{"site":{"name":"Koji","description":"AI-native customer research platform that helps teams conduct, analyze, and synthesize customer interviews at scale.","url":"https://www.koji.so","contentTypes":["blog","documentation"],"lastUpdated":"2026-10-20T19:48:18.053Z"},"content":[{"type":"blog","id":"17776947-acdb-471e-b648-492154a857b2","slug":"dscout-vs-user-interviews-2026","title":"dscout vs User Interviews (2026): Diary Studies or a Recruiting Marketplace?","url":"https://www.koji.so/blog/dscout-vs-user-interviews-2026","summary":"dscout is a research platform for diary studies, Express missions and live sessions, sold on quote-based annual contracts, with 100,000+ active Scouts plus 3M+ partner panel participants. User Interviews is a participant recruiting marketplace, acquired by UserTesting in January 2026, with a combined 7.6M-person network and published fees of about $49 per completed session plus incentives; it does not run or analyse sessions. Koji is an AI interview platform that recruits from your own list or a panel in 130+ countries and runs and analyses voice and text interviews, priced in credits at one euro each.","content":"**Short answer:** dscout and User Interviews solve different problems. dscout is a research platform built around diary studies (\"missions\"), short video responses and live sessions, sold on quote-based annual contracts with no public prices. User Interviews is a recruiting marketplace: it finds, screens, schedules and pays participants for research you run somewhere else, with a published rate of about $49 per completed session on Pay As You Go. Pick dscout if you need people to record their lives over days or weeks. Pick User Interviews if you already have a way to run sessions and just need the right people in them. If what you actually need is the interviews themselves, recruited, run and analysed in one place, an AI interview platform such as Koji covers both halves, on self-serve pricing.\n\nPeople search \"dscout vs User Interviews\" because both show up when you need participants. That's where the similarity mostly ends. One sells a way of doing research. The other sells access to people. Knowing which one you're buying saves a long sales cycle.\n\n## The quick comparison\n\nHere is how the three options line up on the things buyers usually ask about first.\n\n|                       | dscout                                             | User Interviews                                  | Koji                                                    |\n| --------------------- | -------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------- |\n| What it is            | Research platform for diary and in-context studies | Participant recruiting marketplace               | AI interview platform with built-in recruiting          |\n| Main research formats | Diary missions, Express, Live sessions             | None of its own, you run sessions in other tools | AI-moderated voice and text interviews                  |\n| Participant source    | Its Scout panel plus partner panels                | Its own network, now combined with UserTesting's | Your own list, or Koji's panel in 130+ countries        |\n| Who moderates         | Your team                                          | Your team                                        | The AI interviewer                                      |\n| Analysis              | Video clips, tagging and AI analysis of missions   | Not included                                     | Themes, findings and reports built as interviews arrive |\n| How you buy           | Quote-based annual contract                        | Published per-session fees, incentives extra     | Self-serve credits, free to start                       |\n\n![Table comparing dscout, User Interviews and Koji on what each is, research formats, participant source, who moderates, analysis and how you buy](/visuals/dscout-vs-user-interviews-vs-koji-comparison-table/dscout-vs-user-interviews-vs-koji-comparison-table.png \"Most teams compare these two before noticing they do different jobs\")\n\n## What dscout does best\n\ndscout made its name on diary studies. Participants, called Scouts, complete \"missions\": a sequence of short prompts answered with video, photos and text over days or weeks, in the place where the behaviour happens. If you want to see how someone actually cooks dinner on a Tuesday, or how a nurse uses a device across a full shift, that in-context video is hard to beat.\n\nAround the diary product, dscout sells Express (short, fast missions for quick reactions) and Live (moderated video interviews inside the platform). Its own materials describe a pool of **100,000+ active, verified Scouts**, plus **3 million+ more participants reached through partner panels** ([dscout](https://dscout.com/lp/dscout-info)). The same page lists AI features for spotting AI-generated responses during recruiting and for refining questions and drafting follow-ups.\n\nWhere dscout gets harder is cost and access. There is no self-serve tier. PricingSaaS lists all three plans (Core, Select and Enterprise) as price not disclosed ([PricingSaaS](https://pricingsaas.com/companies/dscout)), and our own [dscout pricing breakdown](/blog/dscout-pricing-2026) found negotiated contracts with a median near $49,250 a year. That makes sense for a research team running several longitudinal studies a year. It's a lot for a product manager with one question.