Every year, Greenbook's GRIT Business & Innovation Report surveys thousands of insights professionals to identify which top market research companies are shaping the industry — evaluating more than 1,460 suppliers in total. It's the closest thing market research has to an official scoreboard.
The 2025 results send a clear signal: tech-led firms are gaining ground, AI has moved beyond a market research trend, and the suppliers rising fastest are those combining uniqueness, usability, and real-world utility. As Greenbook's Chief Advisor Lenny Murphy put it, "AI isn't the strategy; it's the infrastructure enabling strategy."
Here's a look at the ten top market research agencies and insights consultancies that earned a spot in the 2025 GRIT Top 50 — what they do and what makes them worth knowing.
Ipsos hit the No. 1 spot in the 2025 GRIT Top 50 for the third year running. The report also named Ipsos the top-ranked full-service supplier and No. 1 qualitative research supplier.
This shouldn't be a surprise — Ipsos, after all, is one the behemoths in our industry.
Operating in 90 markets with nearly 20,000 employees, Ipsos spans everything from asolutions like Ipsos.Digital to synthetic data and AI-powered "digital twins" for modeling consumer behavior.
Ipsos' Greenbook listing reflects a consistent track record across brand, creative, customer experience, and public affairs research. If you're looking for a safe option in the research space, Ipsos is definitely one vendor to consider. That said, it was reported that Ipsos revenue declined by 2.4% in Q1 2026 — signalling that innovative insight teams may be opting for fresher alternatives.
Kantar is one of the world's largest insights and analytics companies, covering brand strategy, media effectiveness, shopper behavior, and creative testing.
Its self-serve platform, Kantar Marketplace, operates across 70+ markets and delivers results in hours, not days. Per Insight Platforms, it's designed for "insights professionals, marketers and agencies who want to test, learn and move faster." G2 reviewers highlight the quality of consumer segmentation and user personas it surfaces, although as of this writing, it only has 6 reviews on the platform.
Just like Ipsos, Kantar has been around for decades and is a safe option as a vendor.
SKIM has a focused thesis: if you understand how people make decisions, you can help companies influence them. It's a simple idea that requires serious analytical chops to execute well.
The Rotterdam-based firm specializes in conjoint analysis, choice modeling, decision journey mapping, and pricing and portfolio research — areas where most generalist agencies quietly struggle. Its Greenbook profile spans CPG, healthcare, technology, finance, and B2B.
NielsenIQ (NIQ) is the world's leading consumer intelligence company — formed when NielsenIQ and GfK combined in 2023.
One of its differentiators is what NIQ calls the Full View: a connected picture of what consumers buy (tracked across in-store and online channels) and why.
For CPG and retail companies that need category-level measurement alongside innovation analytics, NIQ is a key market research vendor to consider. Just like major players like Ipsos and Kantar, this is a big company in the insights space.
Nailbiter does something most research companies don't: it shows you what shoppers actually do, not just what they say they did. Its Videometrics platform captures in-the-moment purchase behavior in-store, online, and at home — then codes both audio and video to surface stated, latent, and emotional decision patterns.
As the Greenbook listing claims, the platform is used by Hershey, Nestlé, Reckitt, and SC Johnson for use cases spanning shopper journey mapping, packaging testing, planogram diagnostics, and new product launch evaluation.
Rival Group placed No. 6 among the world's Most Innovative Suppliers — up three spots from the prior year. Behind that overall ranking are companies doing complementary work.
Rival Technologies is a conversational, mobile-first research platform that turns conventional surveys into chat-style experiences people actually want to complete. The results speak for themselves: 60%+ response rates and 80%+ completion rates, well above industry averages. Rival Audiences gives teams on-demand panel access for agile studies, while AI tools speed up everything from study design to analysis and reporting.
Rival Technologies earned the No. 3 Technology Supplier ranking in GRIT. Clients include Coca-Cola, Warner Bros. Discovery, Kimberly-Clark, and Oura.
Insight Platforms describes Rival as a platform that "transforms conventional surveys into personalized research experiences that emulate the way people communicate today," and G2 reviewers consistently call out high engagement, ease of authoring, and insight quality. If you're evaluating the broader market research software landscape, Rival is worth putting on the shortlist early.
Reach3 Insights is Rival Group's full-service research consultancy — running agile programs and insight communities for enterprise brands on the Rival platform. Reach3 ranked No. 4 in the Full-Service Research category and has stayed in the GRIT Top 10 for four consecutive years. For teams that want the technology and a strategic research partner to run it, Reach3 is the answer.
Recently, Angus Reid joined Rival Group. If you're in Canada, I'm sure you've heard this name: Angus Reid is one of the most trusted names in Canadian market research.
Together, the these companies deliver the insights trifecta: technology, a full spectrum of services and a high-quality market research panel. Few competitors offer these under one roof. As Jennifer Reid, Co-CEO and Chief Methodologist at Rival Group, explained in a recent webinar, putting these things together "allow for special things to happen" — including faster innovation and better value for Rival customers.
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Google earns its GRIT ranking not as a traditional research vendor but as the world's largest consumer signal platform. Think with Google, Google Trends, Analytics, and YouTube Analytics collectively surface behavioral data at a scale no purpose-built research company can match — tracking billions of search queries, content interactions, and purchase journeys in real time.
