AYTM (Ask Your Target Market) and Koji both promise faster consumer insight, but they come at the problem from opposite directions. AYTM is an agile survey platform built on a massive respondent panel — quantitative-first, with AI features bolted on. Koji is an AI-native interview platform built around real, adaptive conversations — qualitative depth at scale. This guide breaks down where each wins in 2026.
The Short Answer
AYTM is an agile consumer insights platform. Its core value is a global panel of 100 million-plus respondents combined with a survey authoring tool, a predictive sample engine, and real-time dashboards. Recent AI add-ons (its Skipper assistant and a Conversation AI module) layer automation on top of a fundamentally survey-and-panel model. It is a strong fit for fast quantitative studies — concept tests, brand tracking, and claims testing — when you need a representative sample quickly.
Koji is an AI-native customer research platform. Rather than fielding a survey to a panel, Koji deploys an AI consultant that conducts real voice or text interviews with your own customers or recruited participants, probes follow-up questions automatically, and turns every transcript into themes and a publishable report. It is built for depth: the why behind the numbers.
If you need 1,000 panel responses to a fixed questionnaire by Friday, AYTM is built for that. If you need to understand why customers churn, what they will actually pay, or how they truly react to a new concept — in their own words, at scale, analyzed automatically — Koji is the modern choice.
What Is AYTM?
AYTM is an agile market research platform aimed at go-to-market and insights teams. Its core capabilities include:
- Consumer panel — access to a global audience of 100 million-plus respondents
- Predictive sample engine — quota and sample management for representative quantitative studies
- Agile survey authoring — a survey builder with diverse question types and advanced logic
- Real-time dashboards — live monitoring and analysis of results as they come in
- Skipper AI — drafts survey methodology, surfaces findings, auto-codes open-ended responses, and translates across 40+ languages
- Conversation AI — an AI-moderated qualitative module that runs interviews at larger scale
- Service tiers — self-serve, assisted, full-service, and PhD-led custom research engagements
AYTM offers a free Lite plan, a Plus plan at around USD 150/month (or USD 1,440/year), and a custom-priced Max tier. It is a capable, established platform. The constraint is its center of gravity: AYTM is built to run surveys against a panel. Its qualitative and AI layers are additive, not the foundation — so true conversational depth is bounded by a survey-first architecture.
What Is Koji?
Koji is an AI-native research platform where the interview — not the survey — is the primitive. You write a brief (or let the AI draft one), and Koji creates an AI consultant that holds real conversations with participants over voice or text, adapting in real time to what each person says.
Key capabilities:
- AI-moderated voice and text interviews — natural, adaptive conversations with automatic follow-up probing and no moderator bias
- Six structured question types — open_ended, scale, single_choice, multiple_choice, ranking, and yes_no — capturing quantitative signal and qualitative depth in one study. See the structured questions guide
- Automatic thematic analysis — transcripts are coded and clustered into themes instantly. See how thematic analysis works
- Customizable AI consultant — tuned to your brand, tone, and research goals
- One-click reports — publishable findings with verbatim supporting quotes
- MCP integration — pipe live insights directly into Claude, Cursor, and your stack
Koji delivers the depth of a senior human-moderated interview at the scale and speed of automated software — from question to insight in hours, with no research expertise required.
Koji vs AYTM: Feature Comparison
| Capability | Koji | AYTM |
|---|---|---|
| Core method | AI-moderated voice and text interviews | Panel surveys (agile quantitative) |
| Built-in consumer panel | Bring your own + recruiting | Yes (100M+ respondents) |
| Conversational follow-up probing | Yes, automatic and adaptive | Limited (Conversation AI add-on) |
| Automatic thematic analysis | Yes, native | Yes (Skipper Autocode add-on) |
| Voice interviews | Yes | No |
| Qualitative depth | High (the why) | Moderate (survey-bound) |
| One-click qualitative reports | Yes | Dashboard-oriented |
| Self-serve starting price | EUR 29/month | Free Lite, then ~USD 150/month |
| Best for | Discovery, churn, pricing, positioning, concept | Quantitative concept tests, brand tracking, claims testing |
Depth vs Scale: The Core Trade-Off
AYTM optimizes for representative scale — getting a statistically sound read from a large panel fast. That is genuinely useful for quantitative questions like A versus B concept preference or brand awareness tracking.
