The 10 best UI/UX design agencies in 2026

By The Design Wire editorial team · Last updated: November 12, 2026 · Prices and ratings from each agency's own site or Clutch profile

Team sizes on this list run from UXDA's 10 to 49 people to frog, which lists 1,000 to 9,999, and WillowTree, now part of TELUS Digital. Published minimums start at $40,000 for a Nielsen Norman Group usability test and reach $250,000+ at Instrument and UXDA. Four of the 10 publish no minimum.

We compared them on what each firm publishes about its UX work, chiefly the clients it names and what users did once the new design went live.

Which UI/UX design agency is best?

Short answer: IDEO is best for launching new digital services at large institutions. Capgemini Invent's frog suits multinationals running one service across dozens of markets. Instrument fits tech platforms refreshing an app and its design system together. Isadora Agency is the pick for UI/UX design at mid-market and enterprise firms that want user research to shape every screen, so customers find the site or app easier to use and convert more often.

IDEO: best for launching new services at big institutions. Soluna, the youth mental-health app it co-designed with Kooth, opened to 6 million young Californians at launch.

frog: best for Capgemini-backed service programs across many countries. Its People Data Centre for Unilever covers 53+ markets.

Instrument: best for refreshing tech-platform apps and their design systems. After Eventbrite's app refresh, monthly active users grew 16% year over year.

Isadora Agency: best for research-led UX that improves conversion. APS Payroll's conversions rose 72% on the site it redesigned, and The Honest Company's subscription retention climbed 60% after a rework built on market research and user testing.

UI/UX design agencies compared side by side

How we compared these UI/UX design agencies

The facts come from the agencies' own sites and Clutch listings, plus parent-company announcements where ownership changed. We compared them on five questions:

Is the work named? The portfolio names the client and what was designed.

What did users do afterward? Retention, task completion, drop-off or adoption, measured for a named client.

Does research shape the interface? Interviews or usability tests appear in the case studies.

How is the team staffed? A scoped project, embedded designers, a monthly plan or a parent group's bench.

Is there a price to plan around? A published minimum or rate to budget against before the first call.

Best UI/UX design agencies in 2026: the full list

IDEO: best for new digital services at large institutions

A design firm that researches and prototypes services before they exist, mostly for big organizations.

Founded: 1991
HQ: San Francisco, CA, plus studios in Cambridge, MA and London
Team size: 250 to 999
Min. engagement: Not published
Clutch rating: Not rated

IDEO sells customer and employee research next to digital product design, and its interface work tends to start with a service nobody has built yet. For Kooth and the State of California, it co-designed and named Soluna, an app for young people's mental health, plus a platform for the clinicians behind it, working with development partner Blackbird. The proof of concept came together in nine weeks, and 94% of its users would recommend it. When Soluna launched in January 2024, 6 million young Californians had access, and the work supported Kooth's four-year, $188M state contract.

Straight Arrow News is the redesign case. IDEO reworked the news product across the website and app, adding Fact Cards and a Sources feature, and a month after the debut, app page views were up 1,170% year over year. Active users rose 700%.

Advantages
+ The redesigned Straight Arrow News app holds a 4.8 App Store rating
+ Industrial design sits in the same firm, for products with a physical side

Things to consider
- Its published work leans toward new ventures and services, and it shows little redesign work on existing marketing sites
- No public reviews and no stated minimum, so ask for a budget range and comparable references early

Best for: Big institutions and state agencies starting a digital service from nothing, like the Soluna app that opened to 6 million young Californians.

frog: best for multinational service programs backed by Capgemini

Capgemini Invent's design unit, founded in 1969, with studios on several continents.

Founded: 1969
HQ: San Francisco, CA, plus studios including New York and London
Team size: 1,000 to 9,999
Min. engagement: Not published
Clutch rating: Not rated

Product design and UX/UI design each account for 30% of frog's work, and software development and digital strategy make up the rest. Unilever shows the scale it's built for. The studio designed the People Data Centre, an in-house consumer analytics service now running across 53+ markets, and Unilever estimates it saves €30 million a year while delivering insight at half the cost of the traditional route.

The MyBupa app is the interface case. Its designers sat inside Bupa UK's own product and engineering teams to pull its digital services into one experience, and user engagement rose 320% while the app's store rating went from 1.6 to 4.6. The app now has 2.2 million users and takes 80,000 digital GP bookings a month.

Advantages
+ Its reworked IKEA Family rewards lifted active members 11% in Italy and Portugal
+ The Odea App it advised Odeabank on won a 2024 iF Design Award for its interface

Things to consider
- It sits inside Capgemini Invent, so expect a consultancy engagement model and ask how Capgemini staff would join
- A headcount in the 1,000 to 9,999 range, spread over many studios, so get the lead studio and day-to-day contact named in writing

Best for: Multinationals that run one service in many countries and want Capgemini behind it, like Unilever, whose People Data Centre covers 53+ markets.

