11 ways to find survey respondents (free + paid)

Are you trying to find survey respondents or wondering how to get survey responses for your business, school project, or client research?

You probably built a solid survey but aren’t sure where to find people to take it. Or you’ve tried a few things and need more reach.

In this article, I share 11 ways to find survey respondents, with both free and paid options, covering different use cases and survey types. I’ve used or tested each method and noted the advantages, limitations, costs, and what you can realistically expect.

I start with free methods and then jump to paid methods. As you can imagine, free options require more effort and time, while paid options are faster. Feel free to jump to what you need.

Note: THIS ARTICLE IS NOT FOR PEOPLE LOOKING TO GET PAID TO ANSWER SURVEYS.

Let’s start with the list: 11 proven ways to find and get survey respondents (free + paid)

1. Online communities (Free)
2. Survey exchange (Free)
3. In-person (Free)
4. Emails (Free/Paid)
5. Synthetic respondents (Free/Paid)
6. Freelancers (Paid) – Best for low budget
7. Advertising (Paid) – Best for specific audiences
8. Standard Insights (Paid) – Best for B2C respondents
9. Wynter (Paid) – Best for B2B respondents
10. Maze (Paid) – Best for UI/UX respondents
11. Local and specialized agencies (Paid) – Best for local and niche insights

No survey yet? Here are a few tools to help you get started

If you haven’t started your survey yet, use our survey builder for free, including our AI survey builder, to create your first draft in seconds. If you don’t know how many people you should survey, use our free sample size calculator. If you want to improve your survey and increase completion rate, check our principles of survey design. More on this at the end.

1. Online communities

Post on social media, communities, and forums.

• Best for: collecting survey data from specific audiences for free
• Effort required: medium to high
• Expected results: 0 to 10 answers per post
• Pricing: free

One of the easiest ways to get people to take your survey is to share your survey in online communities and on social media. Before posting, think about the audience you want. Where do they spend time online?

This method can be very effective when you try to find free survey respondents in niche audiences, but if you need volume, you might encounter limits. To maximize your chances, I listed a few tips at the bottom of the article to improve your survey response rate.

To start, you can post on your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles to signal you are looking for respondents and get a few answers from your network, and send direct messages to your network and target audience to ask them to fill out your survey.

Where to post surveys for free?

1. Survey swap/exchange communities

These are groups where you answer someone’s survey and they answer yours. When I tested this, I averaged 3–4 completes per post, but results vary based on channel activity, posting time, and how clear/appealing your ask is. Expect people to request a return survey. Also note the typical audience: mostly students or freelancers/self‑employed under 35, and frequent survey takers (often 7+ surveys in the last 3 months).

Here is a list of some of the most common places:

Reddit

• /SampleSize ≈ 240k members
• r/SurveyExchange ≈ 37k members
• r/takemysurvey ≈ 23k members

Facebook

• Survey Exchange / Survey Group / Survey Participants – Dissertation, Thesis ≈ 66k member
• Survey Sharing – Survey Exchange / Swap ≈ 31k members
• Find Participants For Thesis & Dissertation Survey Exchange ≈ 23k members

LinkedIn

• Get Survey Participants: Share a Survey, Take a Survey, Find Participants ≈ 3k people
• Survey sharing to find respondents for your survey ≈ 1.6k people

2. Forums/Communities

Forums and communities are a great way to get people to answer your survey. Here are some places you can look, but as mentioned, you should mostly look for where your audience hangs out. For example, if you are looking to survey marketers, you should head to marketing groups and communities.

• https://discadia.com/ – List of discord communities
• https://slofile.com/ – List of slack communities

Post templates you can copy

Use these as a starting point. Adjust tone, details, and any incentive as needed.

DM message

Social media post

For most Facebook and LinkedIn groups, you must have an account and be logged in to view or post content. Some groups also have approval steps and posting rules.

Optional but helpful: add UTM parameters to your survey link so you can track which communities drive responses (for example, utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=survey_name).

Pros

• Free
• Access to niche communities and hard-to-reach audiences
• Can build relationships and get qualitative context in comments
• Good for early signals and pilot testing
• Potential for organic snowballing if community members reshare your post

Cons

• Quality is often low or mixed, needs screening and data cleaning
• The audience often skews to students in swap groups
• Time-consuming to find the right communities and craft posts
• Low and unpredictable volume
• Group rules can limit posting, and you must be logged in or approved to access some groups

2. Survey exchange websites

Answer the survey of others so they answer yours

• Best for: a free way to recruit survey participants and collect survey responses quickly
• Effort required: low to medium
• Expected results: On average, get one respondent every 5-minute survey you complete
• Pricing: free (some platforms offer optional upgrades)

Survey exchange websites work like what I mentioned earlier. The concept is simple: you answer other people’s surveys, and they answer yours. The advantage over posting in general communities is that these platforms create an incentive system that pushes people toward your survey, while regular communities have little incentive, and response flow is more random.

