This article explains how pricing works on Prolific, including participant rewards, platform fees, VAT, and how to estimate the total cost of your study.
On Prolific, you pay:
Participant rewards (what participants earn), plus
A platform fee, calculated as a percentage on top of participant rewards
42.8% of participant rewards (corporate customers)
33.3% of participant rewards (academia and non-profits)
Example: If you pay $70.00 to participants, your total cost will be $100 (corporate) or $93.86 (academic/non-profit).
Participant rewards
Participants receive the full reward amount you set for completed submissions.
If you use custom screening, participants who are screened out receive a small payment for the time spent completing the screener.
What the platform fee covers
The platform fee helps cover the cost of running and improving Prolific, including:
Maintaining a secure, reliable research platform
Recruiting, and supporting a high-quality participant pool
Ongoing product development and feature improvements
Trust, safety, and data protection measures
The platform fee allows us to operate Prolific sustainably while continuing to improve data quality and researcher experience.
VAT may apply to the platform fee only (see VAT section below).
Participant payments
On Prolific, we follow the principle of ethical rewards. Fair pay leads to better data quality.
Recommended minimum: £9.00 / $12.00 per hour
Absolute minimum allowed: £6.00 / $8.00 per hour
You choose how much to pay participants, and they receive the full amount you set.
Bonuses
Bonuses are paid on top of the base reward.
Bonuses are treated as participant rewards
Platform fees apply to bonuses in the same way as base rewards
Participants receive the full bonus amount you award
Bonuses shouldn’t be used to meet the minimum hourly pay requirement.
Screen-outs, returns, and time-outs
You’re not charged for participants who:
Return the study
Time out before completing it
Pre-screeners and Representative samples
Using Prolific’s existing pre-screeners does not incur any additional cost.
Representative samples also do not incur any additional cost beyond the standard platform fee. You can combine representative samples with existing pre-screeners at no extra charge. You can read more about representative samples here.
Academic and non-profit discounted rates
To qualify for the 33.3% academic / non-profit rate, you must:
Sign up using an institutional email address, and
Select Academia or Non-profit as your account type
We’re unable to apply discounted rates to personal or non-associated email domains (for example, Gmail or Outlook).
VAT
You may be charged VAT depending on where you’re based.
VAT is charged on platform fees only
Participant rewards are not subject to VAT
You can read more about when VAT is charged and how to add a VAT exception to your workspace here.
Currencies
Prolific workspaces are available in GBP and USD, and participants are paid in the currency the study is published in. We can provide invoices in other currencies where needed - see here.
You can change your workspace's currency yourself in Workspace Settings, as long as:
The workspace has never been topped up
The workspace has no active or completed studies
The workspace has no draft studies (you'll need to delete any draft studies before changing the currency)
To change your currency, go to Workspace Settings and select GBP or USD under "Workspace currency." If you have draft studies, you'll need to delete them before you can switch currencies.
Once you've published a study (active or completed) or topped up your workspace, the currency becomes permanent and can no longer be changed.
If this applies to you, create a new workspace with your preferred currency instead:
Click the drop-down menu in the top-left corner and select "+ New workspace."
Add your workspace office address (billing address) to the new workspace, making sure it matches the information you want on your invoices.
Select the currency you'd like to use.
You can then maintain separate workspaces in GBP and USD as needed.
Note: changing a workspace's currency affects all users in that workspace.
How much will my study cost?
To estimate the cost of your study:
Use our cost calculator for a quick estimate
Or generate a quote for an exact cost