Short answer: Listen Labs does not publish a price list. Larger companies are sent to a demo and a pilot, and the quote depends on your audience and volume. The most widely cited estimate, from Contrary Research and several buyer guides, is an annual platform base of about $20,000 plus roughly $300 to $400 per completed interview, with hard-to-reach audiences costing more. If you want AI-moderated interviews without a five-figure contract, Koji publishes its prices: a qualified text interview uses 1 credit and a qualified voice interview uses 3, credits cost €1, and you start with 10 free credits and no card.
This guide explains how Listen Labs charges, what a realistic study costs at different sizes, which questions to ask on the sales call, and when a self-serve tool is the better buy.
Why Listen Labs pricing matters right now
AI-moderated interviews have gone mainstream fast. In the 2026 State of User Research report from User Interviews and UserTesting, 80% of researchers said they use AI, up 24 points in a year. Maze's 2025 Future of User Research report found 58% of respondents using AI tools and named time and bandwidth as the top challenge for 63% of teams. Research demand is rising while headcount is not, so more teams are pricing out platforms that run interviews for them.
Photo by Tyler Franta on Unsplash
Listen Labs is the best-funded name in that market. In January 2026 it announced a $69 million Series B led by Ribbit Capital, with Sequoia, Conviction and Pear VC participating. The company says it has interviewed more than one million people and works with enterprises such as Microsoft, Sweetgreen, Perplexity and Robinhood. That profile tells you how it sells: to insights teams with an annual budget, through a sales process.
How Listen Labs charges
Listen Labs' own articles describe the model in general terms rather than with a price list. From those pages and from third-party reports, the structure looks like this:
- A platform subscription. Reported by Contrary Research and buyer guides at around $20,000 a year. Listen Labs has not confirmed this figure publicly, so treat it as an estimate.
- Credits spent per participant. Listen Labs says credit cost scales with audience difficulty, so a general-population study uses fewer credits than a niche B2B or healthcare audience. Third-party estimates put the all-in cost at about $300 to $400 per completed interview.
- A demo and pilot for larger companies. Listen Labs directs companies with 100 or more employees to a guided pilot instead of a self-serve price.
- Optional bring-your-own participants. Listen Labs says teams can interview their own customers at a reduced cost, though it does not publish that rate.
Two features shape the bill. Listen Atlas is the company's participant network, which it describes as 30 million verified respondents across 45 or more countries. Quality Guard monitors interviews for fraud, low-effort answers and mismatched profiles, and one review reports that you are charged only for completes that pass it.
What a Listen Labs study costs at different sizes
Using the reported figures ($20,000 base, $300 to $400 per completed interview), here is what different volumes would cost over a year. These are estimates built on third-party data, not quotes.
| Interviews in the year | Platform base | Per-interview cost | Estimated total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | ~$20,000 | $3,000 to $4,000 | ~$23,000 to $24,000 |
| 30 | ~$20,000 | $9,000 to $12,000 | ~$29,000 to $32,000 |
| 100 | ~$20,000 | $30,000 to $40,000 | ~$50,000 to $60,000 |
| 300 | ~$20,000 | $90,000 to $120,000 | ~$110,000 to $140,000 |
The pattern is simple. At low volume, the platform base is most of what you pay, so a team that runs two or three small studies a year pays a high price per insight. At high volume, the per-interview cost takes over, and audience difficulty becomes the variable that matters most.
What you get for the money
Listen Labs is a full-service platform, and the price buys real things:
- Recruitment handled for you. A 30-million-person network and a recruitment operations team for hard audiences, such as clinicians or enterprise IT buyers. If recruiting is what slows your studies down, this is the part worth paying for.
- Voice and video interviews at scale, with analysis, highlight reels and reports produced from the transcripts.
- Fraud and quality screening through Quality Guard, plus a cap that limits panel participants to three studies a month.
- Language coverage that Listen Labs puts at 50 or more languages for its emotion analysis.
- Enterprise buying support: security reviews, contracts and onboarding.
