The 18 best AI tools for market research in 2026

Peter Kildegaard · 7 October 2026

An AI market research report reads the same whatever is behind it. A line about what buyers want can come from fifteen interviews, a panel of 200, a blog post, a keyword estimate or a model’s guess, and the polished summary makes all five sound equally certain. They are not, and the tool you pick decides which one you get.

This guide is for founders, PMs and marketers at startups who need to decide whether a market is worth entering. It sorts 18 tools by where their evidence comes from, labels what you can honestly claim from each, gives prices checked on 7 October 2026, and ends with a new market decision run step by step for $759.

Key takeaways

For a startup, the evidence that decides a market is prospective buyers explaining, in their own words, how they solve the problem today. Feedbaq gets you that. Connect it to your AI agent for free and the agent becomes your expert researcher: it plans and builds the study, and you preview it free. Buyers answer by voice or show you on screen, the AI follows up, and collecting responses costs $49 a month.
Choose every other tool by where its evidence comes from: a recruited panel, cited desk research, digital signals or a model’s simulation. A polished AI report makes all of them sound as certain as a buyer’s own words. They are not.
Pay for a panel only when the choice that remains needs a number: Pollfish for consumers from $0.95 a response, Wynter for B2B buyers from $899 a study.
Synthetic users generate hypotheses, not evidence about real customers. Use them to sharpen an interview guide, then ask real people.

Start here

Find the line that matches your question. Each names the tool we would try first and the one to compare it with.

Do buyers have the problem, and does your concept make sense to them? Start with Feedbaq, free in your AI agent until you collect responses: buyers explain in their own words how they handle the problem today, then react to your concept. Compare Koji for open interviews billed by credit.
You know nobody in the market. Start with Listen Labs, which recruits, interviews and reports. Compare Wynter if your buyers are B2B professionals.
You need a number: which concept, name or price wins. Start with Pollfish. Compare Conjointly when price and features trade off.
You need B2B buyers to read your positioning. Start with Wynter.
You need to know what is already known. Start with Perplexity. Compare Claude when the research must end in a memo next to your own interviews.
You want to size attention or competitors. Start with Semrush. Compare Similarweb for competitors’ traffic and channels.
You want to rehearse an interview guide. Use Synthetic Users or Delve AI, and never count what they say as evidence.

The 18 tools by where the evidence comes from

The column that matters is the third: what you can honestly claim from the tool’s output, and what you can open behind it. Most tools here use AI to write a fluent answer. Behind the answer sit very different things: a buyer’s own words, a sample’s choice, a page someone published, a model’s estimate, or a model’s imagination.

Hear it from people in the market: Feedbaq, Koji, Perspective AI
Get a number from a recruited sample: Listen Labs, Wynter, Pollfish, PickFu, Conjointly, SurveyMonkey LaunchPad
Find out what is already known: Perplexity, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini Notebook
Read the market’s digital signals: Semrush, Similarweb, Exploding Topics
Generate hypotheses with a model: Synthetic Users, Delve AI

AI market research tools compared by evidence source, prices checked 7 October 2026
Tool	Evidence comes from	What you can claim, and open	Price from	Free plan
Feedbaq	Buyers you invite, by voice or on screen	Heard: buyers’ own words, and the moment they said them	Free; $49/mo to collect	Yes
Koji	People you invite, in open interviews	Heard: verbatim quotes and audio	€29/mo	10 credits
Perspective AI	People you invite, screened	Heard: conversation transcripts	$99/mo	100 credits
Listen Labs	Strangers it recruits and interviews	Sampled: the interviews behind each claim	Not published	No
Wynter	B2B professionals checked by work email	Sampled: scores and written reasons	$899/study	Own panel free
Pollfish	A 250M+ consumer panel	Sampled: percentages from a screened sample	$0.95/response	Free to build
PickFu	A 15M+ consumer panel	Sampled: votes with a written reason	$1/response	Free account
Conjointly	A panel or your list, in choice tasks	Sampled: preference shares	$2,895/yr	20 responses on advanced methods
SurveyMonkey LaunchPad	A panel or your contacts	Sampled: a scorecard	Pay per study	Own contacts, no audience cost
Perplexity	Web pages it cites	Cited: the pages it links	$17/mo, annual	Yes
ChatGPT	The web and files you give it	Cited: the sources in its report	$8/mo	Yes
Claude	The web, files and connected tools	Cited; Heard when it reads your Feedbaq interviews	$17/mo, annual	Yes
Gemini Notebook	Only the sources you load	Cited: the passage in your file	Free	Yes
Semrush	Search data, modeled	Estimated: modeled search volumes	$117/mo, annual	Free account
Similarweb	Traffic signals, modeled	Estimated: modeled traffic	$125/mo, annual	Free trial
Exploding Topics	Search and social growth	Estimated: growth curves	$39/mo	7-day trial
Synthetic Users	A language model	Simulated: a model’s answers	$12,500/yr	No
Delve AI	A model built on your data	Simulated: personas’ answers	$99/mo	Free persona tools