Instrument: best for app and design-system refreshes at tech platforms

A Stagwell-owned Portland studio that designs products and brands for software and consumer-tech companies.

Founded: 2002
HQ: Portland, OR, with a second office in New York
Team size: 350+
Min. engagement: $250,000+
Clutch rating: Not rated

Instrument's product practice covers UX strategy and information architecture, and its interface work usually ships with a design system attached. Eventbrite's app refresh centered on event discovery and came with a new design system. Monthly active users then grew 16% year over year and paid ticket volume 11%. The app took W3 Gold in the 2025 events category.

On ouraring.com, Instrument reworked the store's information architecture and navigation on a new design system. Sales per day rose 42% a month after launch, and the site was named a Webby Honoree for Best Visual Design in 2025. For AlphaSense it rebuilt the site from the ground up, moving 1,700+ pages onto a 50+ component library, and conversion rate rose 24% in early analytics.

Advantages
+ Brand and marketing teams work in the same studio as product design
+ Clients get access to specialists across the Stagwell network

Things to consider
- Its minimum project size is $250,000+
- Stagwell has owned it outright since 2022, so ask which network specialists would join and how they're billed

Best for: Technology platforms updating an app together with its design system, like Eventbrite, whose monthly active users grew 16%.

WillowTree: best for mobile ordering and loyalty apps at consumer brands

A digital product firm working with brands since 2008, now part of TELUS Digital.

Founded: 2008
HQ: Charlottesville, VA (Clutch, TELUS Digital profile)
Team size: 10,000+ across TELUS Digital (Clutch)
Min. engagement: $50,000+ (Clutch minimum)
Clutch rating: 4.9 (36 reviews, TELUS Digital profile)

WillowTree is now TELUS Digital, which publishes its case work. For American Dairy Queen Corporation, the team ran a multi-year program across the DQ app, DairyQueen.com, and the DQ Cakes microsite. Shaped by user research and testing, the redesigned app added native ordering and pickup and a simpler in-app ordering path, and geofencing times each mobile order so it's ready when the customer arrives.

Since the Dairy Queen app launched in March 2022, customers have opened 19.2M loyalty accounts. Annual loyalty sign-ups are up 234% and yearly loyalty transactions up 472%, while the release cycle for new development fell from three months to two weeks.

Advantages
+ Research, design, engineering, analytics, SEO, and growth marketing on the same program
+ Content tied to each franchise's location and menu data

Things to consider
- WillowTree's site now redirects to TELUS Digital, and the case doesn't name the team, so confirm who would staff the work
- Headcount, minimum, and rating come from the TELUS Digital Clutch profile, not from WillowTree alone

Best for: Consumer brands rebuilding mobile ordering around a loyalty program, like Dairy Queen, whose app has opened 19.2M loyalty accounts.

Nielsen Norman Group: best for usability testing of an existing design

A UX research and training firm founded in 1998 by Jakob Nielsen and Don Norman.

Founded: 1998
HQ: Not published
Team size: Not published
Min. engagement: From $40,000 (rapid user testing)
Clutch rating: Not rated

Nielsen Norman Group tests and reviews designs rather than building them. Its rapid user testing puts five to 10 users in front of a design over three days, moderated by an NN/g researcher in person or remotely, and ends in a report with prioritized design recommendations plus a findings session with the client's team. Competitive tests that set a site against rivals start at $60,000, and quantitative studies with 20 to 200 unmoderated users start at $70,000.

Its partial client list includes Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and Intuit, but the firm publishes no named client cases or outcome figures. Custom projects in UX strategy, research, service design, and UX design typically run $40,000 to $200,000.

Advantages
+ A starting price published for each kind of test
+ Team training with 35+ course options for staff who will run research themselves

Things to consider
- It doesn't design or build interfaces, so pair it with a design team for the changes it recommends
- It publishes no client case studies, so ask for examples of studies like yours

Best for: Product teams that want an outside usability study before or after a redesign, starting with a three-day rapid test from $40,000.

MetaLab: best for new features inside large AI and consumer apps

A product design studio with 160 remote staff, founded in British Columbia in 2006.

Founded: 2006
HQ: Vancouver, BC (Clutch), with a remote team across 17 countries
Team size: 160
Min. engagement: $100,000+ (Clutch minimum)
Clutch rating: Not rated

Midjourney grew up on Discord and already had a beta browser experience when it came to MetaLab for a space where its users could connect, share, and learn. The studio designed Rooms, now part of Chat, a multiplayer space that one person or a thousand can join at once. It kept the chat patterns Midjourney's community knew from Discord and matched the product's minimal look.

