How to apply to Prolific

Who can join

• Be over 18, with a created and verified account. Prolific does not allow researchers to recruit children.
• Live in one of the 52 countries on its participant list: Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. Eligibility is where you live now, not your nationality. People anywhere else can only join the waitlist, though Prolific says it may invite some of them.
• A mobile phone number from your country of residence. US and Canada residents need a US or Canadian number, UK and Ireland residents a UK or Irish one, and everyone else a number from a supported country on the same continent as where they live.
• A valid, unexpired photo ID issued by your country of residence, in exactly the name on your Prolific account, for its identity verification through Onfido: a passport, driving licence, visa with photo, residence permit card, US state ID card or EU national ID card. EU citizens may use an ID from their own EU country while living in another one, and Irish citizens living in the UK may use Irish ID. Temporary paper IDs are not accepted.
• A PayPal account, the only payment method Prolific supports, registered in your own name (exactly matching your Prolific account and your photo ID) and in your country of residence. A name mismatch puts your account temporarily on hold.
• One Prolific account per person, ever. Duplicate accounts are banned, and if you had an account that was closed or deleted you cannot create a new one.
• Be physically in your country of residence, with no VPN, proxy or private relay. If you signed up at home but are abroad, for example on holiday, you must wait until you are back; using Prolific abroad or through a VPN puts your account on hold.
• For Domain Expert work, verified qualifications, experience or skills in a field such as law, programming, finance, healthcare, red teaming or a language. Depending on the field, Prolific checks them with a short skills assessment, document checks (for example confirming a medical license through the GMC) or a review of your qualifications or online profiles.

Step by step

1. 1

   Join the waitlist

   Sign up as a participant and fill in some personal information. At this stage you do not have a Prolific account: logins and password resets will not work until you are invited. Only one email address per person may be on the waitlist.

2. 2

   Verify your email address

   Click Verify Email in the message Prolific sends when you sign up. Once that is done you are placed on the waitlist; the rest of verification comes only after you are invited.

3. 3

   Wait for your invitation

   Invitations go out by supply and demand for each demographic and kind of expertise, not first come, first served: some people are invited within hours, others wait months or longer. Support cannot give a status update. The invitation link works once; after that, sign in at the normal Prolific login page.

4. 4

   Verify your phone number

   Choose your country code and enter your mobile number. The text code expires in 10 minutes and you have 5 attempts. The country code must match your country of residence (with a few exceptions), and VOIP numbers are not accepted.

5. 5

   Add your home address and accept Hyperwallet

   Enter your current home address and country of residence, which must match the country of your phone number and your ID (the address itself need not match the ID). Turn off any VPN, iCloud Private Relay or proxy first, or you may not be able to add the address. Then acknowledge that you will be paid through Hyperwallet, a PayPal company.

6. 6

   Verify your ID with Onfido

   Photograph your current photo ID, issued by your country of residence, then record a selfie video, looking at the camera and slowly turning your head left to right, in good light without glasses or a hat. You have 4 attempts. If you fail verification, Prolific cannot offer you an account, and you cannot join again with a new one; you can still cash out anything already earned.

7. 7

   Take 'Your first study'

   A practice study from Prolific appears on your Studies page. It contains checks, so follow the instructions and give it your full attention.

8. 8

   Fill in About You

   Answer the profile questions, from the industry you work in to the sports you play. You need not answer everything at once, but the more you answer, the more likely you are to be invited to studies; your answers are kept anonymous from researchers.

9. 9

   Link your PayPal account

   On your Account page, under Payment Methods, click Link next to PayPal account, enter your Prolific password and log in to PayPal. The PayPal account must be fully verified, in the same full name as your Prolific account, set up to receive both GBP and USD, and at the same address you gave Prolific.

10. 10

    Take studies carefully

    Studies you are eligible for appear on your dashboard. Read each description and estimated time, engage fully, watch for attention checks, and return a study rather than abandoning it if something goes wrong (returning does not hurt your standing). Answers written by an AI tool or automation, unless the study allows it, can get your account put on hold.

11. 11

    Unlock AI tasker studies if you are invited

    Prolific invites participants who meet criteria such as high approval rates and strong performance on past studies to its AI Task Assessment, a test in two parts that simulates real AI studies. Passing adds AI tasker studies to your dashboard, which tend to pay more; not passing does not affect your account.

Tips to get accepted

• Give your date of birth, country of residence and gender on the waitlist form exactly as they appear on your ID: Prolific checks them at verification, and inconsistencies result in a permanent ban.
• Make your PayPal account match Prolific exactly in full name, country of residence and date of birth, and link its primary email address, not a secondary one; any mismatch can stop a cash-out. Prolific charges no cash-out fee, though PayPal may charge for converting currency.
• Set PayPal to receive both GBP and USD, and never refuse a payment from Prolific: a refused currency stops Prolific sending you money in it and temporarily disables cash-outs. A payment you do not accept within 30 days returns to Prolific.
• Do not take studies while visiting another country or through a VPN: Prolific says either will most likely put your account on hold. Moving for good to another supported country is allowed once you update your details, with ID from the new country ready.
• Do not rush. Finishing studies much faster than expected is the top trigger for restrictions: first a warning, then a one-hour block, and continued issues can lead to longer restrictions or a permanent suspension.
• Do not use ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot or other AI tools in a study unless the researcher explicitly asks you to in the description or consent form.
• Log in now and then. After 6 months without activity Prolific emails a warning, and after 14 months without a login the account is closed for good and its data deleted; a closed account can never rejoin.
• If you are a qualified professional new to Prolific, its Expert Network postings are a way in: an accounting posting describes a 10 to 15-minute skills test, says researchers tend to pay up to $60 an hour, and asks you to be ready for tasks needing one hour of uninterrupted work, though many are shorter.
• US-licensed physicians: Prolific's AI research postings by specialty ask for your National Provider Identifier (NPI) and medical-credential checks, state $130 an hour for invited paid screening and project tasks from $216 an hour, and guarantee no hours, task volume or ongoing work.
• For alerts about new studies, install Prolific Assistant, its official browser extension for Chrome and Firefox, and no other: Prolific owns no other extension and has no mobile app.
• Several people in one household (anyone sharing your IP address) may each have an account, but only one of them can take any single study.