Label the evidence before you trust the report

An AI market research report reads the same whatever is behind it. That is the problem. A sentence like “freelancers find invoicing tedious and would pay for automation” can come from fifteen interviews, a survey of 200 people, a blog post, a keyword volume or a model’s guess. The grammar is identical. The certainty is not.

So before a finding goes into a pitch deck or a roadmap, give it one of five labels:

Heard. People in the market said it, in their own words, and you can open what they said. Strong on why and how. It does not tell you how many.
Sampled. A recruited sample answered or chose it. Good for how many and which option wins, within the people you screened for and the options you offered.
Cited. A named source reports it. Only as good as that source, and only once you have opened it. When the Tow Center asked eight AI search tools to name the source of news excerpts, they got it wrong in more than 60% of queries.
Estimated. A model inferred it from digital traces. Similarweb says plainly that it extrapolates its traffic figures from signals. Search volumes are estimates too. Use them for direction and relative size.
Simulated. A model imagined it. Useful for ideas, never for what your buyers think.

The label follows the source, not the tool. Claude summarizing the web is Cited. Claude reading your Feedbaq interviews is Heard. Ask your agent to put the label next to every claim in its report, and to count people, not answers.

For a startup, this ordering has a practical consequence. The cheapest evidence that can change your mind is Heard: fifteen buyers explaining how they deal with the problem today. Desk research tells you what exists. A panel tells you how many. Only people in the market tell you whether your idea fits how they work.

That is why we start a startup’s market research in Feedbaq. It gets you Heard evidence without fifteen calls, and it is free until you collect responses: your AI agent plans and builds the study, and you preview it. Buyers answer by voice, which draws out more than a text box: in a 2024 experiment with 1,001 smartphone users, spoken answers averaged 43.8 words and typed ones 14.2. The AI follows up on what each person said, people can show you a concept or a workaround on screen, and your agent labels every claim and links each quote to the second it was said.

How we chose

This guide is desk research, not a hands-on test. We read each vendor’s current pricing page, product pages and customer stories on 7 October 2026. The main sources are linked at the end.

A market research job a startup runs. Each tool finds, collects, estimates or simulates market evidence, and AI does part of the work. Wynter is the exception: its AI is minor, and it is here because it gives B2B startups verified buyers that no model can stand in for.
A price or a named customer. Every tool publishes a price or a free plan, or names customers in its own stories. 17 of the 18 publish a price.
Something a founder, PM or marketer at a startup would buy. We left out enterprise brand-research suites, social listening platforms and licensed research libraries that sell annual contracts to insights departments. The consumer testing suites among them are in our guide to concept testing tools.
A clear difference from the tool next to it. Each entry names the nearest alternative and when to pick it instead.

We make Feedbaq and recommend it first for hearing from people in your market. For AI tools that research your existing users, see our guide to AI user research tools for product managers.

Hear it from people in the market

The first market research a startup should buy is a conversation with fifteen people who have the problem. Desk research cannot tell you whether your idea fits how buyers work, and a panel can only measure the options you already thought of. These three tools get you the conversations without booking fifteen calls, and in all three an AI follows up on what each person said. Feedbaq keeps the same core questions for everyone, so you can compare people side by side, and lets them react to a concept on screen. Koji and Perspective AI let the whole interview find its own path.

1. Feedbaq

feedbaq.to

Made by us

Feedbaq gets you the depth of a customer call without the calendar. You share a study link, and people answer in their browser by voice, by narrating their screen, or by text and choice. An AI follows up on what each person actually said, and your own AI agent can build the study, publish it and read every answer.

Hear how buyers solve the problem today, before you show them anything. They answer by voice, so you get about three times the words of a text box, and the AI asks about what each person actually said: the spreadsheet they mentioned, the step that broke, what they tried before. Our customer discovery questions are a good start.

Then show the concept and ask what they think it does. A landing page, a mockup or a video. Their own description tells you whether the positioning lands, and on a desktop they can narrate their screen as they read it. Your agent compares the answers across people and links each quote to the moment it was said. See our concept testing questions.

