Recruiting Participants from Koji's Panel

When you do not have a list of people to interview, Koji can recruit them for you. Pick your markets, describe who you want to hear from, review supply and price, and launch. Matched panel respondents take your interview by text or voice, and their answers land in your results next to everyone else's. Panel recruit adds to your own routes rather than replacing them: you can still reach your own people with personalized links or the anonymous generic link, an embed or calls, and both routes land in the same study.

Before you start

• Publish your study. Panel respondents need a live study to land on. Until it is published, the Panel recruit tab asks you to publish first.
• Launching needs a paid plan. Panel recruitment launches on the Insights, Interviews and Enterprise plans. On any plan, including Free, you can build an audience, check supply and pricing, and save a draft. Buying top-up credits on their own does not unlock launching. See On a free workspace.
• Have credits available. Panel respondents are paid for in credits, and Koji sets credits aside when a recruitment launches. See Pricing and credits.
• Add screening questions to the study if you need them. Screening questions belong to the study (Studio, then Questions), so they apply to every panel recruitment. They are available on studies created from September 2026.
• Who can manage panel recruitments. Anyone with full access to the study can create, launch and manage its recruitments: the person who created it, plus the workspace owners and admins.

Start a recruitment

1. Open your study and go to Interviews.
2. Select the Panel recruit tab.
3. Click New recruitment.

Setup has three steps: Size & markets, Who to interview, and Review & launch.

1. Size & markets

• Markets. Choose one or more countries. Each market comes with its panel language, for example "Germany · German". If you pick several markets, Koji creates one recruitment per market and splits your interview goal between them.
• Interviews. How many completed interviews you want.
• Interview mode. Choose whether panel respondents take the interview by text, by voice, or can pick either. You can narrow the modes your study offers, but not add new ones. A text-only recruitment keeps every interview at 1 credit.

Make sure your study can interview people in the language of each market you pick.

2. Who to interview

Type your audience into Who do you want to interview? in plain language, for example "parents in the US aged 30 to 45 who work full time". Koji turns it into targeting criteria from the panel's own profiling questions, which you can review and edit. To add a criterion yourself, click Add targeting criteria and search Panel questions.

• Quotas. For criteria with several answers, choose Whoever responds, Equal, or Custom to control the mix of respondents.
• What the panel cannot target. If part of your description has no matching panel question, Koji tells you. Cover it with a screening question on your study instead.
• Screening questions. Your study's screening questions are shown here for reference. People who do not qualify are screened out and sent back to the panel. Each screening question narrows the audience, which can raise the price.

Profiling questions vary by market. Consumer and general work profiles are the best fit. For highly specialized professionals, such as medical specialists or senior executives in one industry, recruit from your own list or a specialist recruiter and send them a personalized interview link.

3. Review & launch

Before anything launches, the review step shows what you are about to buy:

• Feasibility. Whether the panel has enough matching people (deep, limited or tight supply), overall and per market.
• Incidence rate and interview length, which drive the price.
• Panel cost. The price per completed interview in credits, and the estimated panel total.
• Interview credits. The normal interview charge, shown separately, and an estimated total for the whole recruitment.
• Held at launch. The credits Koji sets aside when the recruitment starts: the panel cost plus the interview credits for your whole goal. It is the same amount whether or not you soft launch. With a soft launch on, it also tells you the recruitment pauses after the first N interviews.

Then choose how to go:

• Start soft launch. On by default. Koji fields around 10% of your goal first, then stops new arrivals by itself once that test batch is in, so you can read the first interviews and check the real incidence rate. Then Release the rest, or Stop here instead. A soft launch is a pause to review, not a cheaper start: the full amount is held at launch, releasing the rest needs no extra credits, and if you stop after the test batch the unused credits come back to your balance.
• Launch hire. Fields the full goal straight away.
• Save draft. Keeps the setup so you can edit or launch it later.

A recruitment stays open for responses for up to 7 days, and stops on its own once its interview goal is reached.

