RICE Score Calculator
Rank the features on your roadmap with the RICE prioritization framework. Enter reach, impact, confidence, and effort for a feature, and get an instant RICE score you can compare against every other idea competing for your build budget.
How it works
RICE is a prioritization framework created at Intercom to decide which features earn a place on the roadmap. It turns four judgment calls into a single comparable number, so a loud request from one stakeholder does not automatically beat a quieter idea that helps far more users.
You estimate four things for each feature. Reach is how many people it affects in a set period, such as a quarter. Impact is how much it moves your goal per person, on the standard scale of 3 for massive down to 0.25 for minimal. Confidence is how much you trust your own estimates, as a percentage. Effort is the total work in person-months across design, engineering, and QA.
The score is a cost-benefit ratio: the numerator is the benefit, effort is the cost. A higher score means more impact per unit of work. The number only means something in comparison, so score your whole shortlist and rank it.
RICE = (Reach × Impact × Confidence) ÷ Effort
Once you have ranked your features, the next question is what it costs to actually build the top ones. Use our software development cost calculator to size a build, or the build vs buy calculator if an off-the-shelf tool might cover the same need.
FAQs
What is a good RICE score?
There is no universal threshold, because the score scales with your reach numbers. What matters is the ranking within your own list. As a rough guide with the inputs here, scores above 500 tend to be strong do-now candidates, 100 to 500 are worth considering, and below 100 usually belong in the backlog. Always compare against your own other features rather than an absolute number.
How do I choose the impact value?
Impact uses a fixed five-point scale so it stays consistent across features: 3 for massive, 2 for high, 1 for medium, 0.5 for low, and 0.25 for minimal. Ask how much this feature moves your primary goal for a single user who encounters it. Keep the definition of each level the same for every feature you score.
Why is effort measured in person-months?
Person-months capture total team time, not calendar time. One person for three months and three people for one month are both roughly three person-months. Include design, engineering, and QA. Because effort is the denominator, small features with real impact rise to the top, which is exactly what the framework is designed to surface. The calculator treats anything under 0.5 as 0.5 to avoid dividing by a near-zero number.