Real people, your own words, free to set up. Connect Feedbaq to your agent for free and it becomes your researcher: it plans and builds the study from your positioning doc, and you preview it for as long as you like. Collecting responses costs $49 a month. Feedbaq is in Claude’s connector directory and also connects to ChatGPT, Codex, Cursor and Grok; setup is on the MCP help page. The plan covers unlimited studies, so the discovery round and the concept round are not two purchases.

You bring: People in the market you can reach, such as your waitlist, a community or LinkedIn contacts, and a concept as an image, a video or a live page
You get: Voice and screen recordings with transcripts timed word by word, follow-up answers, topic counts, and quotes your agent links to the moment they were said
Example: Ask 15 freelance designers how they send invoices today. When one says “I copy last month’s PDF and change the numbers”, the AI asks what goes wrong. Then show the landing page for your invoicing add-on and ask what they think it does.
Shortlist it if: You can reach people in the market and need to hear, in their words, how they handle the problem today and what your concept means to them.
Choose it over: Koji when you want people to show a concept or page on screen and one plan price instead of credits; Listen Labs when you can reach the people yourself and want to start today.
Think twice if: You cannot reach anyone in the market: pair Feedbaq with a panel such as Pollfish or Wynter, or let Listen Labs recruit.

Price: Free in your AI agent; $49 a month to publish and collect responses, with every feature and unlimited studies and team members
Free plan: Yes: connect your AI agent, plan and build studies, and preview them, free

2. Koji

koji.so

Koji runs AI-moderated interviews by voice, chat or phone and groups the answers into themes. Every theme opens down to the verbatim quotes and the audio behind it.

You bring: A research goal and a link you send to people in the market
You get: Adaptive interviews with transcripts, and themes you can open down to the exact quote
Example: Interview 30 people who left a competitor last quarter about why they left, and let each conversation follow its own path.
Shortlist it if: You want each conversation to go where the participant takes it, rather than everyone answering the same questions.
Choose it over: Perspective AI when you want voice interviews, MCP and API on one plan for €79 a month.
Think twice if: You want everyone to react to the same concept on screen, so you can compare their answers side by side: choose Feedbaq.

Price: Insights €29 a month for text studies; Interviews €79 a month, with voice interviews, MCP and API; Enterprise from €500
Free plan: Yes: 10 credits, no card needed

3. Perspective AI

getperspective.ai

Perspective AI runs adaptive research conversations with screening and questions every participant must answer, and probes where an answer is thin. Its MCP server works with Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Cursor.

You bring: A research brief, screening rules and the questions every conversation must cover
You get: Conversation transcripts and an analysis you can question
Example: Screen for operations leads who bought scheduling software in the last year, require “what almost stopped you buying?”, and let the AI probe each answer.
Shortlist it if: Every conversation must pass a screener and cover the same required questions, and still follow the unexpected answer.
Choose it over: Koji when screening and required questions matter more than voice, and when you may want Perspective to run a study for you later.
Think twice if: You plan more than 100 conversations a month: each uses 10 credits, and Pro includes 1,000.

Price: Pro $99 a month with 1,000 credits and unlimited seats; Enterprise on request
Free plan: 100 starter credits, about ten conversations
Watch the extra costs: Research as a Service, where Perspective designs and runs the study and can source participants, is quoted separately.

Get a number from a recruited sample

Pay for a panel when the choice that remains needs a number, or when you cannot reach the market at all. Listen Labs recruits strangers and interviews them. Wynter is the panel for B2B buyers. Pollfish and PickFu are consumer panels you pay per response, and Conjointly and SurveyMonkey LaunchPad bring the methods for price and concept tests. A panel answers the question you wrote, from the people you screened for, so write both after the interviews.

4. Listen Labs

listenlabs.ai

Listen Labs designs the study, recruits from a network of over 50 million participants or from your own list, runs AI-moderated interviews in more than 120 languages and writes the report. Its customer stories include Anthropic, Microsoft, Sweetgreen and Cognition. It announced that it is joining Salesforce, with the same team building the product.

You bring: A market question and the audience you need
You get: Completed interviews and a report in which each claim traces back to a real interview
Example: Recruit 40 finance managers at logistics companies, a market where you have no contacts, and learn how they choose software today.
Shortlist it if: The people you need are strangers to you, and finding them is the hardest part of the study.
Choose it over: Feedbaq or Koji when you cannot reach the market yourself and want recruitment, interviews and the report from one vendor.
Think twice if: You want to start today with a card: it sells through a demo, with no published price.

