You pay for research on CleverX with credits. One credit is one dollar, and each completed response costs a set number of credits depending on the method you choose and who you're recruiting.
Participant incentives are separate, and you see the full cost before you launch.
What a response costs
Credits are charged per completed response.
Method | Your own audience | Consumer | Professional |
Survey | 4 | 15 | 50 |
Unmoderated test | 8 | 25 | 115 |
AI interview | 14 | 35 | 125 |
Moderated interview | 15 | 55 | 250 |
Three things drive the number:
Method: longer, deeper methods cost more than short ones.
Audience: harder audiences cost more than easier ones.
Who supplies the people: bringing your own costs least.
Why professional audiences cost more
The gap between a consumer response and a professional one is recruitment work.
Consumer audiences are reachable through panel partnerships. Professional audiences often aren't, particularly when you need a specific role, in a specific industry, with specific recent experience. Somebody has to go and find those people, check they are who they say they are, and get them booked into your study.
That work is our recruitment team, and it's included in the credit price on every professional study. There's no separate recruitment fee.
Incentives are separate
Credits cover running the study and finding the people. The incentive is what the participant is paid for their time, and it's shown as its own line.
Keeping them separate means you can see exactly what you're paying for, and what reaches the participant.
Bringing your own audience
If you already have the people, inviting them yourself is the cheapest route by a wide margin, a survey costs 4 credits per response instead of 50.
You're paying for the platform, the screener, the recording and the analysis. You're not paying for recruitment, because you did it.
Your rate is fixed when you launch
The rate for a study is set at launch and stays there. If pricing changes later, studies already running are unaffected.
Working out a study's cost
Multiply the per-response rate by the number of responses you want, then add your incentive budget.
Example: thirty professional AI interviews at 125 credits = 3,750 credits = $3,750, plus whatever you're paying each participant.
You'll see this calculated for you before you launch, so there's no need to work it out by hand, but it's worth understanding the shape of it when you're planning a budget.
đ¸ Screenshot: Cost breakdown at launch (credits + incentives shown separately)
Buying credits
Credits are bought separately from your plan. Plans cover seats and platform features; credits cover running studies.
See Plans and what's included for what each plan includes.
If a cost looks wrong
If the credits charged for a study don't match what you expected, contact us with the study name. We'll break down the calculation and explain it.