4 alternatives to MTurk for your academic research

Over the past 15 years or so, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) has grown to become a leading resource for academic researchers. The platform allows you to distribute surveys to online participants to collect data quickly and cheaply. 

However, despite MTurk's widespread use, many scholars have reservations about the quality of the platform and the data they collect on it. For instance, studies found that MTurk produces lower quality data when compared to its competitors. 

Whether you’ve used MTurk before and were disappointed with the results, or you’re weighing up options before starting a project, it’s valuable to know about MTurk alternatives.

In this article, you will learn about:

• What MTurk is
• The pros and cons of using MTurk
• Four MTurk alternatives for academic research

MTurk for academic research

Amazon’s MTurk is a crowdsourcing website that was launched in 2005. It allows users to hire people online to perform all manner of tasks. Since at least 2011 (although likely earlier) it has been used by academic researchers to find participants to take part in studies. 

According to Amazon, there are over 500,000 MTurk workers on the platform in over 190 countries. You can quickly identify research participants, and invite them to take part in surveys and experiments. The research can be carried out on Amazon’s own platform, or you can invite people to participate on external websites. 

You then pay the MTurk workers (sometimes known as ‘Turkers’) for their time. The minimum fee per task is $0.01, plus 20% paid to Amazon - it’s up to you how much you pay the workers for taking part in studies. There is little published data on average earnings on MTurk, but a 2021 study suggests the average Turker earns as little as $2 per hour. 

The pros and cons of using MTurk for academic research

Many researchers are excited about the practical benefits of MTurk. Yet there is a significant amount of skepticism among the scientific community too, which is why many consider using MTurk alternatives. We’ve drawn on a helpful review in the SMA management journal that highlights the pros and cons of using the platform for scholarly research. 

Advantages of using MTurk for academic research

Key benefits of using MTurk in scholarly research include:

• A large and diverse pool: Using MTurk gives researchers access to an enormous, global pool of potential participants. This allows you to select from a far wider demographic range than might otherwise be possible.
• Easy and fast: Thousands of Turkers are typically available at any time, which makes creating a sample and gathering data very fast.
• Inexpensive: With very low minimum fees, MTurk can be a cost effective way of gathering data. 

Disadvantages of using MTurk for academic research

Researchers often begin looking for MTurk competitors after disappointing experiences with the platform. These stem from a variety of issues:

• Inattention: Research suggests the Turkers tend to respond to surveys quickly, in distracting environments (e.g., while watching TV), and they may be less likely to pay attention to instructions. Given the (often) minimal compensation available, many Turkers are motivated to do as many tasks as possible, rather than provide higher quality or thoughtful responses.
• ‘Gaming’ the system: To earn more money, Turkers may falsely self-report demographic characteristics to take part in more studies.
• High attrition rates: The SMA journal review reported that studies conducted on MTurk have an attrition rate of as high as 30%.
• Non-naivete: Many Turkers will have extensive experience of participating in studies, and some even specialize in research on certain topics. This means they’re familiar with study designs, so you may receive less ‘natural’ responses.
• Bots and AI: Over the years there have been reports of people using bots to answer surveys on MTurk to get paid. Similarly, human respondents may use AI tools like ChatGPT to fill in free text areas in surveys.
• Ethics: The low compensation provided by MTurk raises ethical concerns about fair pay. Potential earnings on the platform are typically lower than the statutory minimum wage in most countries.
• Ease of use: To begin using MTurk, you need to create an AWS account, and so getting set up can be quite complex.
• Not specialized: MTurk was originally built to find people to perform basic online tasks (such as helping categorize Amazon product pages). It is now used for a very wide variety of activities, of which research is just one.

Related: How to recruit high-quality survey participants

The four best alternatives to MTurk for academic studies

If MTurk isn’t providing the data quality, reach, or insights you’d expect, it might be time to find an alternative. The following MTurk competitors share many of the same core features as Amazon’s platform, but outperform it in several areas. 

1. Prolific 

Prolific is one of the most widely used platforms for finding participants for scholarly studies. Launched in 2014, Prolific now has over 200,000 active participants in 38 countries (and growing). Critically, all participants are vetted and verified using advanced measures to prove that they are who they say they are. 

So, why might you choose Prolific over MTurk? For academic researchers, it has certain unique advantages. 

Originally, built by academics for academics

Prolific was originally created at the University of Oxford with the express goal of helping academic researchers find participants for studies (the platform now also supports market research, AI training, and other uses). 

Because Prolific was built by academic researchers, the company has first-hand knowledge of the needs of the sector. All of Prolific’s features - from its in-built tools, to its rigor in participant vetting, or its connections with third-party research tools - are intended to support the kind of work you do. 

Higher quality data

According to a study, Prolific produces the highest quality research data when compared to MTurk and similar crowdsourcing platforms. This stems from the fact that Prolific was specifically built for research purposes, as well as the platform’s strong vetting process (over 50 checks, including ID verification). 

According to another study, participants in Prolific studies tend to have higher levels of attention and engagement too. What is more, you can also exclude participants who’ve already taken part in previous and similar studies, which helps tackle the non-naivete issue. 

