{"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":"2026-07-02T12:25:08.393Z"},"content":[{"type":"blog","id":"c454bb12-6a0d-4944-b542-254823c9bdbe","slug":"koji-vs-cint-2026","title":"Koji vs Cint (2026): Sample Marketplace vs AI-Native Research Platform","url":"https://www.koji.so/blog/koji-vs-cint-2026","summary":"Cint is the world's largest programmatic sample marketplace — an exchange connecting surveys to hundreds of millions of respondents via 800+ integrated suppliers and 600+ exclusive panels, billed monthly per completed interview using rate-card or dynamic pricing. Cint is a supply layer: you bring the survey and the analysis. Koji is an AI-native research platform that provides the interview and the analysis — AI-moderated voice and text interviews, six structured question types (open_ended, scale, single_choice, multiple_choice, ranking, yes_no), automatic thematic analysis, and one-click reports in hours. They operate at different layers; Cint sources strangers at scale, Koji extracts depth from an audience you already have (or sample you route in). Survey completion drops 5-20% past 7-8 minutes and from ~89% to 79% as questions rise from 10 to 40, so paying per complete punishes long static surveys. Online quantitative research is ~35% of market research revenue vs 6% for online qualitative. The AI research services market was $7.97B in 2025, projected $35.42B by 2035 (16.1% CAGR). Koji pricing: free tier (10 credits), Insights €29/mo, Interviews €79/mo (text=1, voice=3).","content":"**TL;DR:** **Cint** is the world's largest programmatic *sample marketplace* — an exchange that connects your survey to hundreds of millions of respondents through **800+ integrated suppliers and 600+ exclusive panels**, billed by the completed interview. It solves one problem brilliantly: *getting people to take your survey.* **Koji** solves the other half — and arguably the harder half: actually *running a good interview and analyzing what people said.* Koji is an AI-native research platform with AI-moderated voice and text interviews, six structured question types, and automatic thematic analysis that produces a one-click report in hours. Cint gives you respondents; Koji gives you insight. If you already have an audience — your own customers, users, or community — Koji replaces both the survey tool *and* the analyst, and you may not need a sample marketplace at all.\n\n## Cint vs Koji at a glance\n\n| | **Cint** | **Koji** |\n|---|---|---|\n| **Category** | Programmatic sample marketplace | AI-native research platform |\n| **What it provides** | Respondents (supply) | The interview + the analysis |\n| **You still need** | A survey tool + an analyst | Just your questions |\n| **Method** | Whatever survey you bring | AI-moderated interviews + structured Qs |\n| **Analysis** | Not included | Automatic thematic analysis + reports |\n| **Pricing** | Per complete (rate card or dynamic) | Transparent per-conversation credits |\n| **Best for** | Buying representative sample at scale | Understanding your existing audience deeply |\n\n## What is Cint?\n\nThe Cint Exchange describes itself as the world's largest programmatic research marketplace, connecting researchers, agencies, and brands to a pool of hundreds of millions of people. Its job is matching: connecting your study \"to the right people, at the right time, for the right price.\" Under the hood, Cint aggregates supply from **more than 800 integrated suppliers and 600+ exclusive panels**, and supports both rate-card and dynamic (programmatic) pricing. Billing is monthly, based on the total volume of completes you run — regardless of target group or project status. The most sophisticated buyers use Cint's APIs to automate per-interview pricing based on survey conditions, time-in-field, and budget.\n\nHere's the critical thing to understand: **Cint is infrastructure, not a research tool.** It is a supply layer. You bring the questionnaire (built in your own survey platform), Cint routes respondents to it, and you bring the analysis (done by you, your team, or an agency). Cint is exceptional at the sourcing problem. It does nothing to help you write better questions, moderate the conversation, or interpret the answers.\n\n## What is Koji?\n\n[Koji](/) attacks the parts of research that Cint deliberately leaves to you — the asking and the analyzing — and automates them with AI.\n\n- **AI-moderated voice and text interviews.** Instead of a flat questionnaire, Koji's AI interviewer holds a real two-way conversation: it asks your questions, hears the answer, and probes follow-ups in real time — surfacing the *why* a static survey never reaches. See [AI interviews vs surveys](/docs/ai-interviews-vs-surveys).\n- **Six structured question types.** `open_ended`, `scale`, `single_choice`, `multiple_choice`, `ranking`, and `yes_no` — quantitative structure plus qualitative depth in the same study, because the AI probes on top of every structured answer.\n- **Automatic thematic analysis.