Strella vs User Intuition: AI Interviews and Study Costs

1. Depth by default. User Intuition runs 20–30 minute AI-moderated interviews that ladder 5–7 levels by default, following Reynolds and Gutman’s method from what a participant did to the consequence that mattered and the motivation underneath; you decide how far the moderator probes. Strella’s moderator asks dynamic follow-ups in real time, and the researcher sets a project-wide default for follow-up depth, tunes reaction length and response speed, and adds moderator guidance. Strella publishes no follow-up level count.

2. Whose respondents, and how they are checked. User Intuition recruits from its own 4M+ vetted panel across 58 countries; panelists are tracked across studies, and every session is screened for AI-generated or coached answers. You can also bring customer lists, Prolific, Cint / Lucid, CloudResearch, any provider via custom link, or respondents from your own survey. Strella recruits through partner panels integrated in its product (it names Respondent and User Interviews), marketed as access to up to 8M participants, plus expert networks and your own participants. It verifies email, phone and IP and checks screener answers for red flags.

3. Per-project economics. User Intuition publishes $30 per quality voice interview: $150 for five with your own participants or $300 with panel recruitment, with no subscription and no charge for interviews that fail Length, Depth and Coverage checks. Strella publishes no prices. It sells quote-based annual plans that it describes as usage-based, funds recruitment and incentives through prepaid credits, and buyers report roughly $10K–25K+ per study.

Where the platforms match: Strella’s Strict mode reads guide questions exactly as written, and User Intuition pins required questions in order with verbatim wording. Strella’s MCP AI Connector and User Intuition’s API and MCP both bring research into Claude, ChatGPT and other AI assistants.

• Depth. 20–30 minute interviews ladder 5–7 levels by default, so the readout explains why a choice was made as well as what was chosen.
• Your methodology, run as written. Required questions stay pinned in order and worded verbatim if needed; study rules (for example, no PII or no product claims) hold in every conversation; monadic and sequential monadic designs run as parallel cells compared side by side in the Hub and exports; screeners and hard quotas keep each cell to plan.
• Respondents and evidence you can trace to the verbatim. An owned 4M+ vetted panel, tracked across studies and screened per session, or your own sample. Every finding traces to the quote, transcript and recording, and the evidence review is informed by Malterud’s information power and Hennink’s meaning saturation.
• Modality and scale. Voice, video or chat in 80+ interview languages (Strella lists 46+), and 200+ panel interviews in 24 hours with no cap on parallel conversations.
• Risk-free cost. Published per-study pricing with no subscription, and you pay only for interviews that pass length, depth and coverage checks.
• Deliverable-safe. Isolated per-client workspaces, unreleased stimulus kept confidential, no training of AI models on your data, an editable presentation and CSV exports, with white-label delivery available.

For an agency, that means a fixed-fee project can be costed before the proposal goes out, fielded on the agency’s own method, and delivered under its brand. For an in-house research lead, the next study starts the day the question arrives rather than at the next plan review. See how insights agencies use User Intuition.

Strella lets researchers set a project-wide follow-up depth, tune the moderator’s reaction length and response speed, add global moderator guidance, and choose Strict mode, which reads guide questions exactly as written, or Adaptive mode, which allows minor rephrasing; since March 2026 single questions can be locked inside Adaptive mode. Its AI-guided project setup can import research documents to build the guide.

User Intuition gives your team the same wording control and adds design structure around it. Required questions are pinned in order and worded verbatim when the method needs it. Study rules, such as no PII or no product claims, apply to every conversation. Monadic and sequential monadic designs run as parallel cells compared side by side in the Hub and exports, and screeners and hard quotas hold each cell to plan. Between the pinned questions, the moderator ladders by default, so you define learning goals rather than scripting every conversational branch.

Bring your discussion guide or build one from the brief in five minutes. Your team sets the methodology, learning goals and audience, then reviews the plan and budget before launch. User Intuition handles parallel interviewing and first-pass analysis; your researchers inspect the evidence, interpret the findings and own the recommendation.

User Intuition builds adaptive laddering into the conversation: the moderator follows a participant’s account from an experience to its consequences and the motivation underneath. Researchers define the learning goals rather than prewriting every possible follow-up. If someone says a service is slow, the interview can explore what they were trying to do, what the delay disrupted, and why that disruption changed their choice.

