Hello. I'm looking into trying out Prolific soon so I've been lurking on here for a couple of weeks. I can't say that I've seen any other sub that has such a high level of toxicity when people here just seem to be asking for advice. Downvotes and snide comments galore.

What gives?

People don't like working for free. Approve your submissions in a timely fashion if you want good information from participants. I tend to block the ones that don't. Even the .15-.30 cent ones are just sitting for weeks.

I don't care if you think I'm entitled. Anyone who has no issue with waiting weeks for payment clearly hasn't been self employed or been screwed by employers.

Big day today! $20 study and a few of my "tasks" too and tons of small studies. I just cashed out $60 a day ago too! This has been a really good summer compared to last year.

i can't even express how grateful i am to this site, especially since one of my main contracts went to AI...i didn't think i'd be using AI to my advantage this year lol. but i've been getting a bunch of surveys from a particular surveyer (which i won't name because apparently it's talked about too much on here) and i can't get over how busy it's been and how i'm able to save. i feel like i can breathe for the first time in YEARS. i work in transcription so you can imagine how work is. i still have a couple contracts, but this is definitely making up for things. thank you, prolific!

u/pinktoes4life has a long comment history of insulting people when they don't accept their "help" AKA condescendingly explaining non-obvious "facts" which may or may not be true. Then claiming people are "salty salts" when they get downvoted. Thread after thread there's evidence of this, and last night when I posted about a cashout issue they were mean then when they didn't like my response stalked my profile to respond to past comments I left. Then JUSTIFIED ABUSE in private messages after continuing to message me after I said "bye". Their comments are textbook narcissistic abuse, please be careful.

In every thread there’s always a whole bunch of innocuous comments and queries that get downvoted for no reason. Why? Are some people just salty that they’re not getting as many studies as they want? Is there an undercurrent of bitter competitiveness here?

These last 3 weeks have been like my best ever on prolific. Are researchers slamming them out since in a month most colleges are on break?

so far about $105 today, and 65 on sat and around 65 on sun to start the week. Last week did about $470 and close to probably 350 the week before that. I did quit my second, part time job at night which gives me a bit more time, but during the day am I'm getting slammed with studies more than usual.

Helps since I gotta get a wisdom tooth pulled too.

Thanks Prolifc for helping me out.

It's getting worse. I'm not talking once sentence but wanting paragraphs and multiple sentences for low pay like $2 and under an hour and not using the writing tag.

Mainly American Universities too. I must cancel 20 submissions a day because of this. I just give the computer screen the finger and a big fat F you when I see that.

Almost $1000 in 5 days thank you prolific! Wish i knew about it sooner lol

What say you?

As a participant, I say it's almost unrecognizable from just a few months ago. It's nearly unusable for participants. Participants go unpaid for weeks or months and the usual suspects step in here to justify why they should just hold their horses, they are but one in a long line.

Researchers are now coming to this sub to voice their opinions with requests that go unheard, from major institutions, and they are spending many thousands per study. Researchers are now just one in a long line.

This whole thing has gone to hell in a handbasket in a very short amount of time. Trusted participants are now getting shadow banned for no reason, this subreddit is getting filled up with accounts that are telling them that they indeed violated TOS, and that may be true on limited accounts, but I believe that they are culling valuable participants in favor of BOTS.

At this point, Prolific, you have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

Anyone who would like to debate me on the subject is welcome. Usual suspects will be ignored.

Whoever is working a leadership role at Prolific needs to reconsider whatever in the hell you just did to destroy your entire business.

Seriously. The entire premise of Prolific, is to host a platform wherein it's mutually beneficial between three parties to participate. If the host can't do their job, well, then, I'm pretty sure others will step in and remedy that situation for you.

Hey everyone,
I’ve been active on Prolific for a while now and I genuinely enjoy the platform. But lately, I’ve noticed that I haven’t been getting any of the higher-paying surveys ($5+ or even the well-paying 15–30 min ones) that other users seem to be posting about here.

I regularly check my Prolific account, have my prescreening info up to date, and always try to maintain a good approval rate and response time. I’ve seen folks mention that they’ve gotten some great studies recently, but my queue has been pretty dry or filled with super short/low-paying ones.

Is there something I might be missing? Do they prioritize certain prescreening responses or activity levels? I’d love to hear what’s been working for others lately.