For insights teams, Think with Google functions as a free intelligence resource for spotting category trends, sizing demand, and validating hypotheses before committing to custom research. Google's inclusion in GRIT reflects a broader industry shift toward behavioral and passive data sources — and a recognition that the most important consumer signal is sometimes a search bar.
Qualtrics helped create the experience management category. It is the most used market research software in our industry — the company claims that 13,500 organizations and over 85% of the Fortune 500 use it.
On G2, it has more than 3,000 reviews. It's a powerful platform, though it's worth noting that teams evaluating alternatives often cite pricing and complexity as friction points. If you're in that camp, this breakdown of Qualtrics alternatives is a useful starting point.
quantilope has been named the No. 1 Technology Supplier for Market Research in GRIT two years in a row.
The pitch: 15 fully automated advanced methods — conjoint, MaxDiff, implicit association, segmentation, brand tracking and more — powered by its AI research assistant quinn. Studies that used to require agency support can now be designed, fielded, and analyzed in-platform. G2 reviewers rate it 4.3 out of 5, flagging automation, multi-country capabilities, and speed as standouts. The Insight Platforms profile puts it well: an end-to-end consumer intelligence platform built for real-time insights at scale. Bosch, Danone, Dyson, and Nestlé are among the 300+ brands running on it.
Dig Insights is a Toronto-based consultancy that has built something genuinely useful: a platform for teams who need to move fast on innovation decisions without sacrificing rigor. Its proprietary tool, Upsiide — now part of a broader platform called Dig One — uses a swipe-based, social-media-style interface to screen ideas at scale, with patented modeling that converts engagement data into share of choice and cannibalization forecasts.
Dig One combines Upsiide's innovation testing with OneCliq, which analyzes real-time online conversations (Reddit, social platforms) to surface consumer themes before they hit a survey. As the Insight Platforms profile notes, it blends "social context and agile concept testing in a single workflow." Greenbook describes Dig as a firm that "unites strategy, human understanding, and technology to help brands move decisively."
Ten companies, ten different approaches to the same underlying challenge: helping organizations understand the people they serve. Some do it through global scale. Others through specialized methodology. A few, like Rival Group and Nailbiter, do it by building something the industry hadn't seen before.
The GRIT report's through-line is hard to miss: tech-led firms are growing, service-led ones are contracting, and AI is now table stakes rather than a differentiator. For insights buyers building or refreshing their vendor stack in 2026, knowing where each top market research agency sits on the tech-to-services spectrum is a smart place to start.
The terms get used interchangeably, but there's a meaningful distinction. Market research companies typically provide data collection, survey tools, or measurement services — you bring the questions, they deliver the data. Insights consultancies go further: they help you frame the right questions, design the research, and translate findings into strategic recommendations. Many of the firms on this list do both, which is part of what makes them stand out.
Start with three questions.
First, what kind of research do you actually need? Pricing and portfolio work points to a specialist like SKIM. Behavioral shopper data points to Nailbiter. Building an insight community points to Rival Technologies or other similar Qualtrics alternatives. Shopper insights and customer journey mapping are good fit for partners like Reach3 Insights and Angus Reid.
Second, how fast do you need to move? If your team is running multiple studies a month and needs results in days rather than weeks, a tech-led platform with conversational, mobile-first design and high response rates will serve you better than a full-service agency.
Third, what's your operating model — do you want to run the research yourself, or hand it off? The answer shapes whether you need a SaaS platform, a consultancy, or something in between.
Are AI capabilities an important consideration when I'm choosing a market research company?
AI is most useful when it makes research faster and more accessible without compromising on quality. The 2025 GRIT report found that 67% of suppliers now integrate generative AI directly into client deliverables.
The best market research firms in 2026 aren't just using AI as a feature — they're using it to change what's possible in terms of speed, sample quality, and insight depth.
Depends entirely on the use case. Large global firms like Ipsos and NIQ bring scale, methodological rigor, and the ability to run consistent research across dozens of markets simultaneously. Specialized firms — whether that's a decision-science consultancy like SKIM or a tech-led platform built for agile research — often move faster, cost less, and produce insights that are more directly actionable for a specific problem.
Many companies like Weber and Warner Bros. Discovery are finding success working with innovative research vendors like Rival Technologies. They use the platform and leverage the research panel and full-service consulting as needed. This flexible approach gives them flexibility and cost-efficiency.
Beyond methodology and price, look for fit. A good full-service research partner asks harder questions than you do — they push back on your brief, flag assumptions in your research design, and tell you when a different approach would answer your question better.
Responsiveness and transparent communication matter too, especially when timelines are tight. Awards and rankings like GRIT are useful signals, but the best indicator is usually a team's track record in your specific category or use case.
To make the right call, check out real-world case studies from the vendors you're considering and don't be shy about asking for customer referrals.
For teams running continuous research — regular pulse surveys, product feedback loops, community-based studies — the platform model tends to outperform the project-by-project agency model in both speed and cost.
Platforms built with conversational research at their core, combined with on-demand access to research panels, give teams the infrastructure to run frequent studies without rebuilding the program from scratch each time. If you also want strategic support on top of that technology, look for a vendor that offers both a self-serve platform and a consultancy arm operating from the same data environment.
Looking for a conversational, mobile-first research platform that combines agile technology with a full spectrum of services? Book a demo with Rival Technologies.
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