Cost per insight calculator
Add up the full cost of a research study, fees, incentives, recruitment and team time, and divide it by the interviews it completes.
Cost per insight is the full cost of a study divided by the interviews it completes: fees, incentives, recruitment and your team's hours at their loaded cost. A study with $10,000 in fees, $1,000 in incentives, $2,000 for recruitment and 20 team hours at $75, completing 20 interviews, costs $725 per interview.
How to use it
Enter the fees
Include platform subscriptions or agency fees attributable to the study. For an annual subscription, use the share of it the study accounts for.
Add incentives and recruitment
Enter what participants are paid and what finding them costs, from panel fees to recruiter time. The incentive calculator can size the first.
Count your team's time
Enter the hours your team spends on the brief, fieldwork, analysis and reporting, and the loaded cost of an hour, salary plus overheads.
Enter completed interviews
Divide by the interviews actually completed and usable, not the number planned, so the figure reflects what the study delivered.
The formula
Cost per insight = (fees + incentives + recruitment + your team’s hours × the loaded cost of an hour) ÷ completed interviews.
A worked example
Example inputs, not a benchmark.
- Platform or agency fees
- $10,000
- Participant incentives
- $1,000
- Recruitment
- $2,000
- Your team’s hours
- 20
- Loaded cost of an hour
- $75
- Completed interviews
- 20
- Cost per completed interview
- $725
Common values
| Total cost | 10 interviews | 20 interviews | 50 interviews |
|---|---|---|---|
| $5,000 | $500 | $250 | $100 |
| $15,000 | $1,500 | $750 | $300 |
| $50,000 | $5,000 | $2,500 | $1,000 |
What the numbers show
- Team time is often the largest cost that goes uncounted, and adding it can change which way of running a study looks cheapest.
- Fixed costs, such as fees and the brief, spread across more interviews as a study grows, so the cost per interview falls with scale.
- Comparing cost per completed interview puts agency projects, panels and platforms on the same footing.
- AI-moderated interviews, which Pulse runs from a team's brief, cut the hours a team spends moderating, which is one of the inputs this calculator counts.
What the number leaves out
- It counts interviews, not their value. Two studies with the same cost per interview can differ greatly in how useful their findings are.
- It treats every interview alike. Longer or harder-to-recruit interviews cost more and often yield more.
- It ignores time. A cheaper study that reports after the decision is made may be worth less than a costlier one that reports in time.
- Shared costs, such as a subscription used across many studies, need an allocation rule, and different rules give different answers.
Related
More free research tools
- Incentive calculator Size the incentives to enter here.
- Research ROI calculator Set the study's total cost against the decision it informs.
- Time to insight calculator See how long the same study takes from brief to findings.
- Sample size calculator Size a survey for the precision you need.