Price: Not published; sold through a demo
Free plan: None published

5. Wynter

wynter.com

Wynter puts your message, survey or interview questions in front of B2B professionals who match your customer profile, with answers in 12 to 48 hours. Its 86,000+ panelists are checked by work email and LinkedIn, and it uses no AI respondents. Gong, HubSpot, Notion and Mercury are among the customers it names.

You bring: Your homepage, positioning or survey, and the job titles and company types you sell to
You get: Scores and written reasons from buyers who match your profile, section by section
Example: Show your new homepage to 50 heads of finance at companies of 50 to 500 people and read which line they found unclear, and why.
Shortlist it if: You sell to businesses and need buyers by job title faster than you could find them yourself.
Choose it over: Pollfish when the people must be professionals checked against their job, not consumers who answer a screener.
Think twice if: Your budget for the round is under $899: interview the buyers you can reach first, in Feedbaq.

Price: Pay as you go from $899 a study; Pro $20,000 a year in credits
Free plan: No; tests with your own panel are free
Watch the extra costs: Without a subscription, tests cost 50% more than on a plan.

6. Pollfish

pollfish.com

Pollfish runs self-serve surveys on a panel of 250M+ consumers, paid per response, with AI survey tools and add-on methods such as MaxDiff, conjoint and price sensitivity.

You bring: A survey, the audience filters and the number of responses
You get: Answers from a screened consumer sample, with charts and exports
Example: Ask 200 screened freelancers what they would pay for an invoicing add-on, with a price sensitivity question.
Shortlist it if: The remaining choice needs a number from a consumer sample, at a price you can pay by card.
Choose it over: PickFu when you need screening, quotas or a price method, not a quick pick between options.
Think twice if: Your buyers are defined by job title: choose Wynter.

Price: From $0.95 a response; full service from $5,000 a project; enterprise from $10,000 a year
Free plan: Free account with AI survey tools; you pay when you launch
Watch the extra costs: Screening questions add $0.50 to $5.75 a response, quotas $0.55 each, MaxDiff or conjoint $1.00, and price sensitivity $0.50.

7. PickFu

pickfu.com

PickFu runs paid polls for quick choices: a targeted panel picks between your options and writes why, and AI analysis summarizes the reasons. It names a panel of 15M+ respondents in 15 countries, with 100+ traits to target.

You bring: Two or more options, such as names, logos or headlines, and the audience to target
You get: Votes with a written reason from each respondent, and an AI summary of the reasons
Example: Test three product names with 50 small-business owners in the US and read why the winner won.
Shortlist it if: You have a narrow either-or choice and want an answer from strangers today.
Choose it over: Pollfish when the question is one choice between options and the written reasons matter more than the percentages.
Think twice if: The choice depends on how people work today: a pick between options cannot tell you that, so interview first.

Price: From $1 a response, with surveys from about $15; PickFu+ $99 a month, or from $999 a year
Free plan: Free account; you pay per survey
Watch the extra costs: Targeting, question type and sample size raise the price per response.

8. Conjointly

conjointly.com

Conjointly is self-serve quantitative research with methods that usually need an agency, such as conjoint, MaxDiff, Kano and price studies, plus AI analysis of open answers.

You bring: The features, prices or claims to trade off, and a panel or your own list
You get: Preference shares, price curves and the value the sample puts on each feature
Example: Find whether freelancers value automatic payment reminders more than a lower price, with a conjoint study of 300 respondents.
Shortlist it if: The decision is a trade-off between price and features, and a direct “what would you pay?” question would mislead you.
Choose it over: Pollfish when the decision needs a full conjoint or Kano design and its analysis, not one added question type.
Think twice if: You run one study a year: Professional is a $2,895 annual licence, and the free plan caps advanced methods at 20 responses.

Price: Professional $2,895 a team a year; Ultimate from $10,000 a year
Free plan: Yes: unlimited surveys; advanced methods capped at 20 responses
Watch the extra costs: Panel from $0.55 a response, $1.55 on average; AI text analytics $0.15 a response.

9. SurveyMonkey LaunchPad

surveymonkey.com

LaunchPad is SurveyMonkey’s pay-per-study suite, launched in June 2026, for concept, price, ad and message tests. Each test comes with a built-in method, scorecards with statistical testing, benchmarks and AI-powered insights.

You bring: The concepts or messages to test, and your own contacts or a panel audience
You get: A scorecard with statistical tests, benchmarks, key drivers and a report ready to present
Example: Run a concept test of two positioning statements with 150 people from SurveyMonkey’s panel and share the scorecard with your cofounder.
Shortlist it if: You want a standard concept or price test with the method built in, without designing it yourself.
Choose it over: Conjointly when you want to pay once for a guided test, with no annual licence.
Think twice if: You need to know why people scored a concept low: a scorecard gives you the score, so pair it with interviews.

