Free alternatives · Industry and professional
CustomerInterviewAI
An AI moderator runs voice, video or text interviews with your customers and turns them into findings that cite the exact words people said.
A free alternative to Listen Labs, built by Surge Software. Free. You pay only what third-party services cost us, at cost.
Live at customerinterviewai.com
Walkthrough
See CustomerInterviewAI in action
The problem
What it solves for a business
For: Product, marketing and insights teams, and research agencies, who need to talk to many customers quickly.
- Running and analysing dozens of customer interviews by hand takes weeks.
- AI interview platforms hide their prices and start around $20,000 a year, which shuts out small teams.
- Summaries can hide weak questioning and fake respondents, so it is hard to trust the findings.
How it works
CustomerInterviewAI, step by step
- 01
Describe your goal
Say what you want to learn and get an editable discussion guide with probes, survey blocks and concept tests.
- 02
Set the screener
Add qualifying questions and quotas per answer or age band, with live fill.
- 03
Share the link
Participants open the link and talk to the AI moderator by voice, video or text in the browser.
- 04
Bots filtered out
Nine signals score each interview, and excluded interviews are left out of analysis and never billed.
- 05
Read cited findings
Themes, findings that cite transcript lines, highlight reels and a report you can export.
Comparison
CustomerInterviewAI vs Listen Labs
| CustomerInterviewAI | Listen Labs | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free. You pay only what third-party services cost us, at cost. | No public price; estimated about $20K/year platform fee plus $300-400 per completed interview |
| Public pricing | Yes, with at-cost rates published | No; demo required |
| Fraud and bot detection | 9 signals, excluded interviews not billed | Basic |
| Findings tied to evidence | Every claim must cite transcript lines | Quotes, not enforced |
| Insight-to-decision tracker | Yes | No |
| Survey with AI probe | Yes | Partial |
| Panel | Bring your own participants today; panel ordering built, awaiting partner accounts | Own 30M global panel |
| Voice, video and text interviews | All three in the browser | Yes |
Listen Labs details are taken from its public website and may have changed since.
Why switch
Advantages over Listen Labs
No platform fee
Interviews with your own participants are free; Listen Labs is estimated at about $20K a year before per-interview costs.
Findings you can check
Each finding must cite the transcript lines behind it, and invalid citations are blocked before the report.
Bots kept out
Nine fraud signals exclude fake or copy-paste respondents, and excluded interviews are never billed.
From insight to decision
Findings become decisions with an owner and due date, tracked through to a measured outcome.
Features
What it does today
- Research goal to discussion guide, editable and versioned with restore
- AI-moderated voice, video (per-answer camera clips) and text interviews with adaptive, non-leading follow-ups
- Screeners with qualify rules, quotas per answer and age band, and screen-out codes
- Fraud and bot detection with 9 signals and a 0-100 score; excluded interviews are not billed
- Auto-themes and findings that must cite transcript lines, with invalid citations blocked; highlight reel and Markdown or printable report
- Concept, ad and prototype tests (Figma or any URL) inside the interview, plus survey questions with an AI 'why' probe
- Insight-to-decision tracker, cross-study repository, synthetic pilot participants, REST API and MCP server
- One-click participant erasure and clip retention purge
Use cases
How teams use CustomerInterviewAI
Product discovery
A product team interviews 50 users about a payment flow in a week and reads themed findings with quotes.
Concept test
A marketing team shows two ad concepts inside the interview and gets ratings plus the probed reasons.
Prototype usability
A designer drops in a Figma link; participants try a task, think aloud and rate ease.
Research repository
An insights lead searches across past studies, or queries them from Claude through the MCP server.
Under the hood
Where AI is used, and where it is not
The model
Qwen (qwen3.8-27b) on Surge's own AI server first; Claude Sonnet (Opus for analysis) only on error, timeout or a failed check, billed at cost; a deterministic offline engine if neither is available. Browser speech recognition for voice.
Rules and code
Code enforces that findings cite real transcript lines, scores fraud from 9 signals, applies screener quotas and keeps follow-ups within a per-question probe budget.
People in the loop
The research team edits the guide and screener before launch, reviews findings with their evidence, and decides what action to take in the decision tracker.
Book a working session
A working session with our architects on one of your use cases. You bring a process and sample documents; we leave you with a scoped plan: model, hosting, integrations, timeline and cost range.