** Transcripts are coded into themes and clustered into a per-question codebook across every respondent — automatically. No manual tagging, no analyst backlog.\n- **One-click reports** with quotes grounded in the source transcript.\n\nBecause the interview is conversational and AI-moderated, it also sidesteps a structural weakness of marketplace-sourced surveys: **fatigue and abandonment.** Completion rates fall sharply once a survey runs past **7–8 minutes** — anywhere from a **5% to 20%** drop — and a study that drops from 10 to 40 questions can see completion fall from roughly **89% to 79%.** When you pay per complete, every abandon is wasted money. A conversation that adapts to the respondent holds attention far better than a 40-question grid. (More: [survey data quality guide](/docs/survey-data-quality-guide).)\n\n## Where Cint wins\n\nCint is the right layer when:\n\n- You **don't have your own audience** and need to reach a representative or hard-to-find population.\n- You're running **large-scale quantitative** studies and need thousands of completes fast.\n- You want **programmatic, API-driven sourcing** integrated into an existing research-ops pipeline.\n- You already own a survey platform and analysis workflow and only need *supply*.\n\nThis is real, defensible value — and the broader market reflects it. Online and mobile *quantitative* research accounts for roughly **35%** of worldwide market research revenue, versus just **6%** for online qualitative. The quant-at-scale machine is big, and Cint is plumbing for it.\n\n## Where Koji wins\n\nKoji is the better choice when:\n\n- You **already have an audience** — customers, trial users, churned accounts, a community — and want depth from them, not strangers.\n- You need the **qualitative \"why,\"** not just incidence and counts.\n- You want **analysis included**, not a separate cost center. The AI-based research services market was worth **$7.97B in 2025** and is projected to reach **$35.42B by 2035** (a 16.1% CAGR) — growth driven overwhelmingly by automating the analysis layer Cint doesn't touch.\n- You want a **research screener** and a moderated conversation in one place. Build your qualification logic with [research screener questions](/docs/research-screener-questions), then let the AI take qualified respondents straight into the interview.\n- You want to start **today, self-serve,** without negotiating supplier rates.\n\n## Pricing: per-complete supply vs per-conversation insight\n\nCint bills monthly on completes — a pure supply cost that sits *on top of* whatever you pay for survey software and analysis. Koji folds the asking and analyzing into one transparent, self-serve price: a **free tier (10 credits)**, then **Insights at €29/mo** and **Interviews at €79/mo**, with per-conversation credits (text = 1, voice = 3) and a quality gate so only substantive conversations are billed. If you're bringing your own audience, Koji is often the *entire* cost of the study.\n\n## Which should you choose?\n\nDifferent layers, different jobs. If your bottleneck is **reaching strangers at scale for quant**, Cint is purpose-built — and you can route that sample into a Koji interview if you want depth on top. But if your bottleneck is **understanding the customers you already have** — quickly, with the analysis done for you — Koji is the AI-native platform that replaces the survey tool, the moderator, and the analyst in a single workflow.\n\n## A typical Koji workflow (no marketplace required)\n\nSay you run product at a B2B SaaS company and 30 accounts churned last quarter. With a sample marketplace you would be sourcing strangers; with Koji you talk to the people who actually left. Drop your churned-account emails into a Koji study, set a short brief — what triggered the cancellation, what nearly kept them, what they switched to — and let the AI interviewer run voice or text conversations on each respondent's schedule. It probes every answer: when someone says \"too expensive,\" the AI asks what they compared it against and what would have justified the price. Within a day you have 20+ completed interviews, automatically coded into themes like \"missing integration,\" \"onboarding friction,\" and \"champion left,\" each backed by verbatim quotes. No separate survey tool, no panel invoice, no analyst queue — just the report. That is the workflow a supply-only model like Cint cannot deliver on its own, because sourcing respondents was never the part that made research slow. The slow parts were writing good questions, moderating the conversation, and analyzing the answers — and those are exactly what Koji automates. See [customer discovery interviews at scale](/docs/customer-discovery-interviews-at-scale) for the full pattern.