What the price does not buy is speed of purchase. There is no public rate card, so you cannot try a real study with your own customers this afternoon and decide by Friday.
Questions to ask on the sales call
Because the price is negotiated, the quote you get depends on what you ask. Take this list into the call:
- What is the platform fee, and what does it include? Seats, studies, languages and support levels.
- How are credits priced per audience? Ask for the rate for your two most likely audiences, not a blended average.
- What counts as a billable complete? Ask whether a short, low-effort or flagged interview uses credits.
- What does it cost to interview our own customers? Bring-your-own pricing is often where small teams save the most.
- Do unused credits expire, and when?
- What is the renewal increase? Get any escalation clause in writing.
- Can we export raw transcripts and recordings if we leave?
When Listen Labs is worth it
Listen Labs makes sense when all of these are true:
- You need hard-to-reach participants recruited for you, every study.
- You run research in many markets and languages at once.
- You have an annual research budget approved, and a procurement cycle of several weeks is normal.
- You want one vendor to handle recruitment, moderation, analysis and reporting.
If that describes your team, the platform fee is a reasonable price for a managed workflow.
When a self-serve tool is the better buy
Many teams that look at Listen Labs are not in that position. A product manager who needs 15 customer interviews before a roadmap review, or a founder testing pricing with existing users, pays mostly for a platform base they will barely use.
Koji is built for that buyer, and its prices are public:
- Pay per qualified interview. A text interview uses 1 credit and a voice interview uses 3. Credits cost €1, so a 30-interview voice study with your own customers uses about 90 credits.
- Only good interviews are billed. Every interview gets a quality score from 1 to 5, and only those scoring 3 or more use credits or enter the report.
- No contract to start. You get 10 free credits at signup with no card. After that you can buy credit packs as you go or choose a monthly plan: Insights at €29 a month (29 credits) or Interviews at €79 a month (79 credits). Credits stay valid for 12 months.
- Recruitment when you need it. Interview your own customers through a link, a CSV import with personal invite links, or recruit from your product. On a paid plan you can also use panel recruitment: describe your audience, see the quote per respondent in credits, then launch.
- Structured and open questions in one study. Six question types (open ended, scale, single choice, multiple choice, ranking and yes/no) so you get a number to chart and the reason behind it.
- AI voice interviews and text interviews in 28 languages, with screening questions and a free interview preview before you launch.
The trade-off is honest: Koji's panel is quoted per study rather than bundled into a managed recruitment service, and there is no dedicated recruitment team scoping a sub-1% incidence audience for you. If that service is what you need, Listen Labs is built for it.
Listen Labs pricing vs Koji at a glance
| Listen Labs | Koji | |
|---|---|---|
| Published pricing | No, quote after a demo | Yes |
| Reported entry cost | ~$20,000 a year platform base | Free to start, 10 credits |
| Per interview | ~$300 to $400 per complete (reported, with panel) | 1 credit text, 3 credits voice, €1 per credit (own participants) |
| Billing on quality | Reported: only completes that pass Quality Guard | Only interviews scoring 3 or more |
| Recruitment | 30M network plus recruitment ops | Own participants, in-product, CSV, or panel quoted per respondent |
| Trial | Pilot for larger companies | Self-serve, no card |
For a broader view, see our Koji vs Listen Labs comparison, the Listen Labs alternatives guide, and how AI-moderated interviews work.
Try AI interviews before you sign anything
You do not need a $20,000 contract to find out whether AI-moderated interviews work for your team. Write a research question, let Koji draft the brief, preview it for free, and send the link to ten customers. You will have transcripts, themes and a report before a pilot would have been scheduled.
Start free with Koji. You get 10 credits, no card, and you only pay for interviews that pass the quality bar.
Sources: Listen Labs Series B announcement (January 14, 2026); Listen Labs articles on pricing, Listen Atlas and Quality Guard; Contrary Research and third-party buyer guides for reported pricing; User Interviews and UserTesting, State of User Research 2026; Maze, Future of User Research Report 2025. Listen Labs pricing figures are third-party estimates as of October 2026. Ask Listen Labs for a current quote.
