separates presenters from attendees: the audience watches, chats, and answers polls, while hosts control every microphone. Webinars scale far higher and are priced by attendee tier rather than by host alone.
How much does it cost to run a 1,000 person event?
On the mainstream platforms, a few hundred dollars a month at most in licences: Zoom Webinars is cited at $66.67 per month billed annually for its entry attendee tiers plus a Workplace licence, Teams includes webinars in Microsoft 365 plans, and Webex Webinars is cited at $2,700 per licence per year. Production help, captioning, and rehearsal time usually cost more than the platform.
Can a free platform handle a large group?
For a few hundred people, yes, with effort. BigBlueButton is free software that schools run for classes of a few hundred, but you supply the server and the expertise. The free tiers of Zoom, Teams, Meet, and Webex cap group meetings around 100 people and 40 to 60 minutes, so a real large event needs a paid plan on any of them.
Sources we checked (0)
Is your product missing or out of date?
We review this list regularly. Vendors can request a listing, send updated pricing or ask about featured placement.
Shihab Mia · Founder, Rankite
Shihab has 5+ years in B2B and SaaS SEO. He writes Rankite's software buying guides from pricing pages, documentation and public user reviews. More about Shihab.