Price: Pay per study, no subscription
Free plan: No free plan; building a study is free, and surveying your own contacts adds no audience cost
Watch the extra costs: Panel responses are sold separately and vary with count and targeting.

Find out what is already known

Desk research is the cheapest research, and an AI assistant now does a week of it in an afternoon. Use it to learn who already serves the market, what they charge and what has been published. Then open the sources behind every number you plan to repeat. Perplexity is the fastest at finding sources. Claude and ChatGPT write the longer report. Gemini Notebook answers only from the sources you chose.

10. Perplexity

perplexity.ai

Perplexity is an answer engine that searches the web and your files and shows the source behind each part of the answer. Pro adds deep research, a choice of AI models and higher upload limits.

You bring: A market question, and files you add
You get: Answers and research reports with inline citations to the pages behind them
Example: Ask for every invoicing tool aimed at freelancers, with its price and launch year, then open each cited pricing page before the table goes in your brief.
Shortlist it if: You need to map a market in an afternoon and want every line to point at a page.
Choose it over: ChatGPT or Claude when finding and citing sources is the whole job.
Think twice if: You take citations on trust: in a 2025 Tow Center test, AI search tools named the wrong source in more than 60% of queries.

Price: Pro $17 a month billed annually; Max $167 a month billed annually
Free plan: Yes, with lower limits

11. ChatGPT

chatgpt.com

OpenAI’s assistant for research, drafting and analysis of files and data, with deep research that searches the web and writes a cited report.

You bring: A research question, spreadsheets and documents you upload, or apps you connect
You get: Cited research reports, analyses of exported data, and drafts
Example: Upload a table of competitor prices and ask deep research which customer segments nobody serves, with a source for each claim.
Shortlist it if: Your team already works in ChatGPT, or you analyze exported data often.
Choose it over: Claude when your company already pays for ChatGPT; for desk research the two are close.
Think twice if: You plan to stay on Free or Go: deep research is limited there and expands on Plus.

Price: Go $8 a month; Plus $20 a month; Pro from $100
Free plan: Yes, with limited deep research and uploads

12. Claude

claude.com

Anthropic’s assistant for long documents, research synthesis and writing. Research searches the web and cites its sources, and connectors from its directory, including Feedbaq, let it read your research tools directly.

You bring: A market question, files you upload, and research tools you connect
You get: Cited research reports, and briefs that quote and link the interviews it can read
Example: Run Research on the freelance invoicing market, connect Feedbaq, and ask where your interviews agree with the desk research and where they contradict it, with a link to each quote.
Shortlist it if: You want one agent to do the desk research and then weigh it against what your buyers told you.
Choose it over: Perplexity when the research has to end in a memo that combines the web with your own interviews.
Think twice if: You plan to stay on Free: web search and connectors are included, but Research needs Pro.

Price: Pro $20 a month, or $17 billed annually; Max from $100; Team $25 a seat monthly, $20 billed annually
Free plan: Yes, with web search and connectors; Research needs Pro

13. Gemini Notebook

notebook.google

Google’s research notebook, called NotebookLM until its rename, answers questions only from the sources you load into it and cites the passage behind each answer.

You bring: Reports, competitor pages, transcripts and exports you choose
You get: Answers and comparisons with a citation to the passage in your source
Example: Load the 20 sources your desk research relied on and ask where their market-size figures disagree, passage by passage.
Shortlist it if: You have chosen your sources and want answers from them and nothing else.
Choose it over: Perplexity or Claude when every answer must stay inside the sources you trust.
Think twice if: You need it to find new sources: it answers only from what you load.

Price: Free; Google AI Plus and Pro plans raise the limits and the sources per notebook
Free plan: Yes: up to 50 sources a notebook

Read the market’s digital signals

Digital signals show where attention is moving; they cannot show who will pay. Search volumes, traffic estimates and trend curves are modeled from traces people leave online. They are good for comparing sizes and spotting direction, and for learning the words people use for the problem, which belong in your interview guide.

14. Semrush

semrush.com

Semrush is a search research suite: estimated keyword volumes, the pages that rank, competitors’ search traffic, and your brand’s visibility in AI search. The Starter plan adds MCP access, so your agent can query the data.

You bring: The words people might use for the problem, and competitor domains
You get: Estimated monthly searches, keyword difficulty, and the pages that win each query
Example: Compare how often people search “freelance invoice template” and “invoicing app for designers”, then read the pages that rank to see how competitors frame the problem.
Shortlist it if: You want to know how people describe the problem when nobody is asking them.
Choose it over: Similarweb when search demand and the words people use matter more than competitors’ total traffic.
Think twice if: You read search volume as demand: it estimates searches, not buyers.

