Listen Labs is one of the most-funded names in AI customer research. After raising $69M in 2026 and growing revenue 15x in nine months to cross eight figures in ARR, it has become the default reference point for enterprise teams that want to replace surveys, focus groups, and traditional in-depth interviews with AI-moderated conversations at scale.
Koji is the AI-native alternative built for a much broader audience: founders, product managers, UX researchers, B2B marketers, and consultancies who want the exact same outcome — AI-moderated voice and text interviews with their own customers, automatic thematic analysis, and one-click reports — but with interviews as low as €1 per qualified interview and €3 per qualified voice interview, no subscription, no annual contract, no sales call, and no minimum project commitment.
This guide is for the buyer who is comparing the two and wants a real, specific answer to the question: which one is the right fit for our team? We will be specific about where each tool wins, where each one falls short, and what switching looks like in practice.
TL;DR — One-Sentence Summary
Listen Labs is the right tool when you are an enterprise research or insights team with a six-figure annual budget, a long enterprise sales cycle is not a blocker, and you need a vendor with a high-touch services layer.
Koji is the right tool when you want the same AI-moderated interview workflow — voice, text, structured questions, automatic analysis, customizable AI consultants — but you want self-serve onboarding, transparent pricing as low as €1 per qualified interview, and the ability to run your first study within 15 minutes of signing up.
Side-by-Side Feature Comparison
| Feature | Koji | Listen Labs |
|---|---|---|
| AI-moderated voice interviews | ✅ Yes (ElevenLabs voice stack) | ✅ Yes |
| AI-moderated text interviews | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Real-time AI follow-up probing | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Structured question types | ✅ 6 types (open, scale, single-choice, multi-choice, ranking, yes/no) | Limited — primarily open-ended |
| Automatic thematic analysis | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Customizable AI consultants | ✅ Yes — train consultants on your domain | Limited |
| One-click reports | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Multilingual interviews | ✅ 30+ languages | ✅ 100+ languages |
| Quality gate (only quality interviews count) | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| MCP integration (Claude, Cursor) | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| Self-serve signup | ✅ Yes — start in minutes | ❌ Sales-led only |
| Starting price | Free 10 credits, then from €1 per qualified interview, €3 voice, pay as you go | Custom (typically $20K+/year) |
| Free tier | ✅ 10 free credits at signup | ❌ No |
| Annual contract required | ❌ No | ✅ Typically yes |
Where Listen Labs Wins
Listen Labs has built a serious enterprise product with a polished services layer. There are three areas where it remains the stronger choice:
1. Enterprise procurement and white-glove onboarding. Listen Labs is built around a sales-led motion. If you work at a brand where every new vendor goes through procurement, security review, and a 60–90 day onboarding cycle anyway, Listen Labs is purpose-built for that motion. They will assign a customer success manager, run training, and integrate with your panel providers.
2. Hundred-plus language coverage. Listen Labs supports 100+ languages for transcription and translation. Koji supports 30+. If you are running a global CPG study across 40 markets simultaneously, Listen Labs' language breadth is a real advantage.
3. Brand recognition with executive stakeholders. Listen Labs has invested heavily in marketing — including a viral billboard hiring stunt — and is increasingly recognized in enterprise insights communities. If your CMO has heard of Listen Labs and wants you to "evaluate the AI research thing", that's a real buying signal that can shorten internal selling.
Where Koji Wins
For everyone outside that enterprise procurement profile — which is the vast majority of teams running customer research today — Koji is the stronger choice.
1. You can actually start today. Koji is fully self-serve. You sign up, get 10 free credits, design your first AI-moderated interview study using the AI consultant, and share a link with participants, typically in under 15 minutes. You do not need your own audience either. If you have a list, a product, or a community, Koji interviews them. If you do not, Koji recruits the people for you: describe the audience you want and Koji returns a live per-respondent quote in credits that you approve before launch. Listen Labs requires a sales call, a custom quote, and a contract before you can run a single interview.
2. Transparent, accessible pricing. Koji prices one thing: the interview. Interviews start as low as €1 per qualified interview and €3 per qualified voice interview. Start with pay as you go. No subscription needed. You pay only for the interviews your study actually uses, and volume pricing and plans are there when you want them. There is no overage. There is no hidden ramp, no annual minimum, and no "contact us for pricing" wall. You know exactly what you will pay before you sign up.
3. Structured questions inside conversational interviews. This is one of Koji's biggest technical differentiators. While Listen Labs is primarily open-ended conversation, Koji supports six structured question types that the AI moderator can ask inside the same interview: open-ended, scale (1–5, 1–10, NPS), single-choice, multiple-choice, ranking, and yes/no. This means a single Koji interview can do what previously required both a survey and an interview — quantitative reads and qualitative depth in the same conversation. Read more in our structured questions guide.
