Short answer: Qualzy and Koji both help research teams collect qualitative data online, but they run very different kinds of study. Qualzy is an asynchronous qual platform: you build communities, diary studies and homework tasks from more than 15 activity types, participants respond over days or weeks, and AI transcribes and summarises each response as it arrives. Koji runs AI-moderated interviews: one conversation per participant, by voice, text or phone, where the AI asks follow-up questions in real time and a report builds as interviews finish. Pick Qualzy if your method is a moderated community or a multi-week diary with tasks like card sorts and mood boards. Pick Koji if you need many one-to-one interviews quickly, with probing on every answer, a quality score on every conversation and public pricing from free.
Koji vs Qualzy at a glance
| Qualzy | Koji | |
|---|---|---|
| Method | Async communities, diaries and tasks | AI-moderated one-to-one interviews |
| Who moderates | Your researchers, with AI follow-up prompts | The AI interviewer, with follow-ups in real time |
| Activity types | 15+, including video tasks, card sorts and mood boards | Open questions plus scales, choice, ranking and yes/no |
| Participant time | Repeated entries over days or weeks | One conversation, usually minutes |
| Languages | AI translation in 30+ languages, per Qualzy | Interviews in 28 languages |
| Pricing | Per project or by participant slots | Public pricing; credits per completed interview |
| Best fit | Agencies running communities and diary studies | Teams that need many interviews, fast |
Why this comparison comes up
Agencies and insight teams are rebuilding their qual toolkits around 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).
That leaves two broad routes for online qual. One keeps the classic methods, like communities and diaries, and uses AI to speed up analysis. Qualzy takes that route. The other hands the moderation itself to AI, so one interviewer can talk to hundreds of people at once. Koji takes that one. The evidence on the second route has grown: in a randomised experiment with 3,160 people on the Verasight panel, AI-moderated interviews produced 4.8 times as many words as written open-ends, though completion fell from 99.4% to 40.5% (Verasight, August 2026). Depth goes up, and you have to plan for the people who won't talk to an AI.
Language is the other pressure. CSA Research found that 76% of 8,709 consumers in 29 countries prefer product information in their own language (CSA Research). Both tools take this seriously, in different ways.
What Qualzy does
Qualzy is a qualitative research platform with teams in the UK, US and Australia, built for agencies and client-side insight teams. What it says about itself (Qualzy):
- Async methods. Online communities, diary studies, bulletin boards, homework tasks and in-depth interviews, run over hours, days or weeks.
- 15+ activity types. Including video tasks, heat maps, card sorts and mood boards. One feature page counts 18.
- AI on every response. Each response is transcribed and broken into AI key points and clips the moment it's submitted. Maizy Chat lets you ask questions of the whole dataset.
- AI follow-ups and translation. An AI moderator can suggest follow-up questions, and AI translation covers 30+ languages (Qualzy for agencies).
- Video import. Bring in Zoom or Teams recordings for transcription and clips, so live sessions can sit next to async work.
- Security. Qualzy states ISO 27001:2022 certification and says it is GDPR, HIPAA and CCPA compliant.
Pricing. Qualzy offers two models: pay per project, with no monthly fee, or a subscription based on how many active participant slots you need (Qualzy pricing). Its app pricing page describes a one-time platform fee of AUD 300 plus GST and a daily charge while a project is live, with an optional Qualzy Assist add-on listed at $700 for expert build, launch and management (Qualzy app). Check the current daily rate with Qualzy, as it isn't shown in public listings.
Limits worth knowing. Async methods ask more of participants: several entries over days, not one sitting, and diaries tend to lose people as they run. Someone on your team still designs activities and moderates the community. And public reviews are few; most performance claims come from Qualzy's own case studies.
What Koji does
Koji is an AI-native research platform for running interviews at scale. You type what you want to learn, the research assistant drafts a brief, and the AI interviewer holds every conversation.
- Voice, text and phone interviews in 28 languages. Each participant picks their language on the welcome page. Voice interviews are on the Interviews and Enterprise plans; text works on every plan.
- Real-time probing. The interviewer follows up on each answer, so you get the story behind it without a moderator online.
- Structure inside the conversation. Mix open questions with scales, single choice, multiple choice, ranking and yes/no questions.
- Recruitment built in. Share a link, import a CSV for personal invite links (Interviews and Enterprise), or recruit from Koji's panel on paid plans. Screening questions run before the interview.
- A quality gate. Every interview gets a quality score from 1 to 5; only those scoring 3 or more use credits or enter the report.
- Reports with evidence. Findings, themes and personas, each finding linked to the quotes behind it, updating as interviews come in.
- For agencies. Team workspaces from the Insights plan, and brand themes on Enterprise.
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 and a voice interview 3. Extra credits are €1 each.
Where they differ
Participant effort
A Qualzy diary might ask someone to log in every day for two weeks, upload a video and sort some cards. That gives you behaviour over time, which a single interview can't. It also costs participants more time, and some will drop out before the end.
Photo by Lawrence Aritao on Unsplash
A Koji interview is one sitting. The participant talks or types, the AI asks follow-ups, and they are done. That makes it easier to reach busy people, B2B buyers or customers who would never join a community.
Who does the moderating
On Qualzy, your researchers run the community, with AI helping on follow-ups and analysis. That is a strength when the method needs a skilled moderator's judgement over many days. On Koji, the AI does the moderating, so 200 interviews take the same team time as 20. Guardrails and a free preview let you check how it behaves first.
Breadth of methods
Qualzy has the wider method toolkit: card sorts, heat maps, mood boards and video tasks. Koji focuses on the interview and does it at scale, with structured questions in the same conversation.
How you pay
Qualzy charges for the project and the time it is live. Koji charges per completed interview that passes the quality gate. You can price a Koji study before you start: 50 text interviews are 50 credits.
Using both
Many agencies don't have to choose. A common pattern is to run 100 AI interviews in Koji to find the main themes quickly, then recruit a smaller group into a Qualzy community or diary to watch those themes play out over two weeks. For more on that split, read our guide to diary studies and to async user interviews.
Who should choose which
Choose Qualzy if:
- Your method is a long-running community or a diary study.
- You need tasks such as card sorts, mood boards or video uploads.
- Your researchers want to moderate, with AI speeding up analysis.
Choose Koji if:
- You need many one-to-one interviews, quickly, without moderators online.
- You want probing on every answer and a quality score on every conversation.
- You run studies in several languages and want one interviewer logic across all of them.
- You want public pricing and to pay only for interviews that pass a quality check.
The bottom line
Qualzy is a solid choice for agencies whose work centres on async communities and diaries. Koji is the faster route to depth at scale: AI-moderated voice, text and phone interviews in 28 languages, a report with traceable quotes and prices you can see before you start.
Try Koji free
Create a free Koji account, type your research question and preview the interview yourself. Your 10 signup credits cover ten text interviews. If you run an agency, read our guide to user research for agencies or the multi-market qualitative playbook.