Price: SEO $139 a month, or $117.33 billed annually; SEO + AI Search Starter $199, or $165.17 billed annually
Free plan: Free account; paid plans have a 7-day trial

15. Similarweb

similarweb.com

Similarweb estimates any website’s traffic, channels and audience by modeling signals from analytics it receives, a contributor network of devices, public data and partners. Its entry plan covers competitor traffic, engagement, demographics and alerts.

You bring: Competitor domains and the market you sell in
You get: Estimated visits, traffic sources, audience and engagement for each competitor
Example: See which of five competitors grew fastest last year and which channel drove it, before you choose your first acquisition channel.
Shortlist it if: You need a rough read on competitors’ size and where their visitors come from.
Choose it over: Semrush when total traffic and channel mix matter more than search terms.
Think twice if: You need exact numbers: Similarweb says it extrapolates its figures from signals, so read every one as an estimate.

Price: Competitive Intelligence $125 a month billed annually, or $199 monthly; Business plans by quote
Free plan: High-level data free on its site, and a free trial

16. Exploding Topics

explodingtopics.com

Exploding Topics finds topics whose search and social interest is growing, from a database of 1.1M+ trends that its team curates by hand. Higher plans add trend forecasting with machine learning and a list of trending startups.

You bring: A category or keyword
You get: Growth curves for rising topics, products and startups, with a breakdown by channel
Example: Find which freelance and creator-economy topics grew most in the last two years before you choose a niche to interview.
Shortlist it if: You are choosing which market to study and want candidates before you research one.
Choose it over: Semrush when you want to discover rising topics, not data on terms you already know.
Think twice if: You read growth as demand: a rising topic tells you where to look, not that anyone will pay.

Price: Entrepreneur $39 a month; Investor $99; Business $249
Free plan: 7-day free trial

Generate hypotheses with a model

Synthetic users generate hypotheses, not evidence about real customers. When Nielsen Norman Group compared synthetic and real participants, real participants admitted stopping after three of seven courses. The synthetic users said they finished them all, and praised discussion forums the real participants avoided. A 2025 study in Nature Machine Intelligence, with 3,200 participants across 16 demographic identities, found that language models standing in for people misportray groups and flatten the differences within them.

The vendors agree more than their marketing suggests. Synthetic Users reports 85 to 92% parity with real studies in comparison studies, and its FAQ still says real research stays essential for validation. So use these tools before your interviews: to find objections your guide misses, and to rehearse the follow-ups. Then ask real people.

17. Synthetic Users

syntheticusers.com

Synthetic Users runs interviews with AI participants built to match the audience you describe, and summarizes the themes in minutes. It calls itself a discovery co-pilot, not a replacement for real research, and names TikTok, J.P. Morgan and Samsung among its clients.

You bring: An audience description, a research goal, and the concept, video or site to show
You get: Generated interview transcripts and a summary of themes
Example: Before you interview 15 freelancers, run 20 synthetic interviews to find objections your guide does not ask about yet.
Shortlist it if: You want to rehearse an interview guide or widen your list of hypotheses before you talk to people.
Choose it over: Delve AI when you want simulated interviews more than personas, and an annual research budget covers it.
Think twice if: You want to know what your customers think: the answers come from a model, so they are hypotheses to test with real people.

Price: Annual plans from $12,500 a year in research tokens
Free plan: None published
Watch the extra costs: A typical 10-question text interview uses 1,250 tokens; the vendor puts the cost at $2 to $60 an interview within the pool.

18. Delve AI

delve.ai

Delve AI builds personas from your analytics and customer data, then lets you survey and interview them as synthetic users, or as digital twins of your customers.

You bring: Your website analytics, customer data or a description of the audience
You get: Personas, and answers from the synthetic users built on them
Example: Build personas from your site’s analytics, then ask them which of two headlines speaks to them, to choose which one to test with real visitors.
Shortlist it if: You want personas grounded in your own data and a cheap way to explore them.
Choose it over: Synthetic Users when $99 a month fits your budget and you want the personas built from your own data.
Think twice if: You treat the personas’ answers as customer feedback: they are a model of your data, not people.

Price: Synthetic users $99 a month for 100, $680 for 1,000, $4,000 for 10,000
Free plan: Free persona tools and templates

The close calls

Feedbaq or Koji?