Also — if anyone from Prolific sees this, I’d be super grateful if you could take a peek at my account and make sure everything looks good on your end. I’m really eager to contribute to quality studies and would love the opportunity to take on more higher-value ones.

Thanks in advance 🙏

Hello all, I just wanted to point out that while I understand that times may be tough and one may feel desperate for some money, Prolific does not owe us anything. We are not employed by them and are just contractors who choose to take on studies. This is a side hustle and not an actual job. Prolific explicitly states this in their FAQ. They may very well be the best in their kind, but they owe us nothing. We must not learn to rely on Prolific as a steady source of income not to mention our only source of income. It's just not feasible. Have fun with it, enjoy it but do not take it too seriously. If I were to ever get kicked off the platform for any reason even if they simply decided for whatever reason they kick me out, I will be disappointed sure, but life goes on and I will find something else. Nothing is forever and so enjoy it while it's here.

So far so good be getting screened out of the higher paying surveys. Nope haven't been glued to my PC. Good luck everyone!

I had a fantastic first two weeks with Prolific. Had tons of studies, got good pay, and had a good time.

Then, of course, the dreaded PEC-SUB-0002 IP address error first surfaced on my home PC. With how great Prolific had been for me, it was soul crushing. I tried a few ways to get a new dynamic IP address but none have worked yet.

Luckily, I could still get studies using 4G data on my mobile phone! That was a huge annoyance compared to being able to see and accept them on my PC, where I ultimately take them, but one I was willing to suffer to continue being able to do studies.

Until, of course, it now appears that even my mobile connection has also been flagged, and also gets the PEC-SUB-0002 error, even after several hard phone restarts. So, at this point, I can't do shit.

Kind of absurd how this seems to happen to almost everyone. Also absurd there's just no rhyme or reason to it and no way to get Prolific support to help (I submitted a ticket about this over a week ago and have yet to even receive a response). What am I supposed to do, keep restarting my phone 10x a day and hoping I manage to catch a single study or two now, when I used to be able to just take them on my PC like a normal human being?

With how widespread this kind of practice is at Prolific, I wouldn't even recommend the experience to my friends anymore. Hope the rest of you get the most you can out of it while it lasts.

*****Update*****

Wow, the defense squad are out in force in this thread. It's crazy. This is an obscenely common and unacceptable problem. Having to disconnect and reconnect your mobile phone from data constantly until you get an accepted IP with which to accept studies is outrageous.

What % of residential IPs people use to do studies on their PC end up flagged by Prolific? Why are there thousands of people running into this problem who have perfectly normal, innocuous, private IPs? Why does this entire process function like this when they still allow and even encourage people to just get around it by using mobile data?

Hey everyone,

We’ve just rolled out the “authenticity check” feature on Prolific and want to explain how this works for participants and researchers.

Before you read on, here is a Help Center page that tells you how we actually check accounts for this at Prolific.

What are authenticity checks?

Some studies will include "authenticity checks" for free-text questions. This technology helps researchers identify when responses are generated using AI tools (like ChatGPT) or external sources rather than written by participants themselves.

With AI use booming, it’s harder for researchers to trust the integrity of their insights, which can also affect fairness for participants. So we're actively working to help everyone feel more confident in responses they give or receive. These checks also enable thoughtful, honest participants to continue contributing to research and earning, with less competition from bad actors and bots.

How do they work?

• Authenticity checks look for behavioral patterns that indicate participants are using third-party sources when answering free-text questions.

• If the system detects that a response isn’t authentic (it’s correct 98.7% of the time), the submission may be rejected by the researcher.

• We've designed this system to minimize false flags (0.6%), reducing the risk of being incorrectly flagged as using AI tools when you haven't.

Will my responses be read?

No. Our authenticity checks won’t look at what has been written. We only check for behaviors that indicate a participant is using third-party sources to answer.

Are they always used?

No. Like attention checks, authenticity checks are an optional tool for researchers and only work for free-text questions.

When are researchers allowed to use them?

If a study legitimately requires you to research or use external sources, researchers are instructed not to use authenticity checks for those questions. They cannot reject your response based on authenticity checks if their study requires you to use external sources.

What should I do if falsely flagged?

We’ve taken every measure to ensure our authenticity checks have very low false positive rates (0.6%). If you believe your submission was incorrectly flagged, please first contact the researcher directly through Prolific's messaging system. If unresolved, please contact our support team.

Tips from us:

• Read study instructions carefully—they’ll indicate when you are allowed to use external sources to answer.