The team prototyped divergent concepts along the way, among them a swipe-to-vote feature for mobile that would also capture feedback to train the model. The collaboration ran six months and more than 10,000 Discord messages, and the case puts the number of users affected by the update at 20M+.

Advantages
+ Insider's fully redesigned native iOS and Android apps came with a 4x rise in engagement, per its work index
+ UX research in its deliverables, as on Upwork's product vision and core flows

Things to consider
- Clutch lists a $100,000+ minimum and no reviews, so budget from that floor and ask for references
- Its cases rarely report retention or task completion, so ask for the measures behind a comparable project

Best for: AI and consumer apps adding a feature for a large existing user base, like Midjourney's Rooms, which the case puts at 20M+ users.

Isadora Agency: best for mid-market and enterprise UX design customers find easy to use

A UI/UX design agency that starts with user research so mid-market and enterprise products are easier to use after launch.

Founded: 2009
HQ: Manhattan Beach, CA and New York, NY
Team size: 11 to 50
Min. engagement: $95,000 to $110,000
Clutch rating: 4.8 (19 reviews)
Stack: WordPress (custom and multisite) · WooCommerce · Shopify · Magento · Drupal · Headless · Salesforce integration · iOS and Android apps

Isadora Agency starts its UX work with research, and the menu covers journey mapping, competitive benchmarking, information architecture and analytics audits. When The Honest Company, an existing client, brought it in to rework the diaper subscription program, market research and user testing were in scope next to UX strategy and UI/UX design. The new bundle builder lets parents split sizes and mix product types in one order. Get Started clicks on the landing page rose nearly 25% while the page's exit and bounce rate fell 75%. Seven months in, subscription retention was 60% higher.

APS Payroll hired the agency for a website redesign, and conversions on the new site climbed 72%, with demo requests up 28%. Sunbit, an installment-financing company, wanted its customer portal and app made new. During discovery the agency split the job, with one design team on the portal and another on the app, and it built the marketing site as well. The team has 10 to 49 people, and its senior specialists work with clients directly.

Advantages
+ Research, product design, development and post-launch CRO in one agency
+ Senior specialists at a female-owned firm with offices on both coasts

Things to consider
- A team that only wants extra screens drawn in its own sprints would buy more than it needs

Best for: Mid-market and enterprise businesses that want user research to shape a UI/UX design customers find easier to use, paired with UX research and web design

UXDA: best for mobile banking and fintech app UX

A Riga studio that designs only for banks and other financial companies.

Founded: 2015
HQ: Riga, Latvia
Team size: 10 to 49
Min. engagement: $250,000+
Clutch rating: 4.8 (21 reviews)

UXDA does nothing but UX/UI design, and only for finance. Its services pair user research and testing with digital experience governance for financial institutions. For Emirates NBD it set the UX strategy and UI design for the ENBD X app and the digital ecosystem around it, which puts 200+ banking services online. Activity in the new app, counted in logins and transactions, came in 50% higher than in the previous one.

GCash brought UXDA in to fit GInvest, an investment product, into a super app with 90 million users. For Banorte it designed Bineo, a 100% digital bank that launched in Mexico in January 2024, and Finastra and HSBC are among the clients who have reviewed it.

Advantages
+ A 2025 Red Dot for interface and UX design, for Liv X, Emirates NBD's lifestyle banking app
+ A 2025 German Design Award for the my.t money super app

Things to consider
- The minimum project is $250,000+
- Finance is its only sector, and the team works from Riga, so US buyers should check the working-day overlap

Best for: Banks and fintechs redesigning their mobile banking app, like Emirates NBD, where activity in the new app rose 50%.

Blue Acorn iCi: best for UX work on Adobe commerce and content builds

An Infosys company formed in 2019 when Blue Acorn merged with iCiDIGITAL.

Founded: 2008 (Clutch)
HQ: Charleston, SC (Clutch)
Team size: 250 to 999 (Clutch)
Min. engagement: Not published
Clutch rating: 2.0 (1 review)

For Paychex, the payroll and HR company, Blue Acorn iCi redesigned and optimized the online experience and customized the homepage by each visitor's location. Its Paychex case page says the geolocated homepage increased conversions but gives no figure, and the full study is a gated download.

As iCiDIGITAL, the team gave several Ingersoll Rand industry sites a responsive redesign, AROZONE.com among them, and built a component library each business unit could adapt; AROZONE.com won a W3 Awards Gold Standard in the manufacturing category. Its UX practice lists discovery, brand audits, UX frameworks, visual design, and qualitative user research.

