Amazon Mechanical Turk is shutting down permanently on September 30, 2026. For researchers who have relied on MTurk to recruit online participants, the closure raises an obvious question: what are the best alternatives to MTurk for academic and behavioral research?
The answer depends heavily on what kind of research you are conducting. Today’s participant recruitment ecosystem is more specialized than it was when MTurk became popular with researchers. Some platforms focus on academic behavioral research, some provide access to global populations, some prioritize participant verification and data quality, and others offer enormous commercial research panels.
Below are ten major options researchers may want to consider.
Disclosure: This guide is published by Besample, one of the platforms included below. We have tried to make the comparison useful and factual, including situations in which another provider may be a better choice.
| Platform | Particularly strong for | Limitations |
|---|---|---|
| Besample | Global and cross-cultural behavioral research, diverse countries, affordable prices, specialized features for scientists, language and cultural adjustment services, dedicated support and consulting | Available to academic researchers only, relatively small panels in newer countries |
| Connect by CloudResearch | High-quality samples for general academic research in Western populations, dedicated support | Mostly Western English-speaking samples |
| Prolific | Verified participants, research-specific features, strong quality controls, large US and UK pools | Mostly US and UK, relatively pricey, lack of dedicated support or consulting |
| Toluna | Large-scale global consumer and market research, owned and operated panel | Relatively pricey, lack of specialized features and integrations for academic researchers |
| Dynata | Large, targeted own global panel, complex sampling | Relatively pricey, mostly managed service, lack of specialized features and integrations for academic researchers |
| Clickworker | Large crowd of micro-taskers, global reach, support of surveys, self-service flows | Limited respondent profiling and flows for complex study designs |
| Toloka AI | Focus on data annotation for AI, expert crowd across various domains | Not built for researchers. Limited respondent profiling and flows for complex study designs |
| Microworker | Variety of micro-tasks, self-service flows | Limited respondent profiling and flows for complex study designs beyond surveys |
| Qualtrics | Recruitment integrated with survey and data capturing infrastructure | Does not own a panel -> no direct control over participants, relatively expensive, inconsistent quality |
| Cint | Large panel marketplace, global reach | Does not own a panel -> no direct control over participants, low quality |
1. Besample — best for global and cross-cultural behavioral research
Besample is a global research platform that helps behavioral scientists design and conduct studies across diverse linguistic, cultural, and geographic contexts. The platform features a growing pool of over 60,000 participants across 16 countries: Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Africa, Turkey, and Ukraine.
Beyond participant recruitment, Besample supports the practical work of adapting research for different populations, including navigating language differences, cultural nuances, local response patterns, and country-specific sampling considerations.
Since September 2026, Besample has also offered panels in major Western markets, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, through its integration with Connect by CloudResearch. This combination makes Besample particularly useful for cross-cultural and multi-country projects in which researchers want to collect Western and non-Western samples within the same workflow.
2. Connect by CloudResearch — best all-around option for academic research in Western populations
Connect by CloudResearch is one of the most natural successors to MTurk for behavioral scientists. CloudResearch itself grew out of the academic MTurk ecosystem and has extensive experience with the problems researchers encountered when using general-purpose crowdsourcing platforms for scientific research.
Connect provides a research-oriented participant pool, demographic targeting, participant approval information, and additional quality controls. It retains much of the flexibility that originally made MTurk attractive while providing infrastructure designed more explicitly around research.
For researchers primarily collecting data in the United States and other supported Western populations, Connect offers a strong combination of quality, flexibility, and cost.
Best suited for: general academic behavioral research, experiments and surveys, and researchers seeking Western samples.
Consider another option if: broad international coverage or difficult-to-reach non-Western populations are central to the research design.
3. Prolific — best when participant verification and data quality are paramount
Prolific has become one of the best-known participant recruitment platforms in behavioral science and has built much of its reputation around research-specific participant quality.
The platform uses participant verification and quality-control systems and has invested particularly heavily in addressing a newer problem for online researchers: AI agents and automated respondents masquerading as human participants.
Prolific also offers extensive prescreening, longitudinal research functionality, and representative-sample options for selected populations.
For researchers whose target population is well represented in Prolific's participant pool, it can be an excellent choice when obtaining a clean, verified online sample is the overriding priority.
Best suited for: behavioral experiments, surveys, longitudinal studies, and projects where participant authenticity and research-specific quality controls are especially important.
Consider another option if: the research requires substantial coverage in countries where Prolific's participant pool is limited.
4. Toluna — best for large-scale global consumer research
Toluna operates at a different scale and with a somewhat different orientation from research-specific platforms such as Prolific or Connect. It is a major global market-research and consumer-insights provider with access to participants across a large number of markets.
Its infrastructure is particularly useful for projects requiring substantial samples, consumer targeting, international coverage, or research conducted across many markets simultaneously.
For academic researchers, this can provide considerably greater scale than a typical behavioral-research participant community. The trade-off is that the experience and participant ecosystem are designed around the broader insights industry rather than specifically around academic behavioral experiments.