Choose by what you need to compare. Both adapt to what people say. Feedbaq keeps the same core questions for everyone and its AI follows up on each answer, so you can put fifteen reactions to the same concept side by side. People can react to the concept on screen, your agent can build the study as well as read it, and building is free until you collect responses. Koji holds an open interview that goes wherever the participant takes it, and bills by credit. Pick Feedbaq for a concept test and a discovery round you want to compare. Koji suits a conversation that should find its own way, but then no two people answer the same question, and in Feedbaq the follow-ups still go wherever each answer leads.

Interviews or a panel survey first?

Interviews first, almost always. A survey can only measure the options you thought of, in the words you chose. Fifteen interviews in Feedbaq tell you which options are real and how buyers describe them, in a week and without a calendar. Run the panel after, with their words in the questions.

Your own network or Listen Labs?

Use your network if you can reach fifteen people in a week. A waitlist, a community or a LinkedIn post usually gets you there, a Feedbaq link lets each of them answer when it suits them, and you start today. Pay Listen Labs when the market is new to you and nobody you know is in it.

Pollfish, PickFu or Conjointly?

Match the tool to the shape of the question. PickFu settles a pick between names or headlines in a day, with reasons. Pollfish gives you a screened survey with numbers and add-on price methods. Conjointly is for trade-offs between price and features, where people cannot tell you directly what they value.

Wynter or Pollfish for B2B?

Wynter, when the job title decides who counts. Its panelists are checked by work email and LinkedIn. Pollfish screens consumers by what they say about themselves, which is fine for freelancers and small-business owners and weak for heads of finance.

Perplexity, Claude or ChatGPT for desk research?

Map the market in Perplexity, then write the memo in Claude. Perplexity finds and cites sources fastest. Claude can then weigh that desk research against your own interviews, with Feedbaq connected. If your team already pays for ChatGPT, use it for the memo instead; the two are close.

Semrush or Similarweb?

Semrush first for a startup. Semrush shows how people search for the problem, which feeds your interview guide and your positioning. Add Similarweb when you need competitors’ traffic and channel mix.

Synthetic users or real interviews?

Real interviews. Use Synthetic Users or Delve AI for an hour before the round, to stress-test the guide. Then run the round in Feedbaq, where building the study is free and the answers come from buyers. Never put a synthetic answer in a deck as something a customer said.

A new market decision, with one budget

Say you run a small invoicing app and want to know whether to build an add-on for freelance designers. Here is the order we would run it in, and what it costs.

Desk research, one afternoon. Map who already serves freelance designers and what they charge, in Perplexity or with Research in Claude. Load the sources you will rely on into Gemini Notebook and ask only from those. Look up in Semrush how people search for the problem. Label every line Cited or Estimated.
Interviews, one week. Send a Feedbaq study to 15 freelance designers from your waitlist, design communities and LinkedIn. First ask how they invoice today and the last time it went wrong. Then show the add-on’s landing page and ask what they think it does and who it is for. Ask your agent to compare the answers, with the number of people behind each pattern and a link to every quote.
Decide whether you need a number. If the interviews show no real pain, stop: no panel will fix that. If most describe the same pain and read the concept correctly, the open question is usually price. Then, and only then, run a Pollfish survey of 200 screened freelancers with a price sensitivity question.
Write the decision memo with the labels. Mark each claim Heard, Sampled, Cited or Estimated, and attach the quotes and the survey result so the team can judge the evidence themselves.

Worked budget for one new market decision, prices checked 7 October 2026
Step	Tool	Cost
Desk research	Claude Pro for a month, with Research	$20
Source set	Gemini Notebook	$0
Search language	Semrush free account	$0
Interviews with 15 designers	Feedbaq for a month	$49
Thank-you gift for each interviewee	15 × $20	$300
Price survey	Pollfish, 200 × ($0.95 + $0.50 screener + $0.50 price sensitivity)	$390
Total		$759

If your buyers are businesses rather than freelancers, swap the Pollfish step for a Wynter study, from $899. Either way, the expensive step comes last and only runs when the interviews say the question is worth a number.

Free template

The idea or concept template

Put a design in front of people and hear the unfiltered first reaction, before you build it.

Use this template, free

1What do you use today for this?Text
2Take a look at this. What is your first reaction?Voice
3In your own words, what do you think this does?Voice
4What would stop you from using this?Voice
5Anything else you want us to know?Voice

Questions people ask

What are the best AI tools for market research in 2026?

Pick by where the evidence comes from. To hear people in the market, Feedbaq, Koji or Perspective AI. For a recruited sample, Listen Labs for interviews with strangers, Wynter for B2B buyers, Pollfish or PickFu for consumers, and Conjointly or SurveyMonkey LaunchPad for price and concept tests. For desk research, Perplexity, Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini Notebook. For digital signals, Semrush, Similarweb and Exploding Topics. Synthetic Users and Delve AI simulate answers.

