Prolific recruits research participants from its own pool and runs the study for a researcher who brings their own survey, task or interview link. There is no plan to choose on the Platform side: a researcher sets the reward each participant earns and pays that reward plus a platform fee, with no monthly fee and no subscription. A separate Managed services line, where Prolific's own team runs the sourcing and quality work, is priced by quote after a call.
Every current figure here was read on prolific.com/pricing on 5 October 2026 from the Czech Republic, from the plan cards and the frequently asked questions beneath them, and every older one on the Internet Archive's copies of the pricing pages at prolific.ac, prolific.co and prolific.com.
What does Prolific cost?
| Pay as you go | Managed services | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | A participant reward you set, plus a platform fee | Custom quote after a call |
| Platform fee | 42.8% for a corporate customer, 33.3% for an academic or non profit one | Not stated |
| Minimum participant pay | £6.00 or $8.00 an hour | Not applicable |
| Recommended participant pay | £9.00 or $12.00 an hour | Not applicable |
| Contract or subscription | None | A Statement of Work |
| Active participants | 300,000 or more, on the page's own count | Same pool, sourced and managed by Prolific's team |
| Users | Unlimited | Not stated |
The page's own answer to how the price is worked out says that on the platform a researcher pays a participant reward plus a platform fee, while Managed services is priced to the project. Pay as you go carries over 300 audience filters, representative and quota samples, custom screening, API and no code integrations, workspaces, direct participant messaging and email support. Managed services adds expert curation and verification of the dataset, custom sourcing campaigns, participant training and onboarding, ongoing pool optimization, several stages of quality checks, a dedicated project team, a shared Slack channel and data analysis and reporting. A price calculator on the page estimates platform pricing from a researcher's own numbers; it shows no example figure of its own.
What does a study of 50, 200 or 1,000 participants cost?
A ten minute task at the minimum rate the page allows, $8.00 an hour, pays each participant $1.33. The platform fee of 42.8%, the rate the page quotes for a corporate customer, is added on top of the whole reward pool.
| Participants | Participant pay for 10 minutes at $8.00 an hour | Platform fee at 42.8% | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 | $66.67 | $28.53 | $95.20 |
| 200 | $266.67 | $114.13 | $380.80 |
| 1,000 | $1,333.33 | $570.67 | $1,904.00 |
An academic or non profit customer pays the same participant rewards and a 33.3% fee instead, which comes to $22.20 on 50 participants, $88.80 on 200 and $444.00 on 1,000. Paying participants the recommended $12.00 an hour rather than the minimum raises every reward figure by half again, with the fee moving the same way.
Is there a free plan or a trial?
The platform pricing page lists no free credit and no trial. Signing up costs nothing, and a researcher only pays once funds are added to a wallet and a study is launched. Managed services lists no self serve price at all; it needs a quote from the sales team. The page lists no refund terms.
How has Prolific's price changed?
| Archive copy | Platform fee and participant pay |
|---|---|
| 16 August 2015 | Commission was the researcher's own choice, from 0% up, for a limited time; the page set a minimum reward of £5.00, about €6.50 or $7.50, an hour |
| 26 May 2016 and 6 June 2017 | Commission was fixed at 12.5% on each reward plus 10p a participant; the minimum reward stayed £5.00, about €6.50 or $7.50, an hour |
| 17 June 2018, read from the help center | Commission was 30% on each participant payment and bonus payment, plus VAT where applicable; the minimum reward was £5.00 or $6.50 an hour |
| 21 September 2020 and 13 June 2021 | A service fee of 33% sat on top of the total participant cost; the minimum reward was £5.00 or $6.50 an hour, with £7.50 or $9.60 recommended |
| 10 May 2022 | The service fee stayed 33%; the minimum reward was £6.00 or $8.00 an hour, with no numeric recommended rate printed |
| 14 August 2023 | No fee percentage or participant pay rate was printed; the page named Pay as you go, Scale and Bespoke and said only that there was no contract or subscription, just a service fee for each completed response |
| 25 June 2025, 5 February 2026 and the live page | The platform fee is 42.8% for a corporate customer or 33.3% for an academic or non profit one; the minimum reward is £6.00 or $8.00 an hour, with £9.00 or $12.00 recommended |
The commission moved from a researcher's own choice to a fixed 12.5% plus 10p a participant across the copies of 2016 and 2017, to 30% plus VAT in the 2018 help center copy, to a 33% service fee by September 2020, a rate the copies of 2020, 2021 and 2022 all carry. The archive holds no priced copy from 2019 or 2024; the 2019 copies of both the old pricing page and the help article return a redirect or a 404. The minimum hourly reward stayed £5.00 through every copy to 2021, then moved to £6.00 from the copy of May 2022 on. The two tier fee, 42.8% for a corporate customer against 33.3% for an academic or non profit one, first appears in the copy of June 2025 and has not changed since.
Does Prolific run a feature voting board?
No. The site links no public board where customers post feature requests and vote on each other's, and no public roadmap. community.prolific.com and feedback.prolific.com do not resolve, and prolific.com's /ideas, /feedback and /roadmap addresses all return a 404.
What this costs
Lite
$9 /mo
Pro
$39 /mo
Lifetime
$999 once
Fourteen day trial of Pro, card asked for at signup. Nothing here counts the people who vote, so the bill does not move when the board starts working. The long version, with what happens if you stop paying.
VoteFirst is a feature request board: customers post requests, vote on each other's and follow a public roadmap, at $9 a month for one project or $39 for unlimited projects and colleagues, with no participant reward or platform fee to work out. Prolific recruits and pays verified research participants from its own pool across more than 40 countries, with its own identity and behavior checks on every submission, on its own count; VoteFirst does none of that, it collects and ranks what customers want built next. User Interviews prices a session with a recruited participant, Userlytics prices a session from its own panel or a customer's own participants, and Maze sells pay per use credits for its panel on its free plan. The user research shortlist sets them side by side, and the pricing hub groups every vendor by what it meters.
How were these prices read?
The current figures come from prolific.com/pricing, read on 5 October 2026 as served from the Czech Republic, from the Pay as you go and Managed services cards and the frequently asked questions beneath them. The history comes from the Internet Archive's copies of prolific.ac/about/pricing taken on 16 August 2015, 26 May 2016 and 6 June 2017, of help.prolific.ac's pricing article taken on 17 June 2018, of prolific.co/pricing taken on 21 September 2020, 13 June 2021, 10 May 2022 and 14 August 2023, and of prolific.com/pricing taken on 25 June 2025 and 5 February 2026. The main pricing address returned a redirect in the 2019 copies and the help article a 404 in the same year, and the archive holds no copy at all from 2024. Prices are quoted in US dollars; the page itself gives every rate in British pounds too, and the oldest copies also gave a euro estimate.
14 days, a card at signup, then $9 or $39 a month.