What are the cost components of an interview study?
Every study has the same four parts, whether a person or an AI runs it.
- Moderation: the time of whoever asks the questions and follows up.
- Participants: recruiting, scheduling and any incentives you pay.
- Analysis: reading transcripts, tagging, grouping themes and pulling quotes.
- Tooling: the platform, recording and storage.
With live interviews, moderation and analysis are paid in hours. Ten thirty minute interviews mean five hours on calls plus the time to schedule them and at least as long again to analyze. With an AI moderator, those two lines shrink to the plan price, and the time you spend is reviewing the guide and reading the findings.
How much does a 40 interview study cost with Moderators?
Forty chat interviews fit inside the Starter plan, which includes 100 chat interviews a month. That plan is $99 a month, or $49.50 a month when billed annually. Even at the monthly price, forty interviews is a single month of the cheapest plan. If your customers prefer talking, voice minutes are included too: Starter has 120 voice minutes, so voice suits shorter follow-ups.
Teams that run studies every week choose a larger plan. Team is $249 a month with 400 chat interviews, 300 voice minutes and 5 seats. Scale is $599 a month with 1,000 chat interviews, 750 voice minutes, 15 seats, a findings repository and an API. Enterprise is $1,499 a month with 2,500 chat interviews and 1,800 voice minutes, plus SSO, roles, an SLA and invoices. Full details are on the pricing page.
What does the same 40 interview study cost with a live moderator?
Take the same forty interviews and price the time at an assumed loaded cost of $75 an hour for a researcher. Your own rate will differ, so swap in your number. The shape of the result stays the same.
| Line | Live moderator | AI moderator on Starter |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduling and reminders | 40 interviews x 15 minutes = 10 hours | None, participants pick their own time |
| Moderation | 40 x 30 minutes = 20 hours | None |
| Analysis | About 40 hours of reading, tagging and grouping | 2 to 4 hours reviewing themes and quotes |
| Labor at $75 an hour | About $5,250 | About $150 to $300 |
| Platform fee | Recording and transcript tools | $99 for the month |
| Elapsed time | Three to four weeks | A few days, driven by when customers reply |
The labor line is an assumption, the plan price is not. Even if you halve every live estimate, the AI route still costs a small fraction, which is why teams with a steady stream of questions move routine studies to AI and keep people for the sensitive ones. If you are unsure which studies belong where, the post on AI moderator vs human moderator sorts them.
How do I pick a plan without overpaying?
Count interviews per month, not per study. If you will run one study of 40 to 80 conversations a month, Starter covers it. Two or three studies a month, or several people launching their own, points to Team. Scale adds a findings repository and an API for teams that feed results into other systems. Because unused interviews do not carry over, start one plan below your guess and move up when you hit the limit. For a sense of what to ask, see the customer interview questions set, and for sample sizes see how many user interviews you need.
Check any claim about research cost against a neutral source. The Nielsen Norman Group explains why small interview rounds already surface most problems in its article on why you only need to test with 5 users, which is a useful brake on over-buying volume.
Why do AI interview tools differ so much in price?
Four things move it.
- Public or quote-based pricing. Some vendors publish plans, others ask you to book a call first. A quote tends to include services you may not need.
- Whether a participant panel is included. Panel access costs real money per participant, so bundled panels raise the price. Moderators has no panel, so you interview customers you already have.
- Volume limits. Interviews and voice minutes per month decide which plan you land on.
- Seats and governance. SSO, roles and retention controls are what separate the top plan from the rest.
When you compare, ask for the all-in cost of the study you actually plan, including participants, not just the platform fee. If a vendor will not tell you a number before a demo, treat the cost as unknown in your budget request. Our comparison pages for the Outset alternative and the Listen Labs alternative go through this in more detail.
What costs do teams forget?
- Incentives. Paying customers for their time is separate from any software fee.
- Cleanup time. A moderator that asks weak follow-ups gives you thin transcripts that take longer to use.
- Unused limits. A plan you cannot fill is money wasted, so start on the smaller plan and move up.
- Wrong method. If you need exact percentages of customers who feel something, interviews are the wrong tool and a survey with a proper sample, such as one run on survey software where people answer by voice, fits better.
How do I keep the first study cheap?
Pick one decision, write a narrow learning goal and interview a single customer segment. Forty conversations on one question teach more than a hundred on five. See how a study runs on the AI moderated interviews page.
Run your first study
Pick a plan, send one link to your customers and read the themes with quotes.