Qualfy vs User Interviews

User Interviews is the biggest name in participant recruiting: a panel of 7.5 million people matched to your screener and paid per session, plus Research Hub for running the same workflow over your own customers. It screens, schedules, records and answers questions with citations, and since January 2026 it belongs to UserTesting. Qualfy covers the same loop from a different starting point — the user who is inside your product right now.

The same question, asked of the same nine interviews

“Where do new users get stuck during onboarding?”

UI

User Interviews, nine panel sessions

“Participants generally found onboarding straightforward, though several wanted more guidance during initial setup and expected clearer next steps after signing up.”Cited to the transcripts — of nine people who matched a screener and had never used your product.

User Interviews' AI cites its sources, same as ours. The difference is who is in the nine interviews.

Q

Qualfy

3 of 9 interviews mention getting stuck during onboarding123. All three stalled at the data-import step, not at creating the account. The other six didn't raise onboarding at all.

1 · Ops manager · Mid-marketView in transcript · 8:42

Sign-up was fine. Then it wanted a CSV in a format I'd never seen, and I couldn't tell what it was asking for.

2 · Founder · SMBView in transcript · 12:05

I closed the tab at the import screen. Came back two days later when a teammate said you could skip it.

3 · Analyst · EnterpriseView in transcript · 21:17

The import page looked like it needed admin rights, so I pinged IT before I'd click anything.

A number you can put on a slide: three quotes, three timestamps, and six interviews that didn't say it.

About the panel

A panel answers questions about the market. Your users answer questions about your product.

A panel is the right tool for a real class of question. If you are sizing a market you haven't entered, testing a concept nobody has seen, or trying to reach a title your CRM doesn't hold, User Interviews will put nine matching people on your calendar this week and pay them for you. Research Hub does the same job over your own customers once you've imported the list.

What a panel can't do is remember your product. One of the product managers in Qualfy's own research said it plainly: they had used panels with success, but “I can't test a feature deep in our product with people that don't already have familiarity.” A screener can find someone who resembles your user. It can't find the person who hit the import wall on Tuesday.

That's where Qualfy starts. A campaign targets a behavior — a page, an action, time in the product, a segment — and invites that user in the moment, screens them, and books them against your team's calendars. The list was never the hard part; being there when it happens is.

Where each one starts

User Interviews starts from a screener. Qualfy starts from the screen your user is on.

Recruit draws from the panel, priced per completed session. Research Hub draws from your own users, imported from a CSV, an opt-in form, or the participant API. Either way the participant is chosen from a list. From there the two products cover the same ground — screener, calendar, recorder bot, cited AI — and the grid shows it.

Recruit

Screen

Schedule

Record

Analyze

Qualfy

Built inBuilt inBuilt inBuilt inBuilt in

User Interviews

Panel, or your list by CSVScreener surveysGoogle, Outlook; team calendarsBot on Zoom, Meet, TeamsAI chat, cited

Every cell in the User Interviews row is “built in” by their own documentation. The recorder bot is limited to 1:1 moderated sessions, and there is no in-product widget: Research Hub reaches your users by email, after they are on the list. Its MCP integration is in early access by request, for creating studies and recruiting; analysis is listed as coming soon.

Trust

Both products cite their sources. One publishes how often it's wrong.

We make no claim about User Interviews' accuracy — we can't measure it. We can measure ours, and these numbers are checked before every release; if one slips, the release doesn't ship. That includes the last one: a system that never invents an answer is tempted to refuse too often, so we measure that too.

0

invented answers

on the 29 questions the research could not answer

100%

citations resolve

212 of 212 point at a real moment in a real transcript

100%

claims faithful

212 of 212 claims supported by the excerpt they cite

0

unnecessary refusals

of 56 answerable questions, none got “I don't know” when it could have answered

Price

A published price for strangers. A demo for your own users.

User Interviews

  • Recruit — $49 per completed session pay-as-you-go, $98 with B2B targeting; $41 on the Essential subscription; $36 on an annual Professional contract.
  • Research Hub — Workflow starts at 3 seats, CRM starts at 1,000 contacts; no price is published, book a demo.
  • After the acquisition — UserTesting bought User Interviews in January 2026; its FAQ says pricing, contracts and products are unchanged.

Research Hub is the product this page compares against, and it has no published price, so this page doesn't guess one.

Qualfy

  • Free — 3 interviews, no card, no clock. Cited answers and MCP included.
  • Team, $59/month — 50 interviews a month, 5 seats included.
  • Growth, $149/month — 250 interviews a month, 15 seats included.

Self-serve and transparent pricing.

Feature by feature

Grouped by where it happens in the loop

 User InterviewsQualfy
Getting the conversation
Recruit participantsA panel of 7.5 million, priced per session; or your own users from a CSV, an opt-in form, or the participant API, reached by emailShare link, email invites, or a popup inside your product
Screen before bookingBothYes — screener surveysUp to 5 questions, with disqualification rules
Schedule the interviewBothYes — Google and Outlook, across collaborators' connected calendars; participants self-bookLive availability from Google or Outlook, round-robin across the team
Pay incentivesYes — handled for you, on top of the session priceNot offered
Capturing it
Record the callBothYes — a recorder bot joins Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams; 1:1 moderated sessions onlyA notetaker joins the Meet or Teams call; Zoom recordings can be uploaded
Unmoderated tests and surveysYesNot offered
Using it
Searchable corpus with cited answersBothYes — AI chat cites the parts of the transcript it draws on; project-level chat works across participantsYes — every answer cites the moment in the transcript
Says “I don't know” when the evidence is thinNot documentedYes, by design — measured before every release
Ask from Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor (MCP)Early access by request — creating studies and recruiting today; analysis listed as coming soonYes — on every plan, including free

Choose User Interviews when

  • You need people you don't have — a market you haven't entered, a title your CRM doesn't hold, a concept nobody has used yet.
  • You want incentives paid for you, and unmoderated tests and surveys alongside the interviews.
  • Your research is a program with a budget, and per-session pricing fits how it's funded.

Choose Qualfy when

  • The only valid participant is someone already using your product — the one who hit the wall on Tuesday, not someone who resembles them.
  • You want a published price for research with your own users, and a free plan to prove the loop before you pay.
  • You want to ask your research from Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor today, on every plan, without a request form.

You can use both

Recruit strangers there for the studies that need them, and run the interviews with your own users here. Recordings are downloadable on every Qualfy plan, and transcripts from other tools can be uploaded, so the corpus you ask questions of can hold both.

Every User Interviews claim on this page was checked on September 15, 2026 against User Interviews' own pricing page, product pages, support articles, MCP page and acquisition FAQ. Products change — if something here is out of date or unfair, tell us and we'll correct it.