Respondent vs Prolific

From $40 per B2C session at pay-as-you-go, plus the incentive you set

From $8 per participant/hour minimum incentive, plus platform fee

Session fees are $40 B2C and $80 B2B at pay-as-you-go, falling about 30% on a large annual commitment, with a further discount for unmoderated studies. You are only charged for completed sessions — no-shows and screen-outs are free. Incentives are separate and you fund them: $100-$400 per professional B2B participant is normal, on top of the session fee.

You set the incentive subject to a fair-pay floor of $8/hour ($12 recommended), then Prolific adds a platform fee — around 42.8% for commercial customers, 33.3% for academic and non-profit. Budget the fee: it is a large fraction, not a rounding error. Still far cheaper than moderated-research platforms.

No subscription required; pay per completed session.

No subscription; pay per participant.

Established

Respondent · since 2016

Widely used

Prolific · since 2014

• Reaches professional segments that general panels simply do not contain.
• Verification meaningfully reduces participants misrepresenting their role.
• No subscription commitment.

• Notably better data quality than generic survey panels.
• Fine-grained prescreening across hundreds of demographic attributes.
• No subscription — pay only for what you run.

• Expensive per participant once incentives are included.
• Recruitment only, no research tooling.
• Some fraudulent participation persists despite verification.

• Recruitment only; you supply the study and the tooling.
• Skewed towards students and younger, online-native participants.
• Not suited to recruiting senior enterprise decision-makers.

B2B product teams that need to talk to specific professional roles.

Survey-based and quantitative studies where data quality matters and budget is limited.