Frequently Asked Questions

User Sage is a user research and usability testing platform. Plan a study, run it with simulated people for a fast first read, then validate it with real participants. Briefs, responses, recordings, and findings stay together in one project, so a decision and the evidence behind it never get separated. Every result is clearly labeled by which one produced it: AI Panel (simulated) or Your Panel (participants).

Every plan gets a monthly credit allotment: 25 on Free, 500 on Pro, and a credit amount tailored to your needs on Custom. Running an AI Panel draws from that balance (most methods cost 1 credit per run, Prototype Test costs 2). Collecting and viewing real Your Panel responses is always free, on every plan. Two optional AI assists cost 1 credit each: Help me create questions, and an AI summary of real Your Panel responses. Writing your own questions by hand is free. Need more than your monthly allotment? One-time credit packs top up your balance and never expire. See our Pricing page for exact numbers.

Yes. The owner invites people from Settings as members or viewers. Members share the workspace's studies, AI credits, and GenPop wallet. Viewers can look at results and do not count toward the member limit. Free includes 3 members. Pro and Custom are unlimited. See Pricing for the exact numbers.

You can sign up and start free any time. There is no waitlist. We are still actively building, so you might hit a rough edge while we add features and fix things. There is a Feedback button in the dashboard, or you can write hello@usersage.com.

Seven unmoderated methods today: 5-Second Test, Prototype Test, Card Sorting, First-Click Test, Preference Test, Survey, and Tree Testing. Moderated sessions are also available as a separate path for live interviews and moderated usability testing. See Talk to users live. More methods are on the way.

Start with AI Panel for a fast, directional read, then confirm with participants via Your Panel or GenPop once you have a real decision riding on the result. AI Panel is a hypothesis, not a verdict: a strong first pass, not a replacement for participants when it counts.

No. You can paste a public prototype link directly (no account needed), or connect your Figma account for the full OAuth-based import. Both paths work.

Not for a study that's already live. Use the Clone action to duplicate it as a fresh draft with its own copy of every image, instead of editing (and potentially corrupting) results already in progress.

A reusable, named roster of participants (your own testers or customers) that you can recruit from across multiple studies, instead of typing in a fresh invite list every time.

Add them directly (with their consent), or share your Audience's public opt-in landing page. You choose the visibility: public (anyone can join immediately), private (they request, you approve), or secret (invite-only, no public page at all).

If someone shared a User Sage link with you, they're using it to recruit testers for their own research. User Sage itself never invites you to anything unprompted. See our Privacy Policy for what happens to your information if you take part.

Email hello@usersage.com with "Data Deletion Request." We'll notify the workspace that recruited you and can carry out the deletion directly. See our Privacy Policy for the full process.

Yes. After finishing a study, you'll get the option to save your responses and, once your email is confirmed, create a free account: one login that keeps track of every study you take part in across every workspace that invites you, not just one. It's entirely optional: taking a study never requires an account, and you can keep participating anonymously if you prefer.

AI Panel simulates responses from simulated people and panels you define. It runs in seconds, and draws from your monthly credits. Your Panel is participants you recruit yourself (your own testers or customers); Free is capped at 3 active studies and 30 responses per study. Pro has unlimited active studies and up to 1,000 responses per study. GenPop Panel is a managed pool of participants sourced for you; it draws from a separate prepaid balance rather than your AI credits.

Because they're simulated, not from participants. It's a fast, useful first signal, not proof. Treat an AI Panel result as a strong guess worth confirming with participants before a high-stakes decision, not as the final answer.

A plain frequency count of words that came up often across responses. No AI involved, just what people actually typed, so it can't misrepresent what was said. It only appears once there's enough response text to be meaningful.

Individual, always. User Sage never blends responses into a single average. You see each person's (or each simulated person's) actual answer, plus a summary alongside it.

Pulse is a path-aware quality signal across AI Panel, Your Panel, and GenPop. States are Good, Watch, and Needs work, with different checks on each path. On AI Panel it flags whether simulated people look varied enough for a first pass, or whether they may sound too alike or too eager to please. On Your Panel and GenPop it looks at fill and effort signals once enough participants have responded. Filling in product context helps on AI Panel. When a decision matters, confirm with participants.

You can, and it can be useful for a quick opinion. In an IDE or chat tool, though, simulating a user is usually a one-off role-play. The model improvises from a short persona prompt, and changing the wording or context can change the answer.

User Sage's AI Panel works from a structured model of each Simulated person instead. It holds attributes such as role, experience, and confidence alongside goals, constraints, behavioral tendencies, and what that Simulated person has encountered in the study. Those stay consistent across the method, tasks, and questions, so you get individual responses and a summary you can save, share, compare, and rerun. It is still a hypothesis, not evidence from real participants. When a decision matters, run the same study with Your Panel or GenPop to confirm it with real people.

