Prolific

Prolific is a participant recruitment platform used widely in academic research, UX studies, and market research. Flashpoint.AI integrates with the Prolific Researcher API to let you recruit real human respondents directly from chat or via the API. Respondents are pre-verified Prolific participants who opt in and are paid per completion.

How it works

Prolific uses a study-based model. When you launch a panel, Flashpoint.AI creates a Prolific study with your targeting filters, reward amount, and survey URL. Prolific routes eligible participants to your survey. When a respondent finishes, Prolific marks them as complete and handles payment automatically.

Authentication between the respondent and your survey is handled via URL parameters (PROLIFIC_PID, SESSION_ID, STUDY_ID) that Prolific appends to the survey link. Completion uses unique per-study codes — Flashpoint.AI generates a fresh code for each study so respondents cannot reuse codes across studies.

Targeting filters

Prolific supports a rich set of demographic filters. The platform translates human-readable values (like "female" or "California") into Prolific's internal ChoiceID format automatically. You can pass any of the canonical values shown below, or common aliases (e.g., "M" for male, "CA" for California).

Standard demographic filters

Filter key	Format	Description
`country`	ISO 3166-1 alpha-2	Country of residence. Drives currency and regional pool availability.
`age_min` / `age_max`	Integer (18-100)	Age range. Both are optional; omit one for an open-ended range.
`sex`	Enum	Biological sex.
`ethnicity`	Enum	Self-identified ethnicity. Multi-select supported.
`language`	Enum	First language.
`education`	Enum	Highest education level completed.
`employment_status`	Enum	Current employment situation.
`employment_sector`	Enum	Industry or sector of current employment.
`household_income_usd`	Enum	Annual household income (US participants only).
`marital_status`	Enum	Relationship or marital status.
`has_children`	Enum	Whether the participant has children.
`student_status`	Enum	Whether the participant is a current student.
`nationality`	ISO 3166-1 alpha-2	Country of citizenship.
`us_state`	Enum	US state of residence. Requires `country=US`.
`us_region`	Enum	US census region (coarser than `us_state`).

Canonical values

sex: male, female

ethnicity: african, black/african american, caribbean, east asian, latino/hispanic, middle eastern, mixed, native american or alaskan native, south asian, white, other, white sephardic jew, black/british, white mexican, romani/traveller, south east asian, rather not say

education: no formal qualifications, secondary education (e.g. ged/gcse), high school diploma/a-levels, technical/community college, undergraduate degree (ba/bsc/other), graduate degree (ma/msc/mphil/other), doctorate degree (phd/other), don't know / not applicable

employment_status: full-time, part-time, due to start a new job within the next month, unemployed (and job seeking), not in paid work (e.g. homemaker', 'retired or disabled), other

employment_sector: agriculture, food and natural resources, architecture and construction, arts, business management & administration, education & training, finance, government & public administration, medicine, hospitality & tourism, information technology, legal, policing, military, manufacturing, marketing & sales, retail, science, technology, engineering & mathematics, social sciences, transportation, distribution & logistics, other, rather not say

household_income_usd: less than $10000, $10000-$15999, $16000-$19999, $20000-$29999, $30000-$39999, $40000-$49999, $50000-$59999, $60000-$69999, $70000-$79999, $80000-$89999, $90000-$99999, $100000-$149999, more than $150000

marital_status: single, in a relationship, engaged, married, widowed, divorced, separated, never married, rather not say, in a civil partnership/civil union or similar

has_children: yes, no

student_status: yes, no

us_region: midwest, northeast, south, west

us_state: All 50 states plus Washington DC. Accepts full name (California), USPS abbreviation (CA), or combined form (California (CA)).

country: 40+ countries by ISO-2 code, including US, GB, DE, FR, ES, AU, CA, IN, JP, BR, MX, NL, SE, CH, SG, NZ, ZA, and more. Full names (United States, Germany) are also accepted.

