What is Prolific?
Prolific is an online human data collection platform that recruits verified participants for academic studies, market research and AI work such as preference tuning, safety evaluations and benchmarks. You set the reward and pay a platform fee on top, with a recommended minimum of $12 per hour for participants and domain experts available for specialized tasks.
Online studies and AI evaluations are only as good as the people answering them, and open crowd platforms struggle with bots and unrepresentative samples. Prolific focuses on verified participants and representative sampling, with fair pay rules that support attention and honesty. Researchers use it for surveys and experiments, while AI teams use the same network, plus experts in fields such as healthcare and coding, to collect human feedback for training and evaluating models.
Main Features
- Recruits verified participants for surveys, experiments and user studies.
- Supports representative sampling for more reliable results.
- Collects human feedback for AI preference tuning, safety evaluations and benchmarks.
- Provides domain experts, including healthcare and coding specialists, for AI tasks.
- Uses a pay-as-you-go wallet with no monthly fees on the self-service platform.
- Offers managed services with a custom statement of work for larger projects.
- Includes a price calculator to estimate study costs.
How to Get Started with Prolific
- Sign up as a researcher on prolific.com.
- Create a study and link your survey or task.
- Set participant filters and the reward per participant.
- Add funds to your wallet, launch and review submissions.
Prolific Pricing
Sign-up is free, and you pay per study: the participant reward plus a platform fee of 42.8% for corporate customers or 33.3% for academic and nonprofit customers. Participants must be paid at least $8 per hour, with $12 per hour recommended.
Who Should Use It?
- Academic researchers running online experiments and surveys
- Market researchers who need reliable consumer samples
- AI labs collecting human preference data and safety evaluations
- UX teams recruiting participants for usability studies
- Nonprofits gathering survey data at a discounted fee
Prolific Alternatives
- Scale AI: managed data labeling at enterprise scale
- Appen AI: large annotation workforce for training data
- Reworkd AI: extracts web data automatically instead of from people
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Prolific cost?
Prolific charges the reward you set plus a platform fee: 42.8% for companies or 33.3% for academic and nonprofit users. There are no monthly fees on the self-service platform, and you add funds to a wallet as needed.
How much do Prolific participants earn?
Researchers must pay at least $8 (6 pounds) per hour, and Prolific recommends $12 (9 pounds) per hour. It suggests higher rates for tasks needing specialized skills such as coding or advanced STEM degrees.
Can Prolific be used for AI training data?
Yes. Prolific markets human feedback for AI model evaluation, preference tuning, safety testing and benchmarks, and offers domain experts in areas like healthcare and coding for specialized annotation.