\n\n## What User Interviews does best\n\nUser Interviews does one thing and does it well: it gets qualified people into your sessions. You write a screener, set targeting, and it handles outreach, scheduling, reminders and incentive payouts. Then you run the session in Zoom, Lookback, Maze or whatever you already use.\n\nIts scale grew this year. In January 2026, UserTesting announced it had acquired User Interviews. At the time User Interviews reported a network of **more than 6 million participants**, and UserTesting said it serves **more than 3,000 customers, including 75 of the Fortune 100** ([Business Wire](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260107716032/en/UserTesting-Acquires-User-Interviews-to-Strengthen-the-Industrys-Most-Comprehensive-Customer-Insights-Solution-for-the-AI-Era)). Its 2026 Panel Book now describes a combined, de-duplicated network of **7.6 million participants**, and reports a **7.3% no-show rate** for moderated sessions ([User Interviews Panel Book](https://www.userinterviews.com/panel)).\n\nPricing is published, which is rare in this category. Third-party listings put Recruit at about **$49 per completed session** on Pay As You Go and $41 on the Essential annual plan, which carries a 60-session minimum ([G2](https://www.g2.com/products/user-interviews/pricing)). Incentives are paid on top. For B2B audiences, targeting add-ons and higher incentives push the real cost per participant far above the headline fee, as we worked through in [User Interviews pricing](/blog/user-interviews-pricing-2026).\n\nThe limit is the product boundary. User Interviews fills your calendar. Someone on your team still has to run every session, take notes and turn 20 hours of calls into findings.\n\n## The real difference: method versus supply\n\nPut plainly:\n\n- **dscout is a method.** You buy it because you want diary or in-context research, and recruiting comes bundled with it.\n- **User Interviews is supply.** You buy it because you already know how you'll run research and you're short on people.\n\nThat's why \"which is better\" is the wrong question. A team that needs a three-week diary study of new parents won't get it from User Interviews alone. A team that needs 12 senior finance leads on Zoom next week will find dscout's contract model slow and expensive for that job.\n\nThe common thread is recruiting. In a UserTesting survey of enterprise UX teams, recruiting participants was the most-cited challenge, with **47% of votes** ([UserTesting](https://www.usertesting.com/blog/participant-recruitment)). Both tools exist because finding the right people is the slowest part of research. Neither, on its own, removes the second slowest part: running and analysing the conversations.\n\n## Where Koji fits\n\nKoji takes a third route. Instead of selling a diary method or a list of people, it runs the interviews.\n\nYou describe what you want to learn, and Koji drafts the research brief and interview guide. Participants then talk to an AI interviewer by voice or text, in their own language (28 are supported), and it asks follow-up questions the way a trained moderator would. Answers turn into themes, findings and a report while the study is still in field.\n\nFor participants, you have two options:\n\n1. **Bring your own.** Share an interview link, or import a CSV and give each person their own private invite link ([importing participants](/docs/importing-participants-csv)). Personal links are available on the Interviews and Enterprise plans.\n2. **Recruit from Koji's panel.** From a study's Panel recruit tab, describe your audience in plain language, and Koji finds them through the Cint Exchange in 130+ countries. You see the price per completed interview before launch, and launching needs a paid plan. See [panel recruitment](/docs/panel-recruitment) for how targeting and pricing work.\n\nScreening questions run before every interview, whichever route the participant came in by, and anyone who doesn't qualify is turned away ([screener questions guide](/docs/screener-questions-guide)).\n\n![Koji screener question asking participants which role best describes them, with Product manager selected](/email/shots/shot-screener.jpg \"A screening question runs before the interview, for panel and invited participants alike\")\n\nYou also don't pay for weak conversations. Every interview gets a quality score from 1 to 5, and only those scoring 3 or more use credits or enter the report ([how the quality gate works](/docs/how-the-quality-gate-works)). For panel interviews, a respondent has to answer at least 60 percent of the study's interview questions to count as a complete. Otherwise you are not charged for them.\n\nCosts are simple. One credit is €1. A text interview uses 1 credit and a voice interview 3. Plans start at €29 a month for Insights, with Interviews at €79 a month, and there is a free tier to try it.\n\nWhat Koji doesn't do is multi-week diary missions with photo and video uploads. If watching behaviour unfold in someone's kitchen over 14 days is the point of your study, dscout is built for that. Our [diary study guide](/docs/diary-study-guide) covers when that method is worth its cost.\n\n## Who should pick which\n\n**Choose dscout if** you run longitudinal or in-context research several times a year, need participant video as evidence, and have an annual research budget that can absorb a quote-based contract.