Strella’s dynamic follow-ups run within a project-wide depth the researcher sets. User Intuition’s emphasis is discovering the explanation the researcher did not know to ask about. Its laddering approach, informed by Reynolds and Gutman (1988), helps teams distinguish a requested feature from the benefit it needs to deliver.

User Intuition defends sample quality at three levels. A person listens to every panelist’s interviews before accepting them onto the panel, and panelists are verified at signup and tracked across studies, so a person’s stated role and attributes stay consistent from one project to the next. Every session is screened for AI-generated or coached answers by analyzing the transcript, and video sessions confirm a real, identifiable person is on screen and engaged. Finally, a 20–30 minute conversation that ladders 5–7 levels is hard to fake, and interviews that fail length, depth and coverage checks are not billed. Learn more about participant recruitment.

Strella says its participants undergo email, phone and IP verification, that screener responses are checked for red flags, and that researchers can review sessions before paying and remove fraudulent ones. It routes hard-to-reach professionals through integrated expert networks, and since January 2026 recruitment fees and incentives are paid from prepaid credits.

Both platforms accept your own participants. In User Intuition that includes customer lists, Prolific, Cint / Lucid, CloudResearch, any provider via custom link, or respondents from your own survey, and interviews with your own list run in parallel as people respond. When a stakeholder questions the sample, the useful answer names who recruited each respondent, how they were verified, and where their words appear in the recording.

User Intuition’s evidence review is informed by information power and meaning saturation: the relevant detail in the interviews matters, and noticing a theme is different from understanding it well enough to advise on a decision. The review checks relevant experiences, depth, variation and competing accounts against your learning goals. It can recommend deeper analysis when the material already exists, targeted interviews when an important experience is missing, or no further research when the evidence is sufficient for the purpose.

Strella offers a research repository, AI analysis, and editable reports backed by verbatims. User Intuition adds a per-learning-goal evidence assessment and focused follow-up recommendations, helping your team explain both the recommendation and the research that would strengthen it.

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.

With User Intuition’s agent workflow, an assistant can review what is already known, prepare a focused study, estimate its recruitment cost, and monitor fieldwork after approval. It can then retrieve findings with quotes linked to interview moments and prepare the next research question.

For example, an agency can ask its assistant to examine why a client’s customers switch providers. The assistant can search earlier work, prepare interviews around gaps in the explanation, and return the evidence behind the resulting recommendation. The team receives a reviewable brief and budget before launch, then findings and supporting quotes for the readout. Further research starts from that accumulated evidence.

Strella’s MCP-based AI Connector, launched in March 2026, lets existing customers create studies and query past research from Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Figma Make, Notion, and other MCP clients.

User Intuition lets research teams and agencies run multiple studies and audiences in parallel without a cap on concurrent conversations. Start with five-minute self-serve setup and review findings as quality interviews finish. Specialist audiences are recruited to order.

Strella’s research platform advertises 100 interviews by the next morning and insights within hours, with interviews analyzed as they complete. Its public buying path starts with a demo, and its app offers sign-in only, so a first-time buyer’s clock includes the sales process.

Compare the full path, from account access and recruitment to a finding you can present. User Intuition’s guided setup turns the brief into learning goals and an interview guide that researchers review before launch, and the team can begin reading evidence before every participant has finished.

Five User Intuition quality voice interviews cost $150 in platform fees with your own participants, or $300 with standard panel recruitment. Incentives for your own participants are separate; specialist audiences receive a recruiting quote. Optional plans exist, but a monthly commitment is not required to start, so an additional learning cycle is straightforward to scope from the published pricing.

Strella publishes no prices. Its commercial terms refer to annual plans scaled to company size, needs and research usage, which it describes as usage-based with no per-seat charges and no large minimums. Buyers report roughly $10K–25K+ per study; Strella has not confirmed that figure, so request the plan, recruitment credits and any Advisory work as separate lines for your scope.

User Intuition checks every completed interview automatically for length, depth and coverage before billing. A genuine participant can finish the conversation yet fail to give the substance the brief requires; that interview is not charged, with no refund request. Strella’s quality explanation describes researcher review and payment only for successful sessions. Ask how low depth, missing coverage and fraud affect platform usage, recruitment charges and participant incentives.