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Getting your incentive and participant count right before you launch saves time, budget, and frustration. An incentive that’s too low slows recruitment; a sample that’s too large burns budget before you’ve learned anything actionable. This guide walks you through both decisions so you can configure your study with confidence.

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Choosing the Right Incentive

The amount you offer depends on three factors: the type of research study, the target audience, and the time commitment you’re asking of participants. Higher-effort sessions and harder-to-reach audiences warrant higher pay.
Use these signals to adjust your incentive mid-study if recruitment stalls:
  • Increase pay for senior-level professionals or participants with high-demand, specialized skills — their time is scarcer and they have a higher opportunity cost.
  • Complex or sensitive topics (healthcare decisions, financial stress, workplace conflict) require higher incentives to compensate participants for the extra cognitive or emotional effort.
  • If recruitment is running slow, raising the per-minute rate is one of the fastest levers you can pull to speed things up without changing your screener criteria.

Consumer audiences

Standard rates apply for general-population consumers. Adjust upward for longer sessions or topics that require personal disclosure.

Professional & B2B audiences

Senior managers, specialists, and executives command higher rates. Budget accordingly when targeting decision-makers.

Sensitive research topics

Studies covering health, finances, or personal hardship should offer premium incentives to reflect the emotional investment participants make.

Slow-recruiting studies

Raise the per-minute rate rather than lowering your screener bar. You’ll attract more qualified participants without compromising data quality.

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Choosing How Many Participants to Invite

The right sample size depends on your research goals and study type. Generative discovery studies need fewer participants to surface repeating themes, while evaluative or quantitative studies typically require more to produce statistically meaningful patterns.
Start small, analyze results, and scale up if needed. It’s faster and cheaper to add participants after reviewing early findings than to over-recruit upfront. Use the Audience Extension feature to top up your order once you know how many more sessions you need.
For open-ended discovery — understanding motivations, pain points, or mental models — 5–8 participants per distinct segment is usually enough to reach thematic saturation. Themes stop being novel faster than most researchers expect.
Classic usability research suggests 5 participants uncovers ~85% of major usability issues. Run a first wave of 5, fix the biggest issues, then test again.
For evaluating reactions to specific concepts, messaging, or prototypes, 10–15 participants gives you enough range to see divergent responses across segments.
When you need statistical confidence — for example, measuring feature preference across a population — plan for 50+ participants and consult a sample size calculator based on your margin of error requirements.
If your study covers multiple distinct audience segments, apply your target count per segment, not as a total across all groups.