Respondent vs User Intuition: Recruitment, Interviews and Cost
Choose Respondent when finding and targeting participants is the hard part: it is a recruitment marketplace first, with an AI Moderator and synthesis alongside. Choose User Intuition when the interview itself carries the study. If you already recruit on Respondent, keep it for sourcing and send those recruits into User Intuition through a custom link. User Intuition’s AI moderator runs 20–30 minute voice, video or chat conversations that ladder 5–7 levels deep on your guide, with required questions pinned in order, from a 4M+ vetted panel across 58 countries or your own participants. Respondent does not charge for no-shows or incomplete sessions; User Intuition also checks completed interviews, billing only when length, depth and coverage pass. Five quality voice interviews with your own participants start at $150.
Feature Comparison
| Dimension | User Intuition | Respondent | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-serve setup | Set up a study in five minutes; no sales call required | Self-serve researcher sign-up | Launch the day you scope the question; no sales call sits between the brief and fieldwork. |
| Time to findings | Panel: 24 hours 200+ panel interviews in 24 hours; specialist audiences take longer | Advertises research reports in hours | Panel studies finish inside a day; narrow B2B roles take longer, so set the deadline by audience. |
| Interview scale | Run interviews concurrently, without a platform-imposed hourly interview cap | AI Moderator with participant recruitment | Run several audiences in parallel while your researchers own the interpretation and the recommendation. |
| Pricing model | No subscription $30 per quality voice interview; $150 for five interviews with your own participants (BYOP) | PAYG or volume commitments; incentives separate | Price a five-interview pilot before committing budget, with no subscription and no monthly fee. |
| Recruitment | 4M+ vetted panel across 58 countries, your participants, or Respondent recruits via custom link; standard recruiting $30 each | Participant panel with consumer and professional targeting | Every session is screened for AI-generated or coached answers, and you can bring Respondent recruits too. |
| Quality billing | Pay for quality Automatic Length, Depth and Coverage checks; failed interviews uncharged; no refund request | No charge for no-shows, screen-outs or incomplete sessions | A completed but shallow interview is not billed, so budget goes only to interviews that meet the standard. |
| Agent access | Research planning, cost estimates, findings and follow-ups through MCP/API | Recruitment API; commercial access arranged with its team | An assistant can plan, cost and review a study, while your team approves spend before fieldwork starts. |
| AI interviewing | 5–7 levels Adaptive laddering linked to learning goals | AI Moderator with adaptive follow-ups | Your guide runs as written: required questions stay pinned in order, and you decide how far the moderator probes. |
| Analysis | Source-linked findings and evidence limitations | Synthesis, reports and highlight exports | Every finding traces to its quote and recording, so a stakeholder can check the evidence behind it. |
| Next-study planning | Consequential gaps guide audience, question and method | AI interview reports; confirm gap-based follow-up planning with Respondent | Gaps ranked by decision impact define whose experience the next study needs. |
How do Respondent and User Intuition compare on interview depth?
User Intuition uses 5–7 levels of laddering to explore a participant’s experience, its consequences, and the motivations behind a decision. Respondent’s AI Moderator also supports adaptive follow-ups and synthesis. User Intuition connects that depth to evidence review, assessing whether the interviews answer your learning goals and which explanations still need investigation.
For example, in a laddering interview, “the product was confusing” is a starting point. User Intuition’s moderator reconstructs what the person tried to do, which alternatives they considered, where uncertainty arose, and what happened next. That explanation helps your team choose whether to simplify the product, change how it is introduced, or investigate another cause of confusion. Run the same prompt through Respondent’s AI Moderator and compare how far its adaptive follow-ups go before choosing.
How do Respondent, User Interviews and User Intuition differ?
Respondent and User Interviews both sell access to participants. Respondent lists moderated pay-as-you-go recruiting at $40 per consumer and $80 per B2B session, with an AI Moderator alongside; User Interviews adds scheduling, incentives and an opt-in participant CRM. User Intuition runs the interview itself, from its own 4M+ vetted panel or recruits you bring from either through a custom link.
Choose Respondent when targeting niche professionals is the hard part, and User Interviews when your team wants participant operations, scheduling and a CRM of opted-in people. Both fit a team that moderates sessions itself. User Intuition fits when the interview is the bottleneck: it moderates 20–30 minute conversations that ladder 5–7 levels deep on your guide and bills only interviews that pass length, depth and coverage checks.
Recruits from either platform can join a User Intuition study through a custom link. See the User Interviews comparison and our guide to Respondent alternatives for the full detail.
How many interviews can I run, and how soon will I get findings?
User Intuition runs interviews concurrently, with no platform-imposed hourly interview cap. With five-minute setup, a panel study returns 200+ interviews in 24 hours. Respondent advertises research reports in hours once participants are sourced; on both platforms, how fast your audience can be recruited sets the timeline.
