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About Prolific (for Participants)
Prolific participants can earn money by participating in academic and market research-related surveys, focus groups, interviews, diary studies, and more. After accumulating £5, earnings can be cashed out via PayPal.
General Details 📜
| Status: | Active, Legit |
|---|---|
| Helps You: | Hire Help Make Money |
| Platform Type: | Crowdsourcing Marketplace |
| Opportunities: | Academic Research Participation Diary Study Participation Focus Group Participation Market Research Participation Research Interview Participation |
Key Points 🔑
| Work Type: | Casual |
|---|---|
| Income Type: | Active |
| Work Schedule: | Flexible |
| Workplace: | Remote |
| Minimum Payout: | £5 You can only cash out once every 24 hours. |
| Payout Options: | PayPal |
| Payout Speed: | 0-4 days Prolific processes payouts every Tuesday and Friday afternoon. After you've requested at least four (4) payouts, you'll be moved to instant payouts. Note that the earnings from a study won't be available for payout until they're approved by the researcher running the study, which can take up to 22 days. |
| Other Notes: | Prolific may require you to verify your identity with an ID check. |
Pros:
- Fair pay. Prolific enforces a minimum hourly rate of around $8 USD/hour, which is much higher than most other survey platforms. If a researcher really likes your response, they may even give you a bonus.
- Mostly accurate time estimates. Unlike some survey sites that say a survey is 5 minutes when it's really 30, Prolific offers much better estimates. Not perfect, but better.
- Descriptive surveys. Before taking a survey, you can see what it's about.
- Studies may appear in your native language. That means if you speak Spanish, you'll occasionally receive Spanish studies in your dashboard.
- No mid-study screeners. Prolific researchers can’t screen you out halfway through a survey. If a survey appears in your dashboard and you qualify for it and fill it out honestly and accurately (watch out for attention checks!), you should always get paid.
- Instant payments are available after you've made a certain number of payouts.
- Low payout minimum.
- Studies should never require any personally identifiable information. You can report studies that breach this.
Cons:
- Limited study invitations. You won't be earning super consistently in most cases. On top of this, studies fill up really fast, so you've got to be quick if you want to qualify.
- Delayed earnings. You need to wait up to 22 days for your study submissions to get approved by researchers.
- Can only cash out via PayPal. This isn't a huge con, but it's a downside for anyone who can't get a PayPal account.
- No paid referral program.
Tips:
- Make use of the Prolific Assistant browser extension. It's available on Chrome and Firefox and will notify you when new studies are available.
- Keep your dashboard open so you can reserve a spot in new studies as soon as they become available.
- Be sure to read all questions carefully and provide quality responses. Low-quality responses may be denied. Watch out for attention checks and comprehension as well. If you answer an attention check or comprehension check wrong, the researcher has the right to reject your answers (which means you don't get paid).
- If you believe your study submission was wrongly rejected, kindly reach out to the researcher to try and work something out. If they don't respond, reach out to Prolific support.
- If you run into a study that's taking much longer than the estimated time, paying way too little, or asking for sensitive personal information, report it! Prolific will ban the researcher and sometimes even reimburse you for lost time.
Note: The pros, cons, and tips featured above are manually curated summaries and/or direct excerpts from our 32 Prolific Participant reviews.
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Our Editorial Prolific Earner Review
Prolific is a legit survey site with some of the highest-paying (and most interesting) surveys in the game. However, there isn't a huge quantity of paid studies available on the platform, so if your demographics aren't in demand, or you aren't able to apply to new surveys quickly, you may have a hard time earning.
Want to write your own review of Prolific? Go here!
Prolific Participant Statistics
We've gathered 32 Prolific Participant reviews from 11 unique countries/regions.
Here are some insights and statistics from those reviews:
Reported Hourly Earnings
Reported Monthly Earnings
Reported Time to Reach Minimum Payout Amount (For the 1st Time)
- Unknown (3.33%)
- <= 5 minutes (0%)
- <= 1 hour (0%)
- <= 1 day (6.67%)
- <= 1 week (56.67%)
- <= 2 weeks (16.67%)
- <= 3 weeks (6.67%)
- <= 1 month (10%)
- > 1 month (0%)
- > 1 year (0%)
Statistics above are based on self-reported data from our 32 Prolific Participant reviews.
Help contribute by writing a review!
About the Reviewers
Reviews By Total Earnings
- Unknown (0%)
- Less than $100 (26.67%)
- $100-$999 (63.33%)
- $1,000-$9,999 (10%)
- $10,000-$49,999 (0%)
- $50,000-$99,999 (0%)
- $100,000+ (0%)
Reviews By Age Range
- Unknown (3.33%)
- 13-17 (6.67%)
- 18-24 (53.33%)
- 25-34 (33.33%)
- 35-44 (0%)
- 45-54 (3.33%)
- 55-64 (0%)
- 65+ (0%)
Reviews By Length of Use
- < 1 month (0%)
- 1-3 months (13.33%)
- 3-6 months (23.33%)
- 6-12 months (23.33%)
- 1-2 years (26.67%)
- 2-3 years (3.33%)
- 3-5 years (10%)
- 5+ years (0%)
Are you a Prolific Participant?
Share your experience with other Prolific Participants by writing a review!
32 Prolific Participant Reviews
Rating Breakdown
Filter Reviews
I don't think any other survey site pays as good as Prolific does.
The most efficient survey site in my opinion, no nonsense, no surveys that kick you out at the end, almost all surveys are a guaranteed acceptance and pay, pay rate is almost always higher than other survey sites.
I would recommend this to anyone looking to get into earning money on the side without having to spend an immense amount of time.
- Guaranteed payment after 21 days if researcher does not review submission.
- Quick surveys with high pay rate.
- After 3 initial cash outs, all cash outs afterwards will be instant.
- PayPal email does not have to match Prolific email.
- Occasional surveys requiring third-party software installation.
- Rare glitch that prevents you from reserving a place unless the button is spammed.
- Do not be discouraged by the 5 Pound cash out limit.
- Earning may seem slow, but it adds up and you'll be at the minimum cash out fairly quickly.
- Keep an eye out for multi-part studies/surveys, pay is often very good.
- I tend to only complete surveys under 20 minutes, and I try to complete surveys with a pay rate of around 5+ dollars an hour, that way I spend less time but get a decent amount of money.
Prolific is 100% legit.
During all my use of this I have not had any single problem and from the people that I have met and talked to in the forums and on reddit, nobody has had a serious problem either. Your payment always arrives but if it is delayed or simply missing, you should only speak to the prolific help center to solve your problem, they are super cooperative.
I could not recommend this page more, it is very good to earn quick and easy money. I would recommend it to patient people who have no problem leaving the page open in a tab while playing, working, etc.
- I have cash out 9 times, the first 5 times I have to wait until Thursday or Friday, but then it is an instant payment, in seconds. It cost me more or less a week to get my first payment, which can only be withdrawn when reaching the total of £5. They don't have how much the site has paid out in total since inception and does not have any payment proofs published.
- Very good earning potential if you are constantly attentive to the page.
- There are always studies, although some days not.
- A good payout minimum as it is £5, not very high.
- Many times studies may appear in your native language, in my case Spanish.
- No screeners - Prolific researchers can’t screen you out half way through a survey. If a survey appears in your dashboard, and you fill it out honestly and accurately, you WILL get paid.
- There is only one payment method, Paypal.
- Only people from a specific group of countries can join.
- Studies may stop showing up for a while.
- Studies fill up really fast.
- To avoid being rejected, you have to always be alert to not miss any attention check.
- As soon as a study comes out you must be super fast to join so that it does not fill up.
