Top 3 Prolific Alternatives & Evaluation in 2024

Prolific is a popular data crowdsourcing platform in the AI data collection services space. However, our research has identified some drawbacks of working with Prolific from the perspective of its customers and workers.

Readers interested in Prolific alternatives usually fall under 2 categories: select yours to see relevant information for your case:

• Prolific participants (Workers): These are participants who work or wish to work for Prolific but are also interested in its alternatives. If you are a participant, click here.
• Requestors (i.e., Buyers): These are businesses that are interested in Prolific’s services but want to consider its alternatives. If you are a requestor or buyer, click here.

In this article, we offer a detailed comparison of Prolific’s alternatives for businesses that are looking for alternatives to fulfill their data needs.

Prolific alternatives for participants

This section compares Prolific’s alternatives based on criteria that are useful for its participants or workers.

Table 1. Alternatives comparison for participants

* Based on data from Trustpilot since it mostly has reviews from workers.

** Based on information gathered from analysis of worker reviews.

Notes:

• The companies are ranked based on the total number of reviews.
• The table was created using publicly available and verifiable data
• The links in the table can be used to access the signup and career pages of the companies for workers.

Prolific alternatives for buyers 

If you are a buyer of AI data services and wish to compare Prolific’s alternatives, here is a table summarizing the data relevant for buyers or customers.

Table 2. Prolific alternatives comparison for buyers

* Data was gathered from B2B review platforms such as G2, TrustRadius, and Capterra.

Notes:

• The companies are ranked based on the number of reviews.
• A company is considered to follow a code of conduct if it has a code of conduct page on its website.
• The table was created using publicly available and verifiable data.

Prolific overview

Founded in 2014 and based in the UK, Prolific offers various services through its crowdsourcing platform. The company claims to leverage a global network of contributors to offer services in 2 broad domains:

• AI training and evaluation
• Academic research

Services offered by Prolific

Here is a list of Prolific’s offerings, as claimed on the website:

• Human-generated datasets for AI training
• AI/ML model evaluation via Prolific’s network of contributors.
• Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF)
• Conduct academic & AI research & surveys
• Crowd size 130K+

Pricing

Currently, the company only offers a pay-as-you-go plan for which prices were not provided.

Pros and cons of Prolific

This section highlights some of the pros and cons of Prolific identified from analyzing customer reviews on B2B platforms like G2, Trustradius, and Capterra.

• Some research customers found Prolific’s customer support to be good. However, they also faced issues with the platform’s inability to set customized quotas based on geographic and demographic parameters.¹
• Most of Prolific’s reviews are regarding its research-related services. This indicates that Prolific’s AI services may not be that popular amongst its customers.²

• Prolific crowd size is much smaller as compared to its alternatives like Clickworker or Appen. Here is a comparison of the crowd size of all the companies mentioned in this article.

Figure 1. Crowd size comparison of Prolific and its alternatives

Alternatives overview for customers

Here, we provide an overview of the 3 alternatives mentioned in this article.

1. Clickworker

Founded in 2005, Clickworker is a good alternative to Prolific since it also offers its services through a crowdsourcing platform. The company leverages its global network of over 6 million workers to complete AI projects through micro-tasking.

Here is a list of Clickworker’s data solutions:

• AI training datasets collected and generated by humans
• Image and video datasets in different formats and specifications.
• Speech and audio datasets in multiple languages and dialects.
• Text datasets is different formats
• Data annotation as a service
• Research/survey data collection
• Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF)

Clickworker pricing

• The client determines workers’ pay for each assignment (Free recommendations on setting the rates are provided by the Clickworker).
• A free trial is offered.

Pros and cons of working with Clickworker

• A customer review regarding Clickworker’s AI services and its ‘reliable’ crowd.³

• A customer review regarding Clickworker’s data annotation services and its prices.⁴

2. Appen

Founded in 1996 and based in Australia, Appen is another suitable alternative to Prolific. Appen also uses a crowdsourcing model to provide various services in the AI data space. 

Its offerings include:

• Data collection & generation of different data types (image, video, text, audio, speech)
• Data annotation
• Data validation

Appen pricing

Pricing information was not provided by Appen.

Pros and cons of working with Appen:

• Appen has a larger crowd size as compared to Prolific and Amazon Mechanical Turk.
• Despite Appen’s popularity, recent news has highlighted that the company’s performance is declining. Appen is also losing customers and is going through financial losses.⁵
• A customer states that while Appen’s platform is easy to use, it is not well equipped with servers, and projects can face server crashes.⁶

3. Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk)

Operated under AWS, Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a popular name in the AI data services domain and a suitable alternative for Prolific. MTurk also offers its services through a marketplace operated on a crowdsourcing platform.

Here is a list of its offerings:

• AI data collection and generation of different data types
• Data annotation and labeling
• Market research & surveys
• Academic research

MTurk pricing

• The workers’ pay is determined by the clients for each assignment.
• MTurk charges 20% on the worker’s pay and 20% extra on tasks with 10 or more assignments.
• MTurk charges an extra 5% off the pay for workers with a Master’s qualification.
• A free trial is not offered.

You can also read our separate article on MTurk alternatives.

Pros and cons of working with Amazon Mechanical Turk

• MTurk has a larger crowd than Prolific.
• Customers identified that most workers on MTurk’s platform are not fluent English speakers. This can cause issues for clients who require human-generated speech or text data in English.⁷

• While MTurk’s services are efficient, its Master qualification (5% more expensive than regular workers) workers do not offer higher quality work.⁸.

Transparency statement

AIMultiple serves numerous emerging tech companies, including the ones linked in this article.

Further reading

• AI Data Collection Services: Vendors & Selection Guide
• Top 7 Generative AI Services & Vendors
• 5 AI Training Steps & Best Practices

If you need help finding a vendor or have any questions, feel free to click the button below:

External resources

• 1. Prolific’s review on customer support and customized parameters. G2. Accessed: 13/December/2023
• 2. Most Prolific reviews are for its research services. G2. Accessed: 13/December/2023.
• 3. Clickworker customer review on reliability and easy-to-use platform. G2. Accessed: 11/December/2023.
• 4. Customer review regarding Clickworker’s data annotation services. G2. Accessed: 11/December/2023.
• 5. Hayden Field, (2023). Inside the turmoil at Appen, the former AI darling that’s reeling from executive exits, big losses. CNBC. Accessed: 11/December/2023.
• 6. Appen’s customer review with positive and negative comments. G2. Accessed: 11/December/2023.
• 7. A negative review about MTurk workers’ language ability. G2. Accessed: 11/December/2023.
• 8. Mturk customer review data collection. G2. Accessed: 11/December/2023.