When a launch is refused. Koji won't launch, release or relaunch a recruitment while the study is paused or finished, because every panel respondent would be turned away. Set the study live and try again. It also refuses when the study's participant limit leaves less room than the recruitment needs. The message tells you how many places are left: raise the participant limit, or lower the goal to that number.

On a free workspace

On a free workspace you can set up a recruitment all the way to the review step and save it, but you can't launch it yet. Here is what you'll see:

• On the Panel recruit tab: a Paid plans badge next to the heading, and an Upgrade to launch link that opens billing.
• On a draft: the ⋯ menu shows Upgrade to launch where a paid workspace sees Launch.
• On the review step: a note that launching a panel needs a paid plan, and a Save draft and upgrade button in place of Start soft launch or Launch hire. It saves your audience as a draft and takes you to billing.

The review step on a free workspace doesn't offer to add credits for a shortfall, because credits alone can't unlock a launch. Upgrade first, then top up if you need more. Once you're on a paid plan, open the Panel recruit tab and launch the draft from its ⋯ menu.

Pricing and credits

• Panel price. Each completed panel respondent costs a set number of credits (1 credit = €1). The price depends on the market, how hard your audience is to reach, and the interview length, and you see it before you launch.
• Interview credits. Each interview also uses the normal interview credits: 1 for text, 3 for voice. The quality gate applies to interview credits. The panel price applies to every completed panel respondent. To count as complete, a panel respondent must answer at least 60% of your study's interview questions. Anyone who answers less isn't charged the panel price, and their place stays open for another respondent.
• Credits set aside at launch. When a recruitment launches, Koji reserves credits for it. This is a reservation, not a charge: when the recruitment finishes, unused credits go back to your balance, and any extra completes are charged. Your credit history shows these as panel recruitment entries.
• Price changes. The panel's price per interview can move while a recruitment is live, usually because more or fewer people qualify than expected. Only the interviews still to recruit are repriced; completes you already have keep their price.
  • Price drops are applied automatically.
  • A rise the credits already set aside can cover keeps the recruitment running. You get an email when the credits per interview change.
  • A rise the set-aside credits cannot cover pauses the recruitment and emails you. The Panel recruit tab shows a card with the cost per interview before and after, and how many more credits approving sets aside for the interviews still to recruit. Choose Approve new price and resume, or Add N credits and approve to buy the missing credits and approve in one step when your balance is short, or Stop and keep what we have.
  • A paused rise that becomes covered is approved and resumed for you. As completes come in, fewer interviews are left to recruit, so the credits already set aside can end up covering the new price. When they do, Koji approves it and resumes the recruitment on its own.

Monitor and manage recruitments

Each recruitment is a row on the Panel recruit tab showing its market, progress and status: Draft, Live, Paused, Review test batch, Approve new price, Complete, Ended early or Failed.

Use the ⋯ menu to:

• Pause or Resume a live recruitment.
• Stop a recruitment. You can relaunch it later if its goal and end date have not been reached.
• Relaunch a completed recruitment.
• Edit or Launch a draft.

Panel respondents appear in Responses with everyone else. Your study's response limit counts panel and self-recruited interviews together. Panel respondents who were screened out or rejected for quality don't count toward it.

What respondents experience

Panel respondents arrive at your study from the panel and skip the lead form. They answer your screening questions, if you have any, then take the interview in the modes you allowed. When they finish, or if they are screened out, Koji sends them back to the panel automatically.

Report a low-quality respondent

If a completed panel interview looks fraudulent or low effort, open the respondent's ⋯ menu or detail panel and choose Report respondent. Pick a reason: suspected fraud, straight-lining, speeder, poor quality, ghost complete, or inconsistent answers. You can report a complete until the 25th of the month after it was completed. A panel respondent who answered less than 60% of your interview questions never counts as complete, so you don't need to report them.

Related

• Managing Research Participants
• Personalized Interview Links
• Research Screener Questions
• Plan Comparison Guide