RICE prioritization calculator
Score your feature ideas by Reach, Impact, Confidence and Effort, and see them ranked. Free, no sign-up, and nothing you type leaves your browser.
Score = Reach × Impact × Confidence ÷ Effort. Use the same period for Reach and the same unit for Effort on every idea.
Score
320
Score
100
Score
5.0
Ranking
- 1.Export to CSV320
- 2.Dark mode100
- 3.Single sign-on (SSO)5.0
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What is RICE?
RICE is a simple scoring method for deciding what to build next, popularized by Intercom’s product team. Each idea gets four estimates, and one formula turns them into a single score you can sort by:
RICE score = (Reach × Impact × Confidence) ÷ Effort
A higher score means more value for the work involved. The score isn’t the decision, but it makes you put a number on each part, which exposes the guesses behind a favorite idea.
The four factors
| Reach | How many people the idea affects in a set period, e.g. customers per quarter. Use real numbers where you can: users of that part of the product, or people who asked for it. |
|---|---|
| Impact | How much it helps each of them: 3 massive, 2 high, 1 medium, 0.5 low, 0.25 minimal. |
| Confidence | How sure you are of the other estimates: 100% when you have data, 80% for a solid hunch, 50% for a guess. Below 50% is a sign to find out more first. |
| Effort | The total work, in person-weeks (or person-months; just use the same unit for every idea). Include design, testing and documentation, not only coding. |
A worked example
Say 200 customers a quarter would use CSV export, the impact is medium (1), you’re fairly confident (80%), and it’s half a week of work: 200 × 1 × 0.8 ÷ 0.5 = 320.
Single sign-on might matter a lot to 20 customers (impact 2), but you’re unsure how many would actually use it (50%) and it’s four weeks of work: 20 × 2 × 0.5 ÷ 4 = 5.
CSV export wins by a wide margin. SSO might still be right if those 20 customers are your biggest accounts, which is exactly the kind of judgment the score should prompt rather than replace.
When RICE helps, and when it doesn’t
RICE is most useful once you have more than a handful of competing ideas, or several people arguing for different priorities. Scoring everything the same way makes the conversation about the estimates instead of opinions.
For a team of one to three people with a short list, it can be overkill: a few plain questions about demand, cost and fit usually make the answer obvious.
Other prioritization methods
Get Reach from real requests, not guesses
Reach is usually the weakest number, because it’s guessed in a meeting. The best source is your users themselves: how many different people have asked for something.
UserNote gives you a feedback board where customers post ideas and vote without creating an account, so each idea comes with a vote count. Use it for Reach, and your Confidence goes up too.