Can AI replace customer interviews in market research?

AI can run and follow up on interviews with real people, and it can analyze them. It cannot stand in for the people. In Feedbaq, buyers answer by voice or on screen, an AI asks up to three follow-up questions about what each person said, and your agent compares the answers with a link to every quote.

Are synthetic users real market research?

No. Synthetic users generate hypotheses, not evidence about real customers. Nielsen Norman Group found synthetic participants claimed to finish courses that real participants abandoned, and a 2025 Nature Machine Intelligence study found language models misportray and flatten demographic groups. Synthetic Users itself says real research stays essential for validation. Use them to sharpen an interview guide.

Can I use ChatGPT or Claude for market research?

Yes, for desk research: who serves the market, what they charge and what has been published. ChatGPT’s deep research and Claude’s Research both write cited reports; Research needs Claude Pro at $20 a month. Open the source behind every number you repeat. With Feedbaq connected, Claude can also weigh the desk research against your own interviews.

How much does AI market research cost for a startup?

Our worked example costs $759: Claude Pro for desk research ($20), Gemini Notebook and a Semrush free account ($0), Feedbaq for interviews with 15 prospects ($49), $20 thank-you gifts ($300), and a Pollfish price survey of 200 screened respondents ($390). For B2B buyers, swap Pollfish for a Wynter study from $899.

Is Feedbaq free?

Feedbaq is free in your AI agent. Connect it to Claude, ChatGPT, Codex, Cursor or Grok, and the agent plans and builds studies that you preview, for free, for as long as you like. Publishing a study to collect responses costs $49 a month, with every feature and unlimited studies and team members.

Do I need a research panel for market research?

Not to start. Interview people in the market you can reach first, through a waitlist, a community or LinkedIn. Pay for a panel when the choice that remains needs a number, such as Pollfish from $0.95 a response or Wynter from $899 a study, or when you know nobody in the market, which is when Listen Labs recruits for you.

Keep reading

Researching the users you already have? Read our guide to AI user research tools for product managers.

The 25 best concept testing and ad testing tools in 2026

25 concept and ad testing tools sorted by job: AI-led interviews, quick preference tests, conjoint and pricing research, ad pre-tests and creative analytics.

Read the guide

Customer discovery interviews: 25 questions to ask and how to run them

25 customer discovery questions that get facts, not compliments, plus how to find people, how many interviews you need and how to read the answers.

Read the guide

Sources

Nielsen Norman Group, Synthetic users: if, when, and how to use AI-generated “research” Maria Rosala and Kate Moran, 21 June 2024.
Wang, Morgenstern and Dickerson, Large language models that replace human participants can harmfully misportray and flatten identity groups, Nature Machine Intelligence Volume 7, 2025.
Tow Center for Digital Journalism, AI search has a citation problem Klaudia Jaźwińska and Aisvarya Chandrasekar, 6 March 2025.
Lenzner, Höhne and Gavras, spoken versus written answers to open-ended probes, Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology 2024.
Similarweb, how its data is produced Checked 7 October 2026.
Feedbaq
Feedbaq, pricing Checked 7 October 2026.
Feedbaq, MCP setup and tools
Feedbaq in Claude
Koji, pricing Checked 7 October 2026.
Perspective AI, pricing Checked 7 October 2026.
Perspective AI, MCP documentation
Listen Labs, product and customers Checked 7 October 2026.
Listen Labs, joining Salesforce
Wynter, pricing Checked 7 October 2026.
Wynter, about: pay-as-you-go price and customers Checked 7 October 2026.
Pollfish, pricing Checked 7 October 2026.
PickFu, pricing Checked 7 October 2026.
Conjointly, pricing Checked 7 October 2026.
SurveyMonkey, LaunchPad concept testing Checked 7 October 2026.
SurveyMonkey, LaunchPad announcement 10 June 2026.
Perplexity, Pro and Max plans Checked 7 October 2026.
OpenAI, ChatGPT plans Checked 7 October 2026.
Claude, pricing Checked 7 October 2026.
Google, Gemini Notebook plans Checked 7 October 2026.
Semrush, pricing US prices. Checked 7 October 2026.
Similarweb, pricing Checked 7 October 2026.
Exploding Topics, Pro plans Checked 7 October 2026.
Synthetic Users, pricing Checked 7 October 2026.
Synthetic Users, product, clients and FAQ
Delve AI, synthetic users and pricing Checked 7 October 2026.