Field time is set by audience incidence, not platform capacity: with no cap on parallel interviews, a broad panel study returns 200+ interviews in 24 hours, while narrow specialist roles are recruited to order and take longer. Set the deadline by who you need to reach. With your own participants, including Respondent recruits, interviews run in parallel as participants respond, and findings build as each quality interview finishes.
What does a five-interview study cost, including recruitment and incentives?
User Intuition costs $150 for five quality voice interviews with your own participants (BYOP) or $300 with standard recruitment. Respondent’s displayed moderated PAYG recruiting rates are $40 for consumers and $80 for B2B, before incentives. Respondent’s fees exclude incentives; User Intuition’s panel total includes the recruiting cost, which covers the participant incentive, and excludes interviews that fail quality checks.
At those Respondent list rates, five consumer sessions cost $200 in recruitment fees, and five B2B sessions cost $400, plus incentives. Respondent states that AI moderation and synthesis are included; rates vary with methodology and commitment. Specialist audiences require a scoped quote.
User Intuition’s recruiting cost ($30 per participant) covers the participant incentive, screening and fraud prevention. User Intuition also does not bill an interview that fails length, depth or coverage checks, and for B2B audiences Respondent publishes an $80 per-session rate while User Intuition quotes specialist roles to order, so compare quotes for the same eligibility criteria. See User Intuition’s pricing and inclusions.
Will I be charged for incomplete or low-quality interviews?
No. User Intuition automatically checks Length, Depth, and Coverage before billing. Interviews that fail these checks are not charged, with no refund request needed. Respondent says it does not charge for no-shows, screen-outs, or interviews abandoned partway through.
Respondent also describes layered participant verification and fraud prevention. User Intuition scores every completed interview on length, depth and coverage before billing, so a finished but shallow conversation is not charged either. Ask Respondent whether a completed but shallow AI interview is credited.
Can I see what supports a finding and what still needs research?
User Intuition links findings to the experiences behind them and identifies whose perspective could change the conclusion. It recommends a focused follow-up audience and question, helping your team resolve consequential uncertainty before acting.
User Intuition’s evidence review assesses relevant experience, depth, variation, and competing explanations. For each learning goal, its review shows what the evidence supports, what limits the conclusion, and what that means for the research decision. It ranks gaps by how much they matter to the decision and uses them to shape the next recruiting brief: whose experience is missing and what the next interview needs to establish.
For example, we interviewed 43 Walmart shoppers to understand how they made purchase decisions, where they encountered friction, and what would bring them back. Thirty-six said they would shop at Walmart again, with price, proximity, and familiarity featuring in their accounts. The next question is what drives their next store choice. User Intuition recommends recontacting shoppers after their next comparable trip to compare the experiences of those who returned with those who chose another store.
Explore the Walmart study and sample presentation, including the interviews, findings, and two recommended follow-up studies.
Can I run research through an AI assistant?
Yes. User Intuition lets an AI assistant search past research, turn a brief into a study, estimate recruitment costs, launch within approved spend, and retrieve findings with supporting interview quotes. Respondent’s recruitment API supports participant sourcing. User Intuition connects sourcing with interview execution and evidence review, so the assistant can return a supported recommendation.
For example, ask an assistant in User Intuition’s agent workflow to investigate why trial users do not subscribe. It can search earlier studies, draft a brief for recent non-converters, estimate recruiting costs, and launch the approved interviews. The output is a set of findings you can trace to participant evidence, plus a proposed follow-up for unresolved questions. Your team can use the same research context to prepare a recommendation and its next test.
Respondent’s recruitment API helps teams embed participant sourcing in their own workflows. That is useful when recruiting is one step in a research process your team already manages.
How do you run Respondent recruits through User Intuition?
Recruit and screen on Respondent, then send qualified participants to a User Intuition custom participant link. They take a 20–30 minute voice, video or chat interview that ladders 5–7 levels deep on your guide, with required questions pinned in order. Respondent charges its per-session recruiting fee, plus the incentive you set; User Intuition bills $30 per quality voice interview, and only for interviews that pass.
The workflow has four steps. First, source and screen the audience on Respondent as you do today. Second, build the study in User Intuition and set its own screeners and hard quotas, so every cell fills to plan whichever source a participant came from. Third, share the study’s custom participant link with your Respondent recruits; the participant recruitment workflow treats a custom link like any other sample source, alongside Prolific, Cint / Lucid, CloudResearch or your own customer list. Fourth, the interviews run without a handoff to another moderation tool.
You pay each side for its own work. Respondent charges its per-session recruiting fee, and the participant incentive you set is paid on top. User Intuition charges its platform fee of $30 per quality voice interview with your own participants; its $30 recruiting cost applies only to its own panel. Every session is screened for AI-generated or coached answers, and an interview that fails length, depth or coverage checks is not billed.
