How do you calculate a RICE score?

RICE score = (Reach × Impact × Confidence) ÷ Effort. Reach is the number of people affected per quarter, Impact is a multiplier from 0.25 to 3, Confidence is how sure you are (50%, 80% or 100%), and Effort is total person-months across product, design and engineering. The highest score ships first.

What does a worked RICE example look like?

An inbox empty-state redesign with Reach 4,000 users per quarter, Impact 1, Confidence 80% and Effort 2 person-months scores (4,000 × 1 × 0.8) ÷ 2 = 1,600. A new AI summarizer at Reach 8,000, Impact 2, Confidence 50% and Effort 6 scores 1,333, so the empty-state work wins.

What is the difference between RICE and ICE?

ICE is Impact × Confidence × Ease. RICE adds Reach, your estimate of how many people the change touches, and divides by Effort in person-months. ICE is faster.

What should I do after scoring with RICE?

A RICE score gives you an order, not a decision, and it cannot tell you what an item is worth in money. Take the top few items, price each one as build, buy or rent, then discount each option to today with NPV and compare them side by side.

RICE Prioritization Framework

By Road map ROI, from Cookie Tech, which builds custom software · Published Jun 21, 2026 · Last updated Nov 3, 2026

What changed: Merged our RICE vs ICE comparison into this guide.

Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort. One score, one ranked backlog.

Scoring · ~5 min (est.)

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RICE = (Reach × Impact × Confidence) ÷ Effort

Inputs: Reach (users/qtr) · Impact (0.25–3) · Confidence (0–1) · Effort (person-months)
Output: A single comparable score per initiative
When to use: Weekly backlog grooming for a single product team that needs a fast, defensible rank.
Replaces: Gut-feel priority calls and stakeholder volume contests.

The RICE framework is a feature prioritization method created at Intercom (Sean McBride, 2018): score every initiative by (Reach × Impact × Confidence) ÷ Effort and sort the backlog by that score. It turns a long list of ideas into a ranked order the whole team can argue about with the same numbers. RICE tells you what to look at first. It does not tell you how to get each winner or what it is worth in money, so this guide ends with the next step: putting the top items through a build, buy or rent comparison in discounted dollars.

Interactive

RICE Score Calculator

Score one initiative end-to-end. The output updates live as you change the inputs.

Reach (users / quarter)Effort (person-months)ImpactConfidence

RICE Score

1,600

(4,000 × 1 × 0.8) ÷ 2 = 1,600

The RICE formula

RICE Score = (Reach × Impact × Confidence) ÷ Effort. Reach is the number of people affected per time period (usually per quarter). Impact is a five-point multiplier: 0.25 minimal, 0.5 low, 1 medium, 2 high, 3 massive. Confidence is how sure you are about the other three numbers (100% high, 80% medium, 50% low). Effort is total person-months across product, design, and engineering. Run the math; the highest score goes first. The scales are Intercom's.

Scoring Reach

Reach is concrete: users, signups, transactions, support tickets per quarter. Anchor it to an actual analytics number, not a percentage of the user base. If a change touches 3,000 active users per quarter, Reach is 3,000, not 'most of our users'.

Scoring Impact

Impact is the per-user lift on the goal you actually care about: activation, retention, conversion, revenue. Use the five-point scale (0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 3) to leave less room for false precision. Our advice: if two initiatives both look like a 3, you may not have enough information yet.

Scoring Confidence

Confidence is the haircut. Intercom's scale is 100% high, 80% medium, 50% low, and calls anything below that a 'total moonshot'. Our reading: 100% means you have data (an A/B test, a benchmark, a working prototype), 80% a reasonable analogy, 50% mostly a guess. Our advice: below 50%, gather more evidence before you score it.

Scoring Effort

Effort is total person-months across PM, design, and engineering combined, not engineer-only weeks. Our advice: round to the half-month, and if you cannot estimate it within a 2× range, run a small spike before scoring.

Worked example

Redesigning the empty-state of the inbox. Reach = 4,000 users/qtr. Impact = 1 (medium lift on activation). Confidence = 80% (we have a benchmark from a similar redesign). Effort = 2 person-months. RICE = (4,000 × 1 × 0.8) ÷ 2 = 1,600. Compared head-to-head against a 'new AI summarizer' at Reach 8,000 × Impact 2 × Confidence 0.5 ÷ Effort 6 = 1,333, the unsexy empty-state work wins.

RICE or ICE?

ICE is a lighter version of RICE: Impact × Confidence × Ease. Scales vary, and we use 1 to 10 here. It drops Reach and swaps Effort for a guess at how easy the work is. We have not traced where ICE was first defined. Our suggestion: run ICE for a quarter to build the habit of scoring, then move to RICE when people start challenging the numbers. ICE fits when your items all reach about the same people. RICE fits when one item reaches ten times as many people as another, or when you have effort estimates you trust.

	RICE	ICE
Inputs	Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort	Impact, Confidence, Ease
Time to score one item (our rough estimate)	About 5 minutes	About 1 minute
Reach	An estimate of people reached	Folded into Impact
Effort	Divides the score	Ease is a judgment
Best for (our suggestion)	Quarterly planning, defending a plan	Weekly triage, small teams
How it goes wrong (our suggestion)	False precision on Reach	Everything scores 8

After RICE: build, buy or rent the winners

A RICE score gives you an order, not a decision. It is an abstract number, so it cannot answer 'how much money is this worth?', and it says nothing about whether you should build the feature yourself, buy a ready product or rent it as a service. Take the top few items from your RICE list and price each one three ways: build cost, purchase price or subscription, running costs and the yearly benefit. Discount each option to today with NPV and compare them side by side. Use the free calculator at roadmap-roi.com/try for one option, or the How it works page to see the full build, buy or rent flow.

Sources: Intercom, RICE (Sean McBride, 2018). Other figures on this page are illustrative or our assumption.

Frequently asked questions

How do you calculate a RICE score?: RICE score = (Reach × Impact × Confidence) ÷ Effort. Reach is the number of people affected per quarter, Impact is a multiplier from 0.25 to 3, Confidence is how sure you are (50%, 80% or 100%), and Effort is total person-months across product, design and engineering. The highest score ships first.
What does a worked RICE example look like?: An inbox empty-state redesign with Reach 4,000 users per quarter, Impact 1, Confidence 80% and Effort 2 person-months scores (4,000 × 1 × 0.8) ÷ 2 = 1,600. A new AI summarizer at Reach 8,000, Impact 2, Confidence 50% and Effort 6 scores 1,333, so the empty-state work wins.
What is the difference between RICE and ICE?: ICE is Impact × Confidence × Ease. RICE adds Reach, your estimate of how many people the change touches, and divides by Effort in person-months. ICE is faster.
What should I do after scoring with RICE?: A RICE score gives you an order, not a decision, and it cannot tell you what an item is worth in money. Take the top few items, price each one as build, buy or rent, then discount each option to today with NPV and compare them side by side.