Fairer compensation

Prolific has a minimum hourly compensation of $8 (or £6), and participants are paid quickly in cash to their PayPal or bank accounts. This results in a much more motivated and engaged pool than on platforms like MTurk, where earnings can often be very low. 

Suited to complex academic research

Prolific gives academic researchers a wide variety of tools to conduct studies. Not only can you roll out a one-off survey as with MTurk, you can also contact (anonymous) participants to request they take part in longitudinal research. Similarly, Prolific allows you to use features of the participant’s device (e.g., video camera, microphone) to run more complex experiments. 

Speed and ease of use

Creating a Prolific account takes just minutes, and recruiting participants for studies is fast too. The platform is also easier to use than MTurk.  

Reduces fees for university research

Last but not least, Prolific offers a discount to academic researchers compared to customers in other sectors. 

Compare: MTurk vs. Qualtrics vs. Prolific: Whose survey participants are best?

2. CloudResearch

CloudResearch is another MTurk alternative that was founded by academics. The original tool (MTurk Toolkit) was launched in 2015 and was a kind of data quality and sampling layer to use on top of MTurk. ‘Connect’, their participant recruitment platform, was launched in 2022, and it allows you to find participants from around the world. CloudResearch does not report active user numbers, but has said they have a total pool of over 100 million people in 19 countries (it’s not clear what proportion of these actually take part in studies). 

For academic studies, CloudResearch has several advantages over MTurk. 

Greater attention

CloudResearch published data from its own research into participant attention, comparing its own platform with MTurk. While there’s an obvious conflict of interest, the findings are significant nonetheless. The study shows that CloudResearch participants passed more attention checks and were more reliable than MTurk participants. 

Higher quality data

A different study found that, compared to MTurk participants, CloudResearch respondents were also more likely to have a unique IP address and geolocation. They were also more likely to work more slowly, suggesting they read questions and background information in full. 

Fairer compensation

As with Prolific, CloudResearch offers higher pay rates than MTurk (a minimum of $7.50 per hour). This may also mean that participants are more likely to respond to surveys in full. 

Speed and ease of use

Again, creating a CloudResearch account and recruiting participants for studies via Connect is faster than using MTurk. The platform is also easier to use than MTurk.  

3. Cint

If your research requires a large, diverse, and global sample, then Cint is one of the best alternatives to MTurk. Cint states that it currently has over 335 million engaged participants in 130 countries. 

It’s important to note that Cint is primarily designed as a market research platform, yet it is often used by academic researchers who need large, representative samples for surveys. You should also be aware that Cint’s participant vetting process is much less thorough than Prolific or CloudResearch, and the platform has far less control over participants - who are sourced from third-party panels. 

There are several reasons you might choose Cint over Mturk for academic research. 

Larger participant pool

Cint gives researchers access to a vast, global participant pool - which is hundreds of times larger than MTurk. You also get access to handy tools for narrowing down your search by demographic characteristics.

Ready-made survey panels

Cint also gives you access to some 4,600 ready-made survey panels, which are populated with trusted participants. These pre-prepared samples mean you can quickly find certain groups of people with specific characteristics and complete your studies faster. For example, if you wanted to conduct a study of electric vehicle owners, Cint has ready made samples for this group. 

Hard to reach groups

Because Cint has such a large pool of participants, it’s easier to find samples of people with very specific characteristics. For example, where MTurk might let you narrow down to find a group such as ‘Parents’, Cint might let you find ‘Parents whose children have autism’. 

4. Finding your own participants

Another alternative to MTurk is to simply find your own participants. Academics often find participants through university intranets, adverts around campus, snowball sampling via social media or personal contacts, mailing lists, and so on. 

Finding research participants is, of course, the traditional method and has certain well-known limitations (particularly around sample size and representation, as well as speed in assembling participants). Nevertheless, this approach does have certain advantages over online platforms. 

Higher quality responses

As a rule of thumb, survey or experiment completion rates are higher when the researcher has contacted participants directly. It’s more likely that people who respond to requests will understand the research and be motivated to participate. 

There is an element of social pressure too. It’s far easier to quit an anonymous-feeling survey on MTurk than it is to give up halfway through a questionnaire that someone you have a personal connection to has contacted you about.

Greater variety of research methods

If you contact people directly, you can employ a much wider variety of research methods (online or offline) than you could via MTurk.

Knowledge of your sample

If you have found participants yourself, you are likely to know more about them than you ever could using MTurk. That allows for follow-up questions, deeper insights into their behavior, and qualitative research too. You can also (almost!) guarantee that research participants are who they claim to be. 

Cheaper or free

When researchers gather their own samples, payment is not always expected (evidently, this depends on time involved, participant characteristics, and other issues). This can make research cheap or free - although you need to consider the cost involved in time spent searching for participants. 

The best alternatives to MTurk

In just over 10 years, MTurk has become one of the leading tools academic researchers use to find study participants. However, while the platform offers several key benefits, a growing number of researchers are looking for MTurk alternatives. Its weaknesses - particularly around reliability, inattention and attrition - mean that many scholars are now looking for higher quality participant pools. 

Prolific is one of the leading MTurk competitors and has a wide variety of features that are built specifically to help academic researchers get the highest quality data. Learn more about Prolific, and get started for free.