Written and maintained by CASRAI Editorial Board
Last updated
CloudResearch is a company that sells tools for online human-subjects research: participant recruitment, survey fraud detection and AI-assisted survey software. Researchers searching for it usually want to know which of its products does what, how its participant pools differ, and how it compares with the platforms they used before. This page answers those questions from CloudResearch’s own pages as published on 2026-11-07, and adds a checklist for reporting a CloudResearch sample in a methods section.
What CloudResearch is
CloudResearch’s About page (checked 2026-11-07) lists these products:
- Connect: participant recruitment with “vetted respondents for your studies”. A separate entry point, Connect for Participants, is where people sign up to take studies for rewards.
- Engage: an AI survey platform described as “conversational surveys that scale”.
- Sentry: survey fraud detection that blocks bots.
- Persuad.AI: a tool for intervention research.
- AI Training Data and Managed Research: services listed on the same page.
- MTurk Alternative: a migration path from Amazon Mechanical Turk to Connect.
The sign-in depends on the role: researchers who post studies use the Connect researcher app, and people who want to take studies use Connect for Participants.
Who runs it and what it covers
CloudResearch operates the platform itself. Two participant pools matter most to researchers.
Connect
According to the knowledge-base article Where are participants sourced from? (checked 2026-11-07), Connect is a proprietary, “hand curated panel”: CloudResearch staff verify each respondent before acceptance. It is separate from Prime Panels, with little to no overlap. Participants come mostly from English-speaking nations (Canada, Australia, the UK and the USA), with the USA making up most of the pool.
Prime Panels
Prime Panels is CloudResearch’s other panel. Its size and terms, as CloudResearch states them, are in the comparison below.
Connect vs Prime Panels
CloudResearch’s own article How does Connect compare to Prime Panels? (checked 2026-11-07) gives the following side-by-side. These are CloudResearch’s statements, not independent measurements.
| Dimension | Connect | Prime Panels |
|---|---|---|
| Size | Over 50,000 active participants a month; 5,000 to 10,000 new sign-ups monthly | 40 to 50 million worldwide |
| Countries | US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland; mostly English | Global; can sample in local languages |
| Sample type | Opt-in; supports Census-matched targeting | Opt-in; supports Census-matched targeting |
| Demographics | Younger, leans liberal | Older, leans conservative |
| Pay | Hourly wage set by the researcher; site minimum $7.50 an hour, $10.00 an hour recommended as a baseline | Exact participant pay cannot be specified (charity, gift cards, points) |
| Pricing | Open market: pay affects who takes a study and how fast | Quoted price set to obtain the sample |
| Study length | Suits micro-tasks, hours-long and longitudinal studies | Dropout after about 25 minutes; longitudinal, dyadic, interactive and video studies are hard |
Reading the table as a researcher: the two pools answer different design questions. A study that needs non-English respondents points to Prime Panels; a study that needs repeated contact with the same people or well-paid long tasks points to Connect. That is an interpretation of the table, not a CloudResearch recommendation.
How researchers use it
Researchers make a set of decisions before and after fielding a study:
- Choose the pool (Connect or Prime Panels) based on country, language, study length and whether participants must return.
- Set the participant pay. On Connect the hourly wage is set by the researcher and affects who takes the study and how quickly.
- Decide on screening and fraud controls. CloudResearch offers Sentry for bot blocking; other checks, such as attention items, remain the researcher’s design choice. For documented screening problems on a comparable platform, see MTurk data quality.
Methods checklist for reporting a CloudResearch sample
Reviewers need to know how participants were obtained. A sample description is easier to evaluate if it states:
- Which CloudResearch pool was used (Connect or Prime Panels) and the dates of data collection.
- The country or countries sampled and any Census-matched targeting.
- The hourly pay rate and the study length.
- Any screening, attention or fraud-detection steps, and how many participants they excluded.
- That the sample is an opt-in panel, not a probability sample, and what that implies for generalising the findings.
Strengths and limits
- Strength: Connect is a curated panel in which staff verify each respondent, and it suits long and longitudinal studies (CloudResearch, 2026-11-07).
- Strength: Prime Panels reaches many countries and languages (CloudResearch, 2026-11-07).
- Limit: Connect is mostly English-speaking countries, mainly the USA, and CloudResearch says it skews younger and more liberal than Prime Panels.
- Limit: On Prime Panels exact participant pay cannot be specified, and dropout rises for studies longer than about 25 minutes.
- Limit: Both pools are opt-in samples, and every figure above is the vendor’s own description rather than an independent audit.
Alternatives
| Platform | What the sources say |
|---|---|
| Prolific | Platform-enforced minimum pay of £6 or $8 an hour; recommended rate £9 or $12 and above (Prolific payment principles, checked 2026-11-07). See attention checks on Prolific. |
| Amazon Mechanical Turk | Closed. The mturk.com home page states it permanently closed on September 30, 2026. See Amazon Mechanical Turk: what it was and why it closed. |
| CloudResearch Prime Panels | Same company as Connect, different pool; see the table above. |
For a comparison of Prolific and MTurk on pay and data quality, see Prolific vs MTurk.
FAQ
What is CloudResearch?
A company that offers online research tools, including the Connect and Prime Panels participant pools, Sentry fraud detection and the Engage AI survey platform (CloudResearch About page, 2026-11-07).
What is Connect on CloudResearch?
Connect is CloudResearch’s proprietary, hand-curated participant panel, with each respondent verified by staff before acceptance. Researchers use the Connect researcher app; participants use Connect for Participants.
What is CloudResearch Engage?
Engage is the AI survey platform on CloudResearch’s product list, described as “conversational surveys that scale”.
How does CloudResearch compare with Prolific?
Both are paid participant platforms. On Connect the researcher sets an hourly wage above a $7.50 site minimum; Prolific enforces a floor of £6 or $8 an hour. Neither company’s published pages rank the two on data quality.
Is CloudResearch legit?
CloudResearch states that Connect respondents are verified by staff before acceptance and publishes its pay minimum and panel sizes (see the comparison above). Those are the vendor’s own statements, so to let reviewers judge a sample, document the items in the methods checklist.
Sources
- CloudResearch, About, checked 2026-11-07.
- CloudResearch Knowledge Base, Where are participants sourced from?, checked 2026-11-07.
- CloudResearch Knowledge Base, How does Connect compare to Prime Panels?, checked 2026-11-07.
- Prolific, payment principles, checked 2026-11-07.
