--- title: Market research without a budget: what $0 actually settles description: Research without a budget is still possible: the free plan covers 5 surveys a month, 25 personas and 10 questions each, no card. What it settles, and what it cannot. --- # Market research without a budget No budget does not mean no research, it means no room for a fielded study. The free plan covers 5 surveys a month, up to 25 personas and 10 questions per survey, with no card. That is enough for a real question, as long as you choose the kind of question a small sample can answer. ## What the free plan actually allows ### 5 surveys a month Enough to compare two versions of a concept, or to test one question on two segments, and still keep a run for the rewrite. ### 25 personas per survey 125 interviews a month across the five surveys. At 95 percent confidence, 25 responses carry a margin of about 19.6 points, which is a gap detector, not a measuring instrument. ### 10 questions per survey Room for the decision question, the opposite version, one open follow-up and the segment controls. Most useful surveys fit in fewer. No card, no trial clock. The limit is volume, not time: five surveys a month, every month. ## Three questions that settle at $0 ### Does the concept survive its own description? Show the pitch, then ask what the product does and who it is for, in the respondent's own words. Comprehension failures show up on 25 profiles long before they show up in a launch. ### Which of two prices collapses intent? The absolute level will not be precise at this sample size. The drop between $19 and $29, asked in the same run, is a gap, and a gap is readable. ### Which message lands? Two formulations, same audience, one run. You are not measuring the market, you are checking which sentence people can repeat back. ## Free research, and what stays paid The free plan does not produce three things, and no plan of ours does: a share you can report, an incidence rate, or a market size in dollars. Those come from a fielded sample drawn from the population you address. What the free plan replaces is the field you would have paid for on a question that was going to fail anyway. Beyond volume, the paid plans buy pace and depth: 30 or 100 surveys a month, up to 500 or 5,000 personas, 50 or 100 questions, targeting and API access. The [cost page](/us/cost-of-market-research) lays out what each one covers. ## The real cost is not the money A free run still costs attention, and that is the scarce part. A vague question answered by 25 personas gives a vague answer with a confident-looking chart. The expensive mistake is not the subscription, it is the week spent building on a question that was never decided. Two habits keep the cost down: write the decision first, then the question; and always run the opposite version, so that agreement means something. The [timeline page](/us/how-long-does-market-research-take) shows where that attention goes. [Start for free](/us/login) Related: [what a study costs](/us/cost-of-market-research), [how long it takes](/us/how-long-does-market-research-take), and the [sample size calculator](/us/sample-size-calculator).