\n\n## Start with Koji\n\nStop paying separately for the survey, the sample, and the analyst. [Create a free Koji account](/), point the AI interviewer at your own audience, and get a thematic report from real conversations in hours — no marketplace contract, no manual coding, no research degree required.","category":"Comparisons","lastModified":"2026-06-30T03:20:04.513771+00:00","metaTitle":"Koji vs Cint (2026): Sample Marketplace vs AI Research","metaDescription":"Cint is the world's largest programmatic sample marketplace (800+ suppliers, 600+ panels) — it supplies respondents. Koji is the AI-native platform that designs, moderates, and analyzes research itself. See how they differ, why they're not really competitors, and when you need Koji.","keywords":["koji vs cint","cint alternative","cint exchange","cint pricing","cint sample marketplace","ai customer research platform","cint vs koji","programmatic sample"],"aiSummary":"Cint is the world's largest programmatic sample marketplace — an exchange connecting surveys to hundreds of millions of respondents via 800+ integrated suppliers and 600+ exclusive panels, billed monthly per completed interview using rate-card or dynamic pricing. Cint is a supply layer: you bring the survey and the analysis. Koji is an AI-native research platform that provides the interview and the analysis — AI-moderated voice and text interviews, six structured question types (open_ended, scale, single_choice, multiple_choice, ranking, yes_no), automatic thematic analysis, and one-click reports in hours. They operate at different layers; Cint sources strangers at scale, Koji extracts depth from an audience you already have (or sample you route in). Survey completion drops 5-20% past 7-8 minutes and from ~89% to 79% as questions rise from 10 to 40, so paying per complete punishes long static surveys. Online quantitative research is ~35% of market research revenue vs 6% for online qualitative. The AI research services market was $7.97B in 2025, projected $35.42B by 2035 (16.1% CAGR). Koji pricing: free tier (10 credits), Insights €29/mo, Interviews €79/mo (text=1, voice=3).","aiKeywords":["koji vs cint","cint","cint alternative","cint exchange","programmatic sample marketplace","survey panel","ai moderated interviews","automatic thematic analysis","customer research platform","sample sourcing","qualitative research","cint pricing"],"aiContentType":"comparison","faqItems":[{"answer":"Cint is a programmatic sample marketplace — it supplies respondents (800+ integrated suppliers, 600+ panels) and bills per completed interview. It does not build your survey or analyze the results. Koji is an AI-native research platform that runs the interview and the analysis: AI-moderated voice and text interviews, six structured question types, automatic thematic analysis, and one-click reports. Cint gives you people; Koji gives you insight.","question":"What is the difference between Koji and Cint?"},{"answer":"Only partially, because they solve different problems. If your bottleneck is reaching strangers at scale, Cint is purpose-built supply. If your bottleneck is understanding an audience you already have — customers, users, churned accounts — Koji replaces the survey tool, the moderator, and the analyst, so you may not need a sample marketplace at all. You can also route Cint-sourced sample into a Koji interview for depth.","question":"Is Koji a Cint alternative?"},{"answer":"Cint Exchange bills monthly based on the total volume of completes you run, using either a rate-card or dynamic (programmatic) pricing model depending on commitment. That sample cost sits on top of whatever you pay for survey software and analysis. Koji folds asking and analyzing into one transparent self-serve price: free tier (10 credits), Insights €29/mo, Interviews €79/mo, with per-conversation credits (text=1, voice=3).","question":"How does Cint pricing work?"},{"answer":"Yes. Cint is a supply layer, so you bring your own survey platform to build the questionnaire and your own workflow (or agency) to analyze responses. Koji removes both of those separate costs: it builds and moderates the interview with AI and produces the thematic analysis automatically, in one platform.","question":"Do I still need a survey tool if I use Cint?"},{"answer":"Because abandonment is wasted money. Completion rates drop 5-20% once a survey passes 7-8 minutes, and a study going from 10 to 40 questions can see completion fall from roughly 89% to 79%. When you pay Cint per complete, every abandon costs you. Koji's adaptive, AI-moderated conversation holds attention far better than a long static grid.","question":"Why does survey length matter when paying per complete?"},{"answer":"Yes — that is Koji's sweet spot. Share an interview link, email your customer list, or embed it, and Koji's AI interviewer runs the moderated conversation and analyzes it automatically. If you have your own audience, Koji is often the entire cost of the study, with no sample marketplace required.","question":"Can I use my own audience with Koji instead of buying sample?"}],"relatedTopics":["koji vs cint","cint alternative","sample marketplace","survey panel","ai moderated interviews","programmatic sampling","automatic thematic analysis","qualitative research at scale","research recruitment","customer research platform"]}],"pagination":{"total":1,"returned":1,"offset":0}}