MTurk Is Closing: 5 Alternatives for Recruiting Online Research Participants in the 2026-2027 Academic Year

Amazon Mechanical Turk will permanently close on September 30, 2026, after more than two decades as a default source of online research participants. There is no single replacement: online participant recruitment has grown into a specialized ecosystem, with different platforms suited to different research goals, geographies, and sample types.

Some platforms focus on academic behavioral research and participant quality; others specialize in international samples, representative panels, or large-scale market research. For researchers planning the transition, here are five platforms worth considering, along with what each is best suited for and whether it integrates directly with Labvanced.

Besample: best for global and cross-cultural behavioral research

For researchers taking a global-first approach and looking to collect behavioral data across countries, Besample provides access to research participants across 16 non-Western countries, with particular strength in populations historically underrepresented in online behavioral research, such as Argentina, Brazil, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Indonesia, India, Japan, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine.

Besample was built specifically for academic behavioral and social science research and offers participant recruitment across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. However, since August 2026, researchers can also recruit participants in major Western markets, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, through Besample's partnership and integration with Connect by CloudResearch.

This combination makes the platform particularly useful for cross-cultural studies and multi-country projects where researchers want to collect data from Western and non-Western populations within the same research workflow.

For researchers using Labvanced, Besample is also a particularly convenient option because the two platforms are directly integrated: studies built in Labvanced can be connected to Besample for participant recruitment and data collection.

Beyond participant access, Besample helps researchers adjust their studies to local contexts, including cultural fit reviews, translations, demographic insights, and design adaptations, rather than treating global recruitment as simply distributing the same Western survey across countries.

Best suited for: global and cross-cultural behavioral research, multi-country studies, research beyond WEIRD populations, and Labvanced users looking for an integrated participant recruitment solution.

Does Labvanced integrate with Besample? Yes. See the Besample integration guide for setup steps.

CloudResearch Connect: best all-around MTurk successor for many academic researchers

CloudResearch has deep roots in the MTurk research ecosystem, making its Connect platform one of the most natural transitions for researchers accustomed to recruiting participants online.

Connect combines participant recruitment with demographic targeting and quality controls. Researchers can target participants according to previous approval ratings, while CloudResearch uses additional quality systems to determine which participants remain eligible for studies.

Its pricing is also relatively straightforward for academic users: researchers determine participant compensation, while Connect currently charges academic and nonprofit researchers a 25% platform fee.

For researchers whose work primarily relies on Western online samples and who want something relatively close to the flexibility and affordability that made MTurk attractive in the first place, Connect is a strong place to start.

Best suited for: general academic behavioral research, particularly researchers looking for high-quality Western samples at relatively accessible prices.

Does Labvanced integrate with CloudResearch? Yes. See the CloudResearch integration guide for setup steps.

Prolific: best when participant verification and data quality are the priority

Prolific has become one of the most established participant recruitment platforms in academic behavioral research. Its participant pool currently includes more than 300,000 active, verified participants, and the company has invested heavily in participant verification and research-specific quality controls.

One particularly relevant development is Prolific's response to AI contamination in online research. Participants undergo extensive identity and quality checks, and Prolific now offers in-study authenticity tools designed to identify AI agents and other non-human responses. Its 100% Human Guarantee provides credits worth twice the cost of submissions identified as AI agents in qualifying studies.

For studies where clean, verified human responses are particularly important, and where the target population is well represented in Prolific's pool, the platform is a compelling option.

Best suited for: behavioral experiments and surveys where participant verification and data integrity are essential.

Does Labvanced integrate with Prolific? Yes. See the Prolific integration guide for setup steps.

Cint: for large-scale global and market-research samples

Cint comes from a different part of the research ecosystem. Rather than operating primarily as an academic participant community, Cint runs a large global research marketplace connecting researchers with sample providers.

Its scale is substantial: the Cint Exchange reports more than 800 integrated supply partners, approximately 200 million completed surveys annually, and coverage across 130 countries. Researchers can access respondents through a self-service interface, API integration, or managed services.

That makes Cint particularly useful when researchers need scale, geographic breadth, niche demographic targeting, or multi-market samples. The trade-off is that working with a large sample marketplace can be a different experience from recruiting from a research-specific participant community, so researchers should pay careful attention to sample sourcing and quality-control procedures for their particular study.

Best suited for: large international surveys, consumer research, multi-market studies, and projects requiring substantial sample sizes or specialized demographic targeting.

Does Labvanced integrate with Cint? There is not a direct, two-step (copy-paste) integration at the moment, but it is possible to integrate manually via events.

Sona Systems: best for managing course-credit and community participant pools

Not every researcher leaving MTurk needs a new external crowd. Many labs already recruit from a participant pool they have built themselves, commonly students fulfilling a course-credit requirement, but also paid, non-student community members recruited independently, and only used MTurk to supplement that pool with additional online participants.

Sona Systems is built for that scenario specifically. Rather than connecting researchers to an external marketplace, it helps administer the pool researchers already have: online sign-ups, prescreening, credit or cash compensation tracking, and IRB approval enforcement, all in one system. Institutions commonly run course-credit and paid or community pools as separate sites within Sona, since the two groups need different prescreening and scheduling rules. The platform reports use at the majority of research universities across the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.

For researchers whose main post-MTurk need is not sourcing new participants but managing the ones they already recruit, whether student or community, Sona can be a viable tool for the job.

Best suited for: researchers managing an existing participant pool, whether course-credit students or a self-recruited community or paid sample.

Does Labvanced integrate with Sona Systems? Yes. See the Sona Systems integration guide for setup steps.

So what is the best MTurk alternative?

The answer depends on what kind of sample the research requires.

For researchers moving away from MTurk, the more useful question is not "What is the new MTurk?" but "Which participant source is best suited to the population and methodology of this particular study?"