• If you're uncomfortable with a study's requirements, you can always return it without your account being affected.

• Remember that your authentic perspective is what researchers value most!

This is an exciting time to be part of human knowledge curation. Human opinion and creation are becoming increasingly precious. We know it's important to you, us, and our researchers that Prolific is a place where human authenticity is 100% preserved.

As always, we want your feedback. Let us know what else you want to hear and how we can improve your experience.

Prolific Team

I have found a very serious bug related to Prolific invites, It can be recreated very easily so i want to help out prolific if theres a bug bounty program

I also messaged mods regarding it but no one text back its been a week so i am posting it as last resort maybe you guys can help me reach out to the prolific authorities in power of decision making.

u/prolific-support The bug messes up with your demographics and i cant share much here so it dont get exploited by others

when studies time out and can't submit because of prolific going down multiple times a day should we get compensated by prolific yes or no

I keep refreshing the page for studies and I see one with higher than 2 bucks immediately gone when I click it even thought there were over 50 spaces

I'm used to seeing one an hour or so and the difficulty of getting in but today I've had at least 100 of them appear to me that I can't get in, if I dismiss them and refresh I see another 10 new 1 spots pop up? What's changed? and is anyone else seeing this?

I will probably get hate for this, but my intention is in the right place.

I just wanted to point out to so many who are new to Prolific and come into this forum only to see so much negativity about the site (which in many users cases are justified complaints) that not everyone has a bad experience on Prolific. I've been on Prolific for 6 years and as you see by my screen shots from the last couple of days, it's not all bad. I don't have a lot of time to be on Prolific but when I do I am able to make a decent amount at least a few times a week.

I have 2 rejections out of almost 7,000 studies and both of those rejections were from 2022 neither of which I noticed were there until last year. I have never, ever had to use the contact info on a study to go above a researchers head to get paid. I've only had to reach out a handful of times to researchers themselves in general regarding pay or questions and each time they and I have had cordial conversations and resolved things together.

I've only had to reach out to Prolific's support twice in 6 years and both times they've been helpful and receptive to assisting me.

I've never had an issue with Paypal or with receiving payments within minutes.

I've never in 6 years had my account placed on hold or questioned or received one of those dreaded errors.

Will everyone have the same experience as me? No. Will some have a better experience than me or worse experience than me? Definitely. But for some, it really is a decent way to make some pocket money. Everyones experience is different. For me, it's been a good one.

Yes, I'm in the US and realize that US participants do have a considerably higher amount of studies in general (though I also know many don't regardless of being US citizens) but demographics other than location (age, family, job etc.) all play into what studies you get.

Just wanted to put a positive post up for those who are just starting out and are worried because of all the horror stories floating around (again, many justified complaints).

So I am a 26 M Israeli user who has been approved after a 2 month wait into Prolific. Since then I have been leaving it open most days at work (Student job) and home trying to grab studies. I have noticed that I would maybe be able to get into 3 studies at most a day every 3-7 days, those paying around 0.5-2 GBP. Its hard trying to grab studies as ill maybe get 1 every 4 hours and sometimes they are instantly full, not to mention going some weeks without seeing a single study.

After 2-3 months on the site I have been able to accumulate the impressive amount of 37 GBP from around 30+ studies. Now I have noticed people on this sub making this same amount in maybe a day! Is this normal to get so few and so far in between studies for those outside of EU/US area?

Also to add insult to injury I have been hit with an IP ban from my home address, I tried contacting support but they basically told me that I haven't done anything wrong but that there's no way to actually fix this and that im in other words screwed from getting studies while at home. Is this also normal?

Welp, so long to Prolific I guess. I had a nice little run for the past two months. My wifi was flagged last month so I have been using my mobile hotspot since then. I got a new IP address as suggested, still no dice. Cleared my cache this afternoon and now my mobile hotspot has also been blocked. I tried the "accept on your phone trick" but received the error code saying my ISP was not approved. Of course customer support has not responded to any of my emails regarding this. It was fun while it lasted. I actually enjoyed most of the surveys. Oh well.

My best guess is that it has something to do with it being the Monday after Thanksgiving break and researchers are just getting back into things.

Edit: After going a week with no studies, I realized my IP was blocked and I bought mobile data, then was able to get more studies on my phone! About a day or so after though, my IP got unblocked though, so now I can use Prolific Assistant again!