Compare the highest quality recruitment panels and choose the one best fit for your research needs
Respondent and UserTesting both help fill research studies with participants. However, UserTesting’s all-in-one platform offers a participant panel as part of a suite of features, while Respondent is solely focused on building a panel of verified research participants across consumer and professional audiences.
User Testing
Panel
Respondent’s panel includes more than 3 million phone-verified participants. The platform focuses on high-quality consumer and professional audiences, with an average participant rating of 4.9/5. This makes the panel strong for both consumer research and specialized studies.
UserTesting gives access to at least 1m participants (we can’t find an updated figure) from over 35 countries.
Pricing
Respondent operates on a pay-as-you-go model where researchers pay a fee per session. Unmoderated and survey rates are available, there are no paid add-ons, no recruit limits for pay-as-you-go, and our rates are consistently more affordable.
UserTesting bundles participant recruitment into their product plans. Pricing is not available on their site.
Performance
Respondent maintains a fraud rate below 1% through panel-wide, project, and participant review processes. Our high quality panel enables filling research studies as quickly as 1.5 days with show rates at 95%. Our audience quotas feature also gives more researchers more control on recruitment.
UserTesting claims 85%+ of rated sessions receive 4 or 5 stars
Product Focus
Respondent is a participant panel built to recruit and manage verified consumers and professionals. Respondent is 100% focused on building panel, prioritizing audience quality and expanding reach.
UserTesting offers broader user research platform with recruitment being one of its core functions.
Leveraging AI
AI is used for participant verification, fraud detection, and matching. Respondent also uses AI in project recommendations, giving researchers suggestions on titles and descriptions to optimize their research projects.
Uses AI Insights to generate on-demand summaries of task results and key findings.
Panel
Respondent’s panel includes more than 3 million phone-verified participants. The platform focuses on high-quality consumer and professional audiences, with an average participant rating of 4.9/5. This makes the panel strong for both consumer research and specialized studies.
User Testing
UserTesting gives access to at least 1m participants (we can’t find an updated figure) from over 35 countries.
Pricing
Respondent operates on a pay-as-you-go model where researchers pay a fee per session. Unmoderated and survey rates are available, there are no paid add-ons, no recruit limits for pay-as-you-go, and our rates are consistently more affordable.
User Testing
UserTesting bundles participant recruitment into their product plans. Pricing is not available on their site.
Performance
Respondent maintains a fraud rate below 1% through panel-wide, project, and participant review processes. Our high quality panel enables filling research studies as quickly as 1.5 days with show rates at 95%. Our audience quotas feature also gives more researchers more control on recruitment.
User Testing
UserTesting claims 85%+ of rated sessions receive 4 or 5 stars
Product Focus
Respondent is a participant panel built to recruit and manage verified consumers and professionals. Respondent is 100% focused on building panel, prioritizing audience quality and expanding reach.
User Testing
UserTesting offers a broader user research platform with recruitment being one of its core functions.
Leveraging AI
AI is used for participant verification, fraud detection, and matching. Respondent also uses AI in project recommendations, giving researchers suggestions on titles and descriptions to optimize their research projects.
User Testing
Uses AI Insights to generate on-demand summaries of task results and key findings.
*Based on publicly available information as of October 2025
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them to your projects
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Rated 4.6 from 400+ reviews on G2.com
Director, Research and Testing - Instrument
We tested out a few platforms and quickly realized that Respondent was getting us good people fast. That’s frankly all we need.
Lead UX Researcher - Chili Piper
Respondent helps me easily find the exactly-right participants for my projects. Further, it works for any type of research project with any kind of participant.
GVP, Research at Huge
The participants have been who they say they are, we can verify them, and they're super responsive. Respondent has helped us do better research and be better researchers.
Respondent is the fastest way to recruit, screen, and pay research participants - all in the same place