Most popular survey exchange platforms

• PollPool: fast, easy, free. Share your survey link, answer others
• SurveySwap: student-friendly route to get respondents.
• SurveyCircle: Large mutual-support community with a points-based ranking

Pros:

• Free
• Built-in incentive systems that send respondents your way
• Faster than general communities once you start participating

Cons:

• Quality can be mixed, skewing toward students
• You need to spend time answering others to earn visibility and volume
• Targeting is very limited compared to paid panels
• Limited language and country available

3. In-person

Get answers face-to-face

• Best for: getting high-quality respondents with real context and feel
• Effort required: medium to high
• Expected results: can vary a lot based on your audience, topic, location, and charisma
• Pricing: free

Face-to-face may feel traditional, but it can be one of the most effective ways to get survey respondents. Results depend heavily on your topic and audience.

Go where your audience spends time. From there, you have options: speak to people directly and ask them to complete your survey on paper or on a tablet. Many people will prefer that you fill it for them. If you are shy, you can hand out a small card or flyer with a QR code to your survey and ask them to complete it now or later. You can create a quick design in Canva or a similar tool.

Pros

• Free
• You can select respondents, which improves quality
• You can add a qualitative layer through quick conversations and observations
• Faster feedback loops when you iterate questions on the spot

Cons

• Face-to-face can be challenging and energy-draining
• Getting volume is time-consuming
• Not all topics work well in person, and social desirability bias can creep in
• Requires logistics: location access, device prep, and printed QR codes/cards

4. Emails

Send emails and get answers

• Best for: activating your own audience or B2B outreach
• Effort required: low to high
• Expected results: depends on your audience size and copy
• Pricing: free or email-sending costs

To gather respondents with emails, you either use an existing list, such as your clients, subscribers, or community, or you reach out to strangers.

Reaching your own database is fast and efficient. Prepare a few emails and send them over a week or two to ask people to answer your survey and share it with their contacts.

If you don’t have a database, you will need to build a list and send cold emails asking people to fill out your survey. We won’t cover cold email strategy here, but it can be effective for B2B respondents.

If you are looking for everyday consumers, cold email is not recommended.

Pros

• Mostly free
• Fast to execute

Cons

• Requires an email list or database
• Limited to your list’s size and makeup
• Potential bias toward people who already know you, such as existing customers

5. Synthetic respondents

Let AI simulate respondents’ behaviors

• Best for: collecting fast and/or niche respondents
• Effort required: low
• Pricing: free or paid per answer

Synthetic respondents are a modern research topic. They let AI generate answers based on the information you provide and the audience you define.

Common uses include topping up an existing survey that lacks enough answers by using the current responses as context to generate additional ones, or running quick tests when a brand has strong first‑party data and detailed audience profiles. You can do this by fine‑tuning or prompting an AI model, and some platforms offer pay‑per‑response options.

Pros

• Often lower cost per respondent, depending on your setup
• Very fast results and scalable for both quant and qual style outputs
• Can deepen insights for hard‑to‑reach audiences

Cons

• Still debated; not all teams or projects will accept it
• Quality depends on good study design and high‑quality enrichment data
• For broad general‑population work, real respondents can sometimes be cheaper and safer
• Required technical knowledge to set up your own synthetic system
• Not suitable for sentiment or emotion-based questions since AI lacks subjective experience

6. Freelancers

Let independent researchers collect survey respondents for you

• Best for: low budget, fast answers, no targeting
• Effort required: low
• Pricing: $10 to $300

If you don’t have time to find survey respondents manually, you can hire freelancers to do the outreach for you.

Freelancers offer services to send respondents directly to your survey and sometimes help with survey design. Do not expect much transparency on source or quality. You pay for completes and you will receive them quickly, but usually without targeting.

Some providers are more diligent than others, but in many cases, you are paying someone to fill your form with answers so you don’t have to do the collection yourself.

Pros

• Low price
• Very fast
• Zero setup friction: you share a link and they deliver completely
  

Cons

• Quality risks: bots, survey farms, duplicate or low‑effort responses
• No targeting options or limited controls over who answers

7. Advertising

Advertise your survey on social media

• Best for: specific audiences
• Effort required: medium to high
• Pricing: performance-based

Advertising isn’t just for products; you can also use it to buy survey respondents through paid social campaigns when targeting specific audiences.

Your audience is likely on social media, so put your survey in front of them.

This works best when your audience can be reached through ad targeting. Think Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, TikTok, and more. Match the platform to the audience. From there, creative and topic do the heavy lifting. Use clear value, strong visuals, and pattern interruption to earn the click and motivate answers.

In the examples above, AI Digital offers access to reports in exchange for completing a survey.

Pros

• Large reach potential
• Often broader audience than panels
• Easy to scale spend up or down
• Performance-based: better targeting and creative, lower your cost per complete

Cons

• Quality can vary and will require data cleaning
• Requires advertising know-how
• Performance-based: testing to find a winning creative can take time

8. Standard Insights

AI consumer research platform

• Best for: B2C respondents: fast answers, precise targeting, flexible budgets
• Effort required: low
• Pricing: from $3 per respondent — platform is free

Standard Insights makes it easy to buy survey respondents or recruit survey participants through a transparent, AI-powered platform.