Free includes 25 AI credits every month, every study method, Your Panel recruiting (up to 30 responses per study), and connecting an AI tool to plan studies. Pro adds 500 credits a month, unlimited active studies and up to 1,000 responses per study, larger AI panels, data export, and full MCP access, so your AI tool can create and run studies, read results, and work with your Projects, simulated people and AI panels. Our Custom plan is volume pricing and custom limits for larger teams. See our Pricing page for exact numbers.

Your plan credits refill every month: 25 on Free, 500 on Pro. If you run out mid-month, buy a credit pack or wait for your next refill. Pack credits never expire, and they are only used once your monthly credits are gone, so nothing you buy ever goes to waste. Your Panel studies are not affected either way; they do not draw from your credit balance.

Yes, from your dashboard. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period, and you keep access until then. See our Terms of Service for the full refund policy.

No. Never. Full detail in our Privacy Policy.

No. We never use real participant responses to train or improve AI. They're only processed by our AI providers when you ask for an optional AI summary of your study's responses, and even then without names or email addresses. See our Privacy Policy for details.

The workspace that recruited them is the data controller (they decided to collect it); User Sage stores and protects it on that workspace's behalf as the data processor. Full explanation in our Privacy Policy.

Yes. A data processing addendum is available on request. Email hello@usersage.com and we will send it over.

Yes. Generate a key in Workspace settings (Integrations tab, MCP connector), add it to your AI tool, and ask in your own words. Your AI tool can plan a study with you as a Study Brief, create and duplicate studies, run an AI Panel of simulated people, recruit real participants, and summarize what a study found. New studies are always drafts for you to review, and anything that spends credits or wallet funds is confirmed with you first. Connect on any plan. See Pricing for what's included, and the setup guides for each tool.

We've confirmed these connect with a key you paste in: Claude (Claude Code and the Claude app's custom connectors), Cursor, Muse, Grok Bot, and VS Code. Some other tools only let you sign in to a service instead of pasting a key. We don't support that yet, so they may not connect. If you try one we haven't listed, email us at hello@usersage.com and let us know what you see.

In Workspace settings, open the Integrations tab and find the MCP connector card. Name a key and generate it. It's shown once, so copy it. Then add User Sage to your AI tool with the server URL and your key. Our setup guides show exactly where each one goes in Muse, Grok Bot, Claude, Cursor and VS Code.

A key reaches your workspace alone, and you can revoke it anytime in Settings, which cuts off access right away. Treat it like a password: never share it or commit it to a repo. It can't edit or delete your existing studies, simulated people or panels, and anything that spends credits or wallet funds is confirmed with you first. If a key leaks, revoke it and generate a new one.

Make sure the connection has the scopes User Sage's Settings page describes, and that the file itself is shared as "anyone with the link" if you're testing with real participants. A login wall on the Figma side blocks them even if your connection works.

Email hello@usersage.com with what happened and, if you can, a link to the study. We're a small, actively-building team and read every message.

Email hello@usersage.com and a real person will get back to you.

Credits pay for AI Panel runs with simulated people and a couple of optional AI assists, like drafting questions or summarizing Your Panel responses. Building studies, simulated people, and panels by hand is free, and recruiting participants through Your Panel never costs credits on any plan (Free is capped at 3 active studies and 30 responses per study; Pro has no limit on active studies and raises responses to 1,000 per study).

Unused credits are not wiped out at renewal, but the monthly refresh tops your balance back up to your plan's ceiling (25 on Free, 500 on Pro) rather than adding another batch on top of what's left. So you always carry credits into next month, but the monthly refresh alone never banks you more than your plan's ceiling. Credit packs are the way to hold more than that: they never expire and stack on top.

Yes, a one-time 7-day Pro trial, no card required: full Pro limits and 117 extra credits (Pro's monthly allotment, prorated to a week) while it's active. It's a once-per-account trial, and new subscribers on the monthly plan also get 50% off their first 3 months after.

A live session recording captures your moderated interview on Google Meet, Zoom, or Teams. Video, audio, and auto-generated transcript are stored for 12 months. One session recording covers up to 60 minutes; longer interviews use one recording per hour.

You can still schedule live sessions, but recording won't be available until you buy a session pack or your next Pro billing cycle adds another included recording. Scheduling, booking, and running unrecorded sessions is always unlimited.

Yes, session packs expire 12 months from purchase. Your monthly Pro recording refreshes each billing cycle and does not roll over. Use packs from closest-to-expiring first. We handle the order automatically.