Lyssna vs Prolific

From $89 per month (indicative, Basic)

From $6 per participant (indicative, plus platform fee)

Panel responses are purchased separately per participant, typically a low single-digit dollar amount for general audiences.

You set the incentive with a fair-pay minimum, plus a percentage service fee. Far cheaper than moderated-research platforms.

Free plan with limited monthly responses.

No subscription; pay per participant.

Established

Lyssna · since 2011

Widely used

Prolific · since 2014

• Extremely fast — a first-click test can be designed, run and answered inside an hour.
• Cheap enough to use for routine design decisions rather than special projects.
• Simple test types that non-researchers can run correctly.

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

• Narrow: it answers specific comparative questions, not exploratory ones.
• No moderated sessions.
• Panel is general-population; niche B2B audiences are hard to reach.

• 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.

Design teams that want quick evidence for everyday interface decisions.

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