Short answer: Bolt Insight and Koji both use an AI moderator to run one-to-one qualitative interviews at scale, but they are sold to different buyers. Bolt Insight's BoltChatAI is built for global consumer brands: it designs the discussion guide, recruits through panel partners in many markets and returns a report, usually within a day by its own account, priced through a sales conversation. Koji is self-serve: you type a research question, an AI interviewer runs voice, text or phone interviews in 28 languages with your own customers or Koji's research panel, and every finding in the report links to the quotes behind it. Plans are public, from a free account to €79 a month. Pick Bolt Insight if you are a CPG insights team running multi-country consumer studies and want a managed partner. Pick Koji if you want to run your own studies this week, as often as you need, at a price you can see before you start.
Koji vs Bolt Insight at a glance
| Bolt Insight (BoltChatAI) | Koji | |
|---|---|---|
| Interview format | AI-moderated chat; answers by text, audio, video or images | AI voice and text interviews, plus phone calls |
| Who builds the study | BoltChatAI drafts the guide from your objective and audience | You, with a research assistant that drafts the brief |
| Participants | Recruited through global panel partners | Your own customers by link or CSV, or Koji's research panel |
| Languages and markets | 50+ languages and 120+ markets on its homepage; other Bolt pages give lower counts | 28 interview languages |
| Turnaround | Reports in as little as 24 hours, per Bolt | Results update as each interview finishes |
| Buying model | Contact sales, no public price list | Self-serve with public pricing |
| Best fit | Global CPG and consumer brands | Product, research and marketing teams of any size |
Why AI-moderated qual is now a buying decision
Two years ago, an AI moderator was an experiment. Now most research teams use some form of AI. In Qualtrics' 2025 Market Research Trends report, a survey of more than 3,000 researchers in 14 countries, 89% said they use AI tools regularly or in experimental phases, and 83% of organisations planned to significantly increase AI investment (Qualtrics).
The evidence that AI moderation gets more out of people is also firmer than it was. In a randomised experiment on the Verasight panel with 3,160 respondents, AI-moderated interviews produced 4.8 times as many words in free-response questions as standard written open-ends. The same study found completion fell from 99.4% to 40.5%, with drop-off concentrated among people less comfortable with AI tools (Verasight, August 2026). Both numbers matter when you pick a platform: you want the depth, and you want to know how a vendor handles the people who leave.
Money is following. Bolt Insight raised £7 million in December 2025, led by Pembroke VCT, to scale BoltChatAI internationally (Research Live). So the real question for a buyer is no longer whether to use an AI moderator, but which kind of vendor fits how your team works.
What Bolt Insight does
Bolt Insight is a London company founded by Hakan Yurdakul, who spent 14 years at Unilever, and Kerem Turgay. Its product, BoltChatAI, launched in 2022 (Bolt Insight). What it says about itself:
- One-to-one AI moderation. BoltChatAI runs individual interviews that probe vague answers and pick up contradictions. Participants can respond by text, audio, video or images.
- A guide drafted for you. You give it a research objective and a target audience, and it drafts the discussion guide.
- Many markets. Its homepage claims 50+ languages and 120+ markets. Other Bolt pages give 25+ languages across 40+ countries, so ask which languages your markets get before you commit.
- Panel partners. Participants come through global panel partners rather than your own customer list.
- Fast reports. Bolt says reports can arrive within about 24 hours.
- Newer features. It has added Dynamic Personas and a Meta-Analysis feature for comparing trends across past qual and quant studies (CustomerThink).
- CPG clients. The company says 11 of the world's top 15 consumer packaged goods companies use it, including Unilever, Danone and Reckitt, and that it has interviewed more than 5 million consumers.
Pricing. Bolt Insight does not publish prices. GetApp lists a starting price of US$9,950 on a flat-rate model, but that listing rests on three reviews, so treat it as a rough signal and ask for a quote (GetApp).