Advantages
+ A shared component library that several business units reuse across their own sites
+ Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Commerce builds in the same firm as the UX team

Things to consider
- Its one Clutch review is rated 2.0, so collect references directly
- The Paychex conversion gain is unquantified and other cases sit behind downloads, so ask for measured results

Best for: Companies on Adobe platforms that want UX and site redesign from their commerce partner, as Ingersoll Rand did across its industry sites.

Fantasy: best for AI-native interfaces at enterprise companies

An independent studio, founded in 1999 as Fantasy Interactive, that now designs and builds AI products for large companies.

Founded: 1999
HQ: San Francisco and New York
Team size: 250 to 999
Min. engagement: Not published
Clutch rating: Not rated

Fantasy has stayed independent since it started, and its UX/UI practice now works next to AI agent development. For The Home Depot it designed and built Magic Apron, a search that understands the customer's project, and the tool is estimated to have brought in $20 million of new revenue in its first year. For BNY it set the vision for Eliza, the bank's internal AI platform, and built the code for an AI-native design system of 60+ production-ready components.

Salesforce had 40+ disconnected web properties, and Fantasy folded them into one with a new design system and a Page Builder tool. Today 85% of Salesforce's webpages run through that system.

Advantages
+ Since its brand and marketing site relaunch, Vimeo's enterprise revenue is up 60%
+ LIV Golf's rebuilt native apps went live in 72 days

Things to consider
- About 70% of its service mix is AI work, so check the depth of the team on an interface that has no AI in it
- It publishes no minimum and has no public reviews, so the budget only comes into view with a proposal

Best for: Large companies building AI into a product their customers use, like The Home Depot, whose Magic Apron search is estimated at $20 million of new revenue in year one.

How to choose a UI/UX design agency

Size the program first. Capgemini Invent owns frog, and WillowTree is now part of TELUS Digital. When the design is one part of a consulting or technology program the parent already runs for you, that link is useful; when it isn't, ask how much of the parent comes with the contract.

Match the sector where it matters. A bank or fintech app is UXDA's whole business, with Emirates NBD and GCash among its clients. A large institution building a service that doesn't exist yet is closer to IDEO's work on Soluna.

List everything that ships with the interface. When the UX has to carry from the product into the marketing site, as it did for Sunbit's portal and app, one team that also does web design and development saves a round of handoffs.

For most mid-sized and enterprise buyers, pay for research first. If nobody can say why users abandon a flow, the first money should go to research. Nielsen Norman Group sells that as a standalone usability test from $40,000, and Isadora Agency runs it inside the same project that designs and builds the site or product. The large groups fit better when the interface is one workstream in a program that spans many countries.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best UI/UX design agency in 2026?

It depends on the job. IDEO is best for new services at large institutions, frog for one service run across many markets, and Instrument for refreshing a tech platform's app and design system. Isadora Agency fits UI/UX projects at mid-market and enterprise companies that want research done before design starts, so changes rest on how customers behave. For a banking or fintech app, UXDA works only in finance.

How much does a UI/UX design agency cost?

Isadora Agency's projects cost $95,000 to $110,000. Nielsen Norman Group publishes a $40,000 starting price for a rapid usability test, and WillowTree's Clutch profile, now under TELUS Digital, lists a $50,000+ minimum. MetaLab's Clutch minimum is $100,000+, and Instrument and UXDA start at $250,000+. IDEO, frog, Fantasy, and Blue Acorn iCi publish no minimum. Ask every firm to price research separately from design and build so the bids line up.

What is the difference between UI and UX design?

UX design covers how a product works: the research behind it and the flows people follow. UI design is what the user sees and touches on each screen. Most projects need both, and they're easier to test together when one team owns them.

Is an embedded design team better than a fixed project?

It depends on how often the product changes. An embedded team suits a product that keeps shipping and has a product owner to direct the designers. A fixed project fits a redesign with a deadline and a number to hit, and it's easier to budget. Capgemini Invent's frog worked the embedded way on the MyBupa app, inside Bupa UK's own teams.

How can a company tell whether a UX redesign worked?

Pick one or two behaviors before launch and measure them afterward, such as clicks on the main call to action, completed sign-ups, drop-off at a named step or retention. Agree on the baseline with the agency in writing, and judge the change once the new design has had a few months of real traffic.

The bottom line

IDEO, frog, and Instrument suit new services at big institutions, one service across many markets, and app refreshes at tech platforms. Isadora Agency puts user research ahead of UI/UX design for mid-market and enterprise companies and tracks what users do after launch. UXDA covers banking apps, and Nielsen Norman Group tests a design that another team builds.

More guides from The Design Wire: Product design, SaaS design, Complex web apps.