If you're having trouble accessing Prolific, the issue may be on our end. Here's how to find out what's happening and what to do in the meantime.
Check our status page
The first thing to do is visit status.prolific.com. This page shows the live status of all Prolific services, including the website, study submissions, and payments.
If an incident is in progress, you'll see it listed there along with real-time updates from our team as we work to resolve it.
Subscribe to updates
On the status page, you can click Subscribe to updates to receive email or SMS notifications whenever an incident is reported or resolved. This means you won't need to keep checking back manually.
How do I know if the issue is with Prolific?
A few things are worth ruling out before assuming there's a site-wide issue:
Slow internet connection: try loading another website to check your connection.
Browser cache: try a hard refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R on Windows/Linux, Cmd+Shift+R on Mac) or open Prolific in a private/incognito window.
VPN or browser extensions: these can sometimes interfere with loading. Try disabling them temporarily.
If other websites load fine and the status page shows an active incident, the problem is on our side and our team is already on it.
If the status page shows no issues
If status.prolific.com shows everything as operational but you're still unable to access the site, it's worth contacting our support team so we can investigate. Please include:
A description of the problem (e.g. error message, blank page, spinning loader)
The browser and device you're using
Roughly when the issue started
During a known outage
If we're experiencing a known outage, the best thing to do is wait and check the status page for progress updates. Our team will post an update as soon as the issue is resolved.
If you were unable to complete a submission during this time, please reach out to the Support team, who can help.