Limits worth knowing. Most of the scale figures above come from Bolt's own marketing, and its pages disagree on language and market counts. Independent reviews are thin. And because studies are built around panel recruitment and sold through sales, it suits planned consumer projects better than a product manager's question on a Tuesday afternoon.
What Koji does
Koji is an AI-native research platform you run yourself. You type what you want to learn, the research assistant drafts a brief, and an AI interviewer holds the conversations. What it does today:
- Voice, text and phone interviews. Participants choose to talk or type, and you can also send a call-back link or have Koji call a list of numbers. Interviews run in 28 languages. Voice interviews are on the Interviews and Enterprise plans; text works on every plan.
- Open questions with structure. Mix open questions, which the AI follows up on, with scales, single choice, multiple choice, ranking and yes/no questions in one interview.
- Screening first. Screening questions turn away people who don't qualify before the conversation starts.
- Your customers or a panel. Share a link, import a CSV so each person gets a private invite link (Interviews and Enterprise), or recruit from Koji's research panel on paid plans, with the cost shown before you launch.
- A quality gate. Every interview gets a quality score from 1 to 5. Only interviews scoring 3 or more use credits or enter the report.
- Reports you can check. Findings, themes and personas, each finding linked to the quotes behind it.
- Free previews. Take your own interview by text or voice before launch. Previews never use credits.
Pricing. A free account comes with 10 credits. Insights is €29 a month with 29 credits, Interviews is €79 a month with 79 credits, and Enterprise is priced on request. A text interview uses 1 credit, a voice interview 3, and phone calls 0.6 credits a minute. Extra credits are €1 each.
Where they differ
A managed consumer study or a tool you drive
Bolt Insight is closer to an AI-powered research partner. You bring an objective, it brings the guide, the panel and the report. That is a good fit for a brand team that runs a set number of big studies a year across many countries.
Koji hands you the controls. A product manager can go from a question to a live interview in an afternoon, read the first answers the same day and change the brief for the next wave. Teams that want to talk to customers every week tend to need that.
Who you interview
BoltChatAI recruits consumers through panel partners. That is its strength for category and concept work. Koji does panel recruitment too, but most Koji studies start with people you already know: your trial users, churned accounts or B2B buyers, invited by link or a CSV of personal links. Those people are rarely on a consumer panel.
Photo by LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash
Media
Bolt accepts audio, video and image answers, which helps for packaging or in-home tasks. Koji is voice and text, with phone calls. There is no video or photo upload, so if you need participants to show you a product on a shelf, Bolt fits better.
How you buy
Bolt needs a sales conversation. Koji publishes its prices and charges only for interviews that pass the quality gate. You can price a 40-interview voice study before you sign up: 120 credits.
Before you sign with either
Put the same questions to both vendors. Take a test interview yourself, ask how low-effort answers are handled and whether you pay for them, and trace one finding back to the raw quotes.
Who should choose which
Choose Bolt Insight if:
- You are a consumer or CPG brand running concept, packaging or usage studies in many countries.
- You want the vendor to draft the guide, recruit the sample and deliver a report.
- You need participants to send photos or video as part of the task.
Choose Koji if:
- You want to run interviews yourself, quickly and often, without a sales cycle.
- Your participants are your own customers or users, including B2B buyers.
- You want scales and choice questions inside the same conversation, and every finding traceable to quotes.
- You want to see the price first and pay only for interviews that pass a quality check.
The bottom line
Bolt Insight is a credible, funded choice for global consumer brands that want a managed AI-moderated study. Koji is the faster and more open choice for teams that want to run their own AI interviews: voice, text or phone, 28 languages, a quality gate on every interview and public prices from free.
Try Koji free
The quickest way to compare is to run a study. Create a free Koji account, type your research question, preview the interview yourself and send it to ten customers. Your 10 signup credits cover ten text interviews, enough to see the report before you spend anything. For a wider view, see our guide to AI-moderated interview platforms, or compare Koji with GetWhy, another platform built for consumer brands.