Best suited for: large international surveys, consumer research, multi-market studies, and projects requiring substantial global scale.
Consider another option if: the project is a relatively small behavioral experiment and research-specific participant infrastructure is more important than panel scale.
5. Dynata — best for large and highly targeted global samples
Dynata is another major provider of first-party research data and global survey participants. Its scale and targeting capabilities make it particularly relevant for projects requiring large samples or specific demographic and consumer populations.
Unlike platforms built primarily as self-service marketplaces for academic researchers, Dynata sits within the professional market-research ecosystem and can support more complex sampling requirements and large international projects.
This can make Dynata especially valuable for researchers who need populations that would be difficult to recruit from a conventional academic participant pool.
Best suited for: large global studies, specialized demographic targeting, consumer research, and complex sampling requirements.
Consider another option if: simplicity, transparent self-service recruitment, or the workflow of a research-specific participant platform is the priority.
6. Clickworker — best for general-purpose microtasking and crowdsourcing
Clickworker is a global crowdsourcing platform for companies that need people to complete structured online tasks at scale. Currently owned by LXT AI, its use cases include surveys and market research, data collection, web research, product testing, AI training and annotation, and other microtasks.
With a large international crowd and self-service options, Clickworker is one of the closer alternatives to MTurk’s original general-purpose crowdsourcing model.
Best suited for: Microtasking, surveys and market research, distributed data collection, AI-related tasks, and other projects requiring a large global crowd.
Consider another option if: You’re conducting complex behavioral research and need specific features such as logitudinal or interactive experiments, specialized support for cultural adjustment, etc.
7. Toloka — best for AI training data and annotation
Toloka is a human data platform focused primarily on AI and machine learning applications. It supports tasks such as data collection and annotation, preference labeling, model evaluation, instruction tuning, and other workflows that require human judgment.
The platform combines a global contributor network with built-in quality controls and options ranging from general annotators to domain experts, making it particularly relevant for teams developing, training, and evaluating AI systems.
Best suited for: AI and ML teams that need human-generated or human-annotated data for model training, evaluation, preference labeling, data collection, and other AI development workflows.
Consider another option if: Your primary goal is behavioral or market research rather than AI development, or you need research-specific features for complex experimental or longitudinal study designs.
8. Microworkers — best for traditional microtasks and flexible crowd work
Microworkers is a global crowdsourcing marketplace built around short, distributed online tasks. Employers can recruit workers for surveys and research studies, data collection, annotation and categorization, transcription, content evaluation, application testing, and a wide variety of other microjobs.
Its broad task flexibility and marketplace model make Microworkers one of the more direct alternatives for users looking to recreate the traditional MTurk-style experience of distributing relatively simple tasks to a large online crowd.
Best suited for: Traditional microtasks, surveys, data collection, annotation, testing, and other projects that benefit from a flexible global crowdsourcing marketplace.
Consider another option if: You need a platform specialized in academic behavioral research, sophisticated experimental designs, or highly specialized AI training and evaluation workflows.
9. Qualtrics — best for combining recruitment with survey infrastructure
Most academic researchers know Qualtrics primarily as survey software, but Qualtrics also provides access to research participants and online samples.
The major advantage is integration. Researchers can combine survey design, participant recruitment, fielding, and other research services within the same broader ecosystem rather than coordinating separate survey and recruitment platforms.
Qualtrics can also support demographic and behavioral targeting and more managed approaches to sample recruitment.
Best suited for: survey research, representative or targeted samples, and researchers who want participant recruitment integrated with their existing Qualtrics workflow.
Consider another option if: the main priority is accessing a dedicated behavioral-research participant community or minimizing recruitment costs.
10. Cint — best for accessing a very large global panel marketplace
Cint differs from several of the platforms above because it operates a large research marketplace connecting sample buyers with numerous participant suppliers around the world.
That model provides substantial geographic reach and scale. Researchers can use Cint for multi-country surveys, demographic targeting, consumer research, and projects requiring samples that extend well beyond a single proprietary participant community.
The marketplace model also means researchers should understand how participants are sourced for a particular project and apply appropriate quality-control procedures—particularly for academic behavioral research where provenance and participant experience may matter.
Best suited for: large-scale international surveys, multi-market research, consumer samples, and projects where geographic reach and scale are major requirements.
Consider another option if: having a single, research-specific participant community is important to the study design.
Which MTurk alternative should researchers choose?
There is no universal replacement for MTurk. Researchers conducting cross-cultural or global behavioral research may find Besample particularly useful. Researchers primarily seeking Western academic samples may prefer Connect. Those prioritizing participant verification and research-specific quality controls may gravitate toward Prolific. Researchers who need very large international or consumer samples should also consider Toluna, Dynata, or Cint, while Qualtrics can be particularly convenient when recruitment needs to sit within a broader survey-research workflow.
So rather than asking simply, “What platform replaces MTurk?”, it may be more useful to ask: What participant source best matches the population, methodology, scale, and quality requirements of this particular study? That is the question researchers now have considerably more options to answer.