Launch & cost
Interviews are paid one by one, at the same price on every plan, Free included. Your plan covers your workspace (seats, uploads, Swarm runs, the API); see Billing & plans.
Prices
| Your own people | Everyday people | Professionals | |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI or human interview | $10 | $39 | $99 |
| Text survey response | Free | $3 | $3 |
| Website survey | Free | — | — |
The price covers everything: recruiting and screening, the participant's payment, the AI interviewer, the recording, the transcript and the study report.
Free interviews: every workspace gets three interviews with your own people, once, on any plan. They're used first. Once a launch uses them they're gone for good: they don't come back when a study finishes, is deleted or goes back to draft.
Scale workspaces can agree volume prices; email [email protected].
Check the cost before you launch
The Summary card on the right of the new-study page shows each cost line and the total. The launch button repeats it, for example Launch · 10 interviews · $390. Free studies say so: "Free with your own people."
Launch
- Click the launch button on the Summary card.
- If you have a saved card, it's charged straight away and the study launches.
- If you don't, a checkout page opens. Your card is saved for next time, and the study launches once the payment goes through.
If the price changed between when you saw the total and when you clicked (say, because you edited the audience in another tab), launching stops and asks you to check the new total. Nothing is charged.
You pay once, at launch. Nothing is charged on its own after that. A text survey sent to 5 people first is paid in two parts: the 5 when you send it, the rest when you click Approve the rest (see Study types).
Before launching, the app checks that the study is complete. It won't launch without a title, at least one guide question, a host and open times for a human interview, a screener question for panel studies, or with a deadline in the past.
Pause, resume, end and go back to draft
All of these are in the study's ⋯ menu.
- Pause: nobody new is invited until you resume. Sessions already under way finish.
- Resume: invitations start again.
- End study: stops the study for good, before it reaches its target. Nobody new can take part; sessions already under way can still finish. The launch closes with the interviews that were done. Purchases are final, so interviews that haven't happened aren't refunded or carried over to another study. If the study has sessions and automatic study reports are on, its final study report is written.
- Back to draft: possible only while nobody has taken part yet, and only when the launch was free (it used only free interviews). The free interviews it used stay used: they don't come back, so launching again uses whatever free interviews are left and charges for the rest. A paid launch can't go back to draft, because purchases are final. Pause it instead.
Refunds
You are charged when you launch. All purchases are final; we don't offer refunds, also when fewer people take part than you asked for. See the Terms.