\n\n![A product team around a table with laptops, talking through which research tool fits the questions they need answered](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1758518729685-f88df7890776?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3w5NDUzMDN8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHw5fHxwcm9kdWN0JTIwdGVhbSUyMG1lZXRpbmclMjBsYXB0b3BzJTIwZGlzY3Vzc2lvbnxlbnwxfDB8fHwxNzkyNDc1NDEzfDA&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=80&w=1080)\n\n_Photo by [Vitaly Gariev](https://unsplash.com/@silverkblack?utm_source=koji&utm_medium=referral) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=koji&utm_medium=referral)_\n\n**Choose User Interviews if** you have researchers who moderate their own sessions, already own the tools to run and analyse them, and mainly need a reliable supply of screened people, including B2B professionals.\n\n**Choose Koji if** you want the conversations themselves: dozens of in-depth interviews with your customers or a targeted audience, run without scheduling a single call, and analysed by the time the last one finishes. It suits product managers, founders and small research teams who'd otherwise spend weeks on recruiting and moderation.\n\nSome teams use more than one. A research team might keep dscout for an annual diary study and run Koji for the weekly questions that come up between big projects. Before you sign anything, work through the questions below with your team.\n\n![Checklist of eight questions to ask before choosing a research recruiting setup, from monthly volume to data portability](/visuals/research-recruiting-platform-checklist/research-recruiting-platform-checklist.png \"Answer these before a sales call, so the call is about your needs and not theirs\")\n\n## The bottom line\n\ndscout and User Interviews are both good at what they were built for. dscout gives you rich, in-context diary research at enterprise prices. User Interviews gives you people, transparently priced, and leaves the research to you. Neither one interviews anyone for you.\n\nIf your real bottleneck is getting from a question to evidence, try running the study in Koji. Write your research question, pick your participants or recruit from the panel, and read the first findings the same day. [Start free on Koji](/signup) and see what your audience says.\n","category":"Comparisons","lastModified":"2026-10-20T06:20:14.315576+00:00","metaTitle":"dscout vs User Interviews (2026): Features, Pricing, Fit","metaDescription":"dscout vs User Interviews compared: diary studies vs a recruiting marketplace, pricing, panel size, the UserTesting deal, and when Koji is the better fit.","keywords":["dscout vs user interviews","user interviews vs dscout","dscout pricing","user interviews pricing","participant recruitment platforms","diary study platform","dscout alternative","user interviews alternative"],"aiSummary":"dscout is a research platform for diary studies, Express missions and live sessions, sold on quote-based annual contracts, with 100,000+ active Scouts plus 3M+ partner panel participants. User Interviews is a participant recruiting marketplace, acquired by UserTesting in January 2026, with a combined 7.6M-person network and published fees of about $49 per completed session plus incentives; it does not run or analyse sessions. Koji is an AI interview platform that recruits from your own list or a panel in 130+ countries and runs and analyses voice and text interviews, priced in credits at one euro each.","aiKeywords":["dscout","User Interviews","UserTesting acquisition","participant recruitment","diary studies","AI interview platform"],"aiContentType":"comparison","faqItems":[{"answer":"dscout is a research platform built around diary studies, short Express missions and live sessions, with participants from its own Scout panel and partner panels. User Interviews is a recruiting marketplace that finds, screens, schedules and pays participants for sessions you run in other tools. dscout sells a research method; User Interviews sells access to people.","question":"What is the difference between dscout and User Interviews?"},{"answer":"User Interviews publishes its prices: third-party listings put Recruit at about $49 per completed session on Pay As You Go and $41 on the Essential annual plan with a 60-session minimum, with incentives paid on top. dscout publishes no prices; all three plans are quote-based annual contracts.","question":"How much does User Interviews cost compared with dscout?"},{"answer":"No. User Interviews recruits and schedules participants and handles incentives. Your team still moderates each session in another tool and analyses the results.","question":"Does User Interviews run or analyse the interviews?"},{"answer":"Yes. UserTesting announced it had acquired User Interviews in January 2026. User Interviews' 2026 Panel Book describes a combined, de-duplicated network of 7.6 million participants.","question":"Is User Interviews part of UserTesting now?"},{"answer":"Koji does both. You can invite your own participants or recruit from Koji's panel in 130+ countries on a paid plan, and an AI interviewer runs each voice or text interview and builds the report as answers arrive. A text interview uses 1 credit and a voice interview 3, at one euro per credit. Koji does not run multi-week diary missions.","question":"Is there an option that recruits and runs the interviews too?"}],"relatedTopics":["dscout","User Interviews","participant recruitment","diary studies","AI-moderated interviews"]}],"pagination":{"total":1,"returned":1,"offset":0}}