Attribute search for niche targeting

Standard filters cover demographics. For niche targeting — smartphone OS, brand affinity, pet ownership, political ideology, dietary preferences — use the attribute search. Prolific exposes approximately 150 filters in their full catalog. This is an agent-only operation — there is no public REST endpoint. The surveys agent queries the catalog by natural language and returns the vendor's own filter IDs and option IDs, which you pass directly into the attributes parameter on quote and submit.

Agent prompt:

Search Prolific for "smartphone os" filters.

The agent returns matches with attribute_id and options that go directly into attributes on the quote request.

The full flow

Step 1: List available providers

Discover which panel providers are configured for your team.

Agent prompt:

What panel providers do we have?

API call:

curl https://surveys.flashpoint.ai/api/v1/panels/providers \
  -H "X-Service-Token: $TOKEN" \
  -H "X-Team-ID: $TEAM_ID"

Step 2: Check targeting filters

Before quoting, see what filters Prolific supports and which values each accepts. This is an agent-only operation — Prolific filters are surfaced through the surveys agent (not a public REST endpoint). For Dynata, the equivalent catalog is exposed at GET /api/v1/panels/dynata/attributes.

Agent prompt:

Show me what Prolific filters are available.

Step 3: Get a quote

Request price and feasibility without committing money. Returns cost per completion, total cost, estimated availability, and warnings if the pool is too small.

Agent prompt:

Quote 200 US women ages 25-44 on Prolific for the sneaker survey.

API call:

curl -X POST https://surveys.flashpoint.ai/api/v1/surveys/$SURVEY_ID/panels/quote \
  -H "X-Service-Token: $TOKEN" \
  -H "X-Team-ID: $TEAM_ID" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "provider_id": "PROLIFIC_PROVIDER_UUID",
    "sample_size": 200,
    "country": "US",
    "targeting": {
      "sex": "female",
      "age_min": 25,
      "age_max": 44
    }
  }'

Response shape:

{
  "feasible": true,
  "estimated_completes": 200,
  "estimated_days": 2,
  "cost_per_complete": "2.45",
  "total_cost": "490.00",
  "currency": "USD",
  "warnings": []
}

Step 4: Approve and pay

Once you review the quote, approve the launch. Payment is collected via Stripe inline in the chat UI. The panel auto-launches after payment clears.

Agent prompt:

Looks good, launch it.

The agent calls request_panel_payment, which renders a Stripe payment panel inline. Nothing is charged until you complete payment in that panel. After payment clears, the Prolific study is published and begins recruiting.

Step 5: Monitor status

Check live progress — completes, starts, in-progress, disqualified, and over-quota counts — directly from Prolific's API.

Agent prompt:

How's the Prolific panel doing?

API call:

curl https://surveys.flashpoint.ai/api/v1/surveys/$SURVEY_ID/panels/$INTEGRATION_ID/status \
  -H "X-Service-Token: $TOKEN" \
  -H "X-Team-ID: $TEAM_ID"

Response shape:

{
  "status": "active",
  "completes": 142,
  "starts": 178,
  "in_progress": 12,
  "disqualified": 24,
  "over_quota": 0
}

Step 6: Pause and resume

Temporarily halt recruiting (e.g., to check responses before continuing) without closing the study.

Agent prompts:

Pause the Prolific panel for now.

Resume recruiting on Prolific.

Pricing

Prolific charges per completion. The reward per respondent is determined by study length (LOI) and the platform's hourly floor. Prolific adds a service fee on top of participant rewards. Flashpoint.AI adds a margin to the Prolific total to arrive at the final cost you see in quotes.

The cost calculator factors in:

Reward per completion — derived from LOI and Prolific's hourly rate floor, or a custom reward you specify.
Prolific service fee — approximately 43% of participant rewards.
Screen-out payments — disqualified respondents receive a small fixed payment (default: $0.14).

Rate limiting

Prolific enforces rate limits on their API. Flashpoint.AI handles 429 Too Many Requests responses automatically with exponential backoff and Retry-After header support. You do not need to manage rate limiting yourself.

Next steps

Dynata — an alternative panel provider for large-scale and B2B research.
Synthetic — run AI personas first to pre-flight your survey.
Analyze — compare Prolific results against synthetic or other panels.