I’m biased, but hear me out. Standard Insights is a complete research platform, not just a survey tool. You can recruit respondents in 150+ countries and go beyond fixed targeting fields by describing the exact audience you want. The platform will tell you if it is feasible, how hard it is to reach, and what it will cost. If your budget is tight, you can adjust targeting or collect respondents yourself and still use the platform’s tools.

You also get an AI survey builder, automated translation, AI answer analysis, and automated data visualization. Results come in an interactive report you can customize, export in multiple formats, and share via link.

Create your free Standard Insights account

Pros

• End‑to‑end survey platform with AI assistance at every step: build, recruit, visualize, and analyze reports.
• Transparent respondent pricing and a platform with a free plan.
• Custom audience option: type your target audience
• High‑quality respondents.
• Fast delivery, typically 1 to 21 days, depending on audience difficulty.

Cons

• Advanced academic or custom modeling may require exporting to a BI tool
• Limited third‑party integrations today

9. Wynter

Find B2B survey respondents

• Best for: B2B respondents, fast quality answers.
• Effort required: low
• Pricing: from $495 for 15 participants and a single question, $911 for 10 questions. More options available, up to 50% discount with subscription.

Wynter helps businesses recruit B2B survey participants in under 72 hours.

It is a self-serve platform for reaching B2B audiences that are usually hard to access. You can run single‑question surveys or a 10‑question package, and they also offer landing page reviews and live sessions. Their B2B segments are pre‑bundled so you can check out quickly and get results in 48 to 72 hours.

Pros

• 70k+ quality‑verified B2B audience
• Transparent respondent pricing and a platform with a free plan.
• Turnaround as fast as 48 hours
• Self‑serve platform

Cons

• Limited to predefined survey packages
• You can’t always select an exact number of participants

10. Maze

User research platform

• Best for: user testing, UI/UX testing
• Effort required: low
• Pricing: starting at $5 per respondent (credit system, 1 credit = $5)

Maze is a popular self‑serve tool for product teams. You can run usability tests, concept tests, copy comparisons, and integrated surveys. They provide 50+ templates to help you get started. You can recruit via a link, embed in your product, or hire from their panel with live audience size and cost estimates. Pricing uses credits, where one credit equals five dollars.

Pros

• Self‑serve free platform with survey building and reporting
• Large audience pool
• 50+ templates and guided flows

Cons

• You can’t always select an exact number of participants

11. Local and specialized agencies

Market research agencies

• Best for: local insights and specific industry data (for example, healthcare)
• Effort required: low to medium
• Pricing: upon quote

Local agencies are ideal when your research participant recruitment requires specialized expertise or regulated audiences.

Agencies also help when you need more than raw data or you need very specific audiences. Many bring deep market and industry expertise, and some operate their own panels.

For complex audiences such as medical professionals, a specialized agency is often the best route. Agencies can also handle full projects end-to-end, from screener to reporting. The trade‑off is cost and time to seek the right partner. If you are an agency, discover the 4 benefits of working with us.

Pros

• Expert guidance, from design to analysis
• Better access to niche or regulated audiences
• Ability to manage full‑scope projects

Cons

• Higher cost than DIY or exchanges
• Longer timelines due to scoping, compliance, and recruitment
• May require NDAs, contracts, or minimums

How to get people to answer surveys

When you use free methods, whether face-to-face or on social media, you might struggle to get people to answer your survey. To boost your conversion rate, start with our simple yet essential survey design principles to improve clarity, reduce drop‑offs, and increase survey completion. Here are a few of them:

• Start with solid survey design: Keep questions clear, keep it short, and structure it well so fewer people drop out mid‑way.
• Motivate people to participate: Incentives help, but if you have no budget, offer to share results or give something in exchange, such as a helpful resource or small service. Some people will answer just to help, so show gratitude.
• Make it easy to respond: Use a survey tool with a smooth experience (you can try Standard Insights). If someone is busy, give them a link or QR code to complete later. In person, you can offer to type answers for them.
• Meet people where they are: Share in the right communities and at the right times. Add a one‑line purpose, time to complete, and deadline so expectations are clear.

These steps help if you’re learning how to get people to take your survey or how to get survey responses more efficiently. You can measure and learn more about completion rate with our survey response rate calculator.

How to Analyze and Report Survey Results

You’ve got results. Here’s what to do next.

• Clean your survey data: remove duplicates, ineligible respondents, straight‑liners, and nonsense open‑ends
• Visualize your survey data: pick the right charts so insights are easy to spot and share
• Analyze the data: segment by audience, compare groups, and highlight patterns, trends, and surprises
• Build an actionable report: summarize key takeaways, explain what they mean, and recommend next steps

Want a step‑by‑step playbook? Read How to Analyze and Report Survey Data: Step‑by‑Step Guide

Frequently asked questions