4. Customizable AI consultants for your domain. Koji lets you train AI consultants on your company context, brand voice, and research priorities. The consultant then helps draft research briefs, generate interview questions, and analyze responses through your specific lens. Listen Labs offers AI assistance, but the level of customization on Koji is meaningfully deeper.
5. Quality gate. Koji only counts interviews that pass an automatic quality score (3+ on a 5-point scale). Junk responses, half-finished interviews, and low-engagement conversations do not consume your credits. Listen Labs charges per interview attempted regardless of quality.
6. Native MCP integration for AI agent workflows. Koji exposes its full research workflow through the Model Context Protocol — meaning Claude, Cursor, and other AI agents can launch studies, pull insights, and run analyses programmatically. This is meaningful for product teams that want continuous discovery embedded directly in their tooling. Listen Labs has no equivalent. See our MCP overview for more detail.
7. Voice and text in one platform. Koji participants can choose voice or text mode, and you can analyze both side-by-side. This dramatically improves response rates for B2B audiences (where executives often prefer text on mobile during a commute over a 20-minute voice call).
Pricing Comparison
| Plan | Koji | Listen Labs |
|---|---|---|
| Entry tier | Pay as you go, no subscription, from €1 per qualified interview | Not available — enterprise only |
| Mid tier | Plans that add team workspaces, when you want them | Custom |
| Annual savings | Annual is the cheapest per interview, as low as €1 per qualified interview | Negotiated per contract |
| Top-ups when credits run out | Your study pauses until you top up; nothing is ever charged automatically | Custom |
| Free tier | 10 credits at signup | None |
Why this matters. A team that runs 25 voice interviews per month pays from €75 a month, at €3 per qualified voice interview. The same volume on Listen Labs typically lands in a five-figure annual contract, several times the price for the same outcome at small scale. Listen Labs' unit economics start to make sense at hundreds of interviews per month with services attached. Below that threshold, Koji is the clearly more efficient choice.
Use Case Fit — Which Should You Pick?
Pick Koji if you are:
- A founder validating a startup idea with 15–30 customer interviews
- A product manager running continuous discovery interviews weekly
- A UX researcher wanting AI-moderated interviews without enterprise sales
- A B2B marketer running win-loss interviews with closed-lost prospects
- A consultancy delivering customer research to multiple SMB clients
- An agency that needs to white-label or bring-your-own-key research
Pick Listen Labs if you are:
- A Fortune 500 insights team with a six-figure annual research budget
- Working on global CPG studies across 40+ markets simultaneously
- Required by procurement to use a vendor with a dedicated CSM
- Already standardized on a sales-led enterprise vendor model
What Switching From Listen Labs to Koji Looks Like
Most teams that move to Koji from Listen Labs report the same three reasons: faster setup, transparent pricing, and the ability to give research access to non-researchers (PMs, founders, marketers) without expanding their license footprint.
The migration is straightforward: export your discussion guide, paste it into Koji's research brief editor, and let Koji's AI consultant convert it into a structured study with the right mix of open-ended and structured questions. You can typically rebuild a Listen Labs study in Koji in 30 minutes. See our from-survey-to-conversation guide for migration patterns.
Industry Context — Why This Comparison Matters Now
The shift from traditional and panel-based research to AI-moderated interviews is no longer experimental. According to Maze's 2026 Future of User Research Report, 69% of research teams now use AI in at least some research projects — a 19% increase year-over-year. Teams report 63% faster turnaround times, 60% improved efficiency, and 56% more optimized workflows.
The number of organizations where research is essential to all levels of business strategy nearly tripled in a single year — from 8% in 2025 to 22% in 2026. The implication is clear: research is being democratized, embedded in product workflows, and run by non-researchers more than ever before. The platforms that win in 2026 are the ones that make this accessible — not the ones with the longest enterprise sales cycle.
The Bottom Line
Listen Labs is a great enterprise platform with strong product fundamentals. But for the vast majority of teams running customer research in 2026, the right answer is the platform you can sign up for in 60 seconds, run your first AI-moderated voice interview before lunch, and pay for in credits as you go, not a five-figure annual contract.
Koji gives you the full AI-moderated interview workflow — voice, text, structured questions, automatic analysis, customizable AI consultants, MCP integration, one-click reports — at a price and onboarding speed that fits how modern product teams actually work.
Try Koji Free
Sign up at koji.so and get 10 free credits at signup — enough to run your first AI-moderated interview study today, no credit card required. From question to insight in hours, not weeks.
Want to dig deeper before signing up? Read our guides on AI moderated interviews, structured questions, and the AI consultant to see exactly how Koji works under the hood.
