Eye tracking technology has vastly improved in recent years, resulting in the development of both more advanced and more accessible hardware. As with most products a larger difference exists between the low- and high-end hardware on the market and the companies producing them.
A majority of the difference in price will come down to the eye tracker’s accuracy, freedom of movement (the “headbox”) and the sampling rate. Some research questions require a very high measurement accuracy (e.g. 0.1°), while other researchers may require less (e.g. 1.0°). While the capabilities of the hardware is of course crucial, many other factors come into play such as the accompanying software, usability, support, and general compatibility with other systems.
In this post we’ve gathered the prices of 20+ eye trackers to quickly present an overview of the price points you may encounter on your journey to purchasing an eye tracker. We also have a technical cheat sheet of a variety of eye tracking hardware sold and integrated by iMotions.
The lack of 100% transparency in pricing is due to several reasons – level of publicly availability, pricing being subject to academic discounts, and general price fluctuation. Both screen-based eye trackers, eye tracking glasses, and VR eye trackers are listed together below.
If you’re looking at more than just the price to decide which eye tracker to get, then try out our tool to help you decide which eye tracker is right for you.
Low-end Eye Trackers [$100-$1,000]
There are a limited number of eye trackers available at this price range due to the nature of the cost associated with building hardware.
Low-end eye trackers are generally not recommended for advanced research (although this largely depends on the research question) but are great to help get a better understanding of the technology and data collection.
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- GazePoint GP3 – 60 Hz (hardware only)
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- Tobii EyeX (Works with Tobii Gaming SDKs – not for research purposes)
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- Tobii 4C (Works with Tobii Gaming SDKs – not for research purposes)
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- EyeTribe (acquired by Oculus / Facebook)
Middle-end Eye Trackers [$1,001-$10,000]
The eye trackers within this price range are, for certain research questions, more than adequate and provide good value for those with a limited budget.
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- SMI RED M (SMI Acquired by Apple)
High-end Eye Trackers [$10,001+]
In this section is where you will find the top-of-the-line eye trackers available for commercial and academic use.
Eye trackers of this caliber are normally used by organizations with more advanced research objectives that rely heavily on high accuracy, precision, stability, and usability.
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- SMI RED-m – 60Hz / 120Hz (SMI Acquired by Apple)
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- SMI Eye Tracking Glasses – 120Hz (SMI Acquired by Apple)
I hope you’ve enjoyed our overview of the price points in the world of eye tracking hardware. The next step after considering eye tracking hardware is which software should complement it. iMotions allows you to get the most value by helping you future-proof your setup as well as providing the possibility to add more sensor modalities, such as facial expression analysis, galvanic skin response, EEG, ECG and more.
Note: this is an updated version of an article (originally published June 20th, 2017) that previously featured fifteen eye trackers.