The evidence ends up in one place. Each finding links to its quote, transcript and recording, transcripts and screener answers export as CSV, and each study is indexed in the Customer Intelligence Hub, so the next brief can start from what Respondent recruits already said.
Pricing Comparison
| Dimension | User Intuition | Respondent |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $150/study — 5 quality voice interviews · your own participants | $40 consumer / $80 B2B — Displayed moderated recruiting rate per session; incentives extra |
| Model | Per-study pricing | PAYG or volume commitments |
| Commitment | No subscription required | No commitment on PAYG; optional annual discounts |
| Usage | $30 per quality voice interview | AI moderation and synthesis included per published pricing |
| Recruitment | $30 per standard panel participant | Per-session recruitment plus participant incentives |
Respondent: Rates shown are the moderated PAYG list rates. Confirm methodology, targeting, and incentives before comparing a total.
Why researchers choose User Intuition
User Intuition is an AI-moderated interview platform that gives research teams and agencies the depth of a senior researcher at the scale of a survey, with vetted respondents, your own methodology and evidence you can trace to the verbatim. Quality is built in: a person vets every panelist by hand, every session is screened for fraud, and you pay only for interviews that pass.
Senior-researcher depth
The moderator ladders 5–7 levels deep by default, using Reynolds and Gutman's laddering method, so you hear the reasons behind the reasons.
Your methodology, run as written
Bring your discussion guide and frameworks. Required questions stay pinned in order, word for word if you need it, study rules keep the moderator inside your compliance lines, screeners and hard quotas fill every cell to plan, and you decide how far it probes.
Every finding traces to its source
Click any theme through to the verbatim, the transcript and the recording. Every claim in the deliverable traces to what a participant said.
Respondents you can stand behind
A 4M+ vetted panel across 58 countries: a person listens to every panelist's interviews before they're accepted, then every session is screened for AI-generated or coached answers and panelists are tracked across studies. Or bring your own: customer lists, your panel provider, or respondents straight from your survey.
Deliverables ready to present
Themes, verbatims and an editable presentation for every study, plus every transcript, recording and screener answer to export into your own tools. Put your own brand on them when you need to.
Survey scale, quality-only billing
200+ panel interviews in 24 hours, with no cap on parallel conversations. Each one is scored on length, depth and coverage, and you pay only for those that pass.
- Isolated workspaces
- Confidential stimulus
- Never used to train AI models
- GDPR & CCPA compliant
- SOC 2 Type II examination underway
- Security →
Which Platform Is Right for You?
Choose Respondent if:
- You need niche professional or B2B audiences sourced, screened and scheduled by a recruitment marketplace.
- You run moderated human sessions in your own tools and only need participants delivered to them.
- You want participant sourcing embedded in your own systems through Respondent’s recruitment API.
- You also run unmoderated tests and want one annual recruiting commitment to spend across moderated, unmoderated and API sessions.
Choose User Intuition if:
- You want laddered interviews, 5–7 levels deep, and evidence assessment in the same workflow.
- You want billing tied to interview quality, with length, depth and coverage checked before you pay.
- You want findings to inform the audience and question for the next study.
- You want a 4M+ vetted panel across 58 countries, where a person vets every panelist by hand and every session is screened for AI-generated or coached answers.
- You want to bring Respondent participants into User Intuition via custom link.
Switching from Respondent
Start with one decision
Define the client or business decision and the questions the research must answer.
Confirm the audience and cost
Use your participants or check panel eligibility, incentives, and recruiting fees.
Review and launch
Approve the study plan and budget, then collect interviews.
Review evidence and next steps
Inspect findings, source quotes, limitations, and proposed follow-ups before commissioning more research.
What researchers say
"A broad consumer study fills almost immediately, but the last time we screened for a specific category buyer it took a few extra days to recruit. They tell you that going in, and since we only pay for the interviews that pass quality, I don't mind the wait."
"Collapsed our stack without giving up interview depth, which was the fear. Recruiting, conversations, and the archive live in one place now. Brand questions get answered from what we already know instead of another fielding cycle."
"We delivered a significantly better client deliverable in half the usual time. We can now take on more work, and our team is more than three times as productive based on the number of studies we can run at once."
Key Takeaways
- 1Use both
Keep Respondent for sourcing and send its recruits into User Intuition by custom link for laddered interviews and quality billing.
- 2Research workflow
Respondent: Participant sourcing, adaptive AI interviews, and synthesis. User Intuition: 5–7-level laddering, per-goal evidence assessment, and targeted follow-up planning.
- 3Cost
Respondent’s per-session fee excludes incentives; User Intuition’s panel total includes the recruiting cost, incentive included, and excludes interviews that fail quality checks.
- 4Evidence
User Intuition assesses what each learning goal’s evidence supports before recommending additional research.
Frequently asked questions
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