Koji optimizes for conversational depth at scale. When a participant says they would not pay more, Koji asks what they are comparing the price to and what would change their mind. When someone calls a concept exciting, it digs into exactly which part and why. A survey — even an AI-assisted one on a 100-million-person panel — collects answers to the questions you already thought to ask. A Koji interview discovers the questions you did not know to ask. For pricing research and concept testing, that difference routinely separates a confident decision from a misleading one.
This is also where the broader industry is heading. In the 2025 GRIT report, only 13 percent of brand-side researchers reported high satisfaction with generative-AI tooling, and 40 percent still rank data quality as their top challenge — a direct symptom of bolting AI onto survey-and-panel models rather than rebuilding research around conversation. Meanwhile 33 percent of insights buyers now value AI literacy over traditional expertise, and teams that embed research into strategy report 2.7x better business outcomes.
Pricing Compared
AYTM offers a free Lite tier, a Plus plan around USD 150/month, and a custom Max tier — and panel sample is typically priced on top per respondent, so a fielded study can cost far more than the subscription line. Full-service and Xpert engagements are quoted separately.
Koji keeps pricing simple and credit-based, with no per-seat fees:
- Insights — EUR 29/month (29 credits)
- Interviews — EUR 79/month (79 credits)
- Enterprise — custom
Text interviews cost 1 credit, voice interviews 3 credits, and Koji's quality gate means only conversations scoring 3 or higher consume a credit — you never pay for junk. New accounts start with 10 free credits. For teams that want deep qualitative insight without panel-sample invoices, Koji is dramatically more cost-efficient.
When to Choose AYTM
- You need representative quantitative data from a large consumer panel, fast
- Your studies are concept tests, brand trackers, or claims tests measured at scale
- You want full-service or PhD-led engagements as an option
- Panel recruitment is a hard requirement and you do not have your own audience
When to Choose Koji
- You need to understand the why — motivations, objections, unmet needs, willingness to pay
- You are running discovery, churn, pricing, positioning, or concept research
- You want qualitative depth at survey-like scale, analyzed automatically
- You want voice interviews and one-click reports out of the box
- You value speed and a low, predictable price over panel volume
The Verdict
AYTM is a solid agile survey platform with a large panel and a growing AI layer — ideal when the question is quantitative and the answer needs a representative read. But surveys, however agile, are bounded by the questions you write in advance.
Koji is built for the opposite job: surfacing the reasoning, emotion, and context that drive real customer decisions, through conversations that adapt in the moment — then analyzing them automatically. For most product, marketing, and founder teams trying to understand why customers do what they do in 2026, that depth, speed, and price point make Koji the stronger choice. Many teams pair the two: AYTM to measure, Koji to understand.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Koji an AYTM alternative? Yes, for qualitative and conversational research. Koji replaces survey-and-panel studies with AI-moderated interviews that probe for depth. If your only need is large-scale representative quantitative data, AYTM's panel is purpose-built for that.
Does Koji include a consumer panel? Koji is optimized for interviewing your own customers and recruited participants. AYTM bundles a 100M+ panel; with Koji you bring your audience or recruit, which keeps studies cheaper and the insight closer to your actual users.
Which gives deeper insight? Koji. Adaptive AI follow-up probing surfaces motivations and objections that fixed survey questions miss — even AI-assisted surveys only collect answers to questions you already wrote.
Ready to go beyond panel surveys? Start with Koji free — 10 credits included, from question to insight in hours, no research expertise required.
