Fiuto vs Synthetic Users
Fiuto vs Synthetic Users: what you get with Fiuto
Fiuto writes the study, runs it with AI respondents and real people, recruits when you need it, and reads the results back. From the web app or the coding agent you already build in.Free to start, in minutes, no research experience required.
Fiuto's mark beside Synthetic Users's, with "vs" between them.
How it works
Fiuto runs your full research loop
Paste a URL and Fiuto takes it from there. No research experience needed.
What you get with Fiuto
The four differences that change what you can do this afternoon, not a feature checklist.
Does Fiuto test with real people, or only AI respondents?
Both, in that order. Up to five AI respondents go through the study first, so you get a read in minutes and catch a bad task before anyone else sees it. Then the same study goes to real people, recruited from Prolific's panel or reached by sharing the link with your own users. The AI pass is the rehearsal. The real pass is the answer, and every response, click, rating and recording is readable per person.
Does Fiuto run card sorts and first-click tests, or only interviews?
Eighteen methods, not one conversation. Card sort, tree test, first-click, five-second and preference test, click heatmaps, live site and prototype tasks, copy tests, surveys and open text. Eighteen method blocks in all, mixable in one study, on every plan including Free. An interview asks what someone thinks they would do. A first-click test records where they went, and the two disagree often enough to matter.
Can I start on Fiuto today, or do I have to book a call?
You can use Fiuto today, and the AI is free. Fiuto has a free plan with no card, 600 AI credits a month, and every method on it. AI is metered by credits and never gated by tier, so the assistant that drafts your study works on the free plan, not just inside a demo. Sign up, draft, and launch this afternoon. Nobody has to call you first.
What does Fiuto charge to put this in front of real people?
A published price per real respondent. US$7.00 on the 5-minute band, US$14.00 on 12 minutes, US$21.00 on 20, ordered from the launch page and paid per order outside your AI credits. A reserve covers screen-outs and whatever it does not use is refunded when the run settles. Sharing the study link with your own users costs nothing, so a real-people read is a hundred dollars and an afternoon, not a budget line.
Side by side
Every row checked against Synthetic Users' own pages in September 2026.
| Fiuto | Synthetic Users | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Every method, 1 live study a month, 10 responses per study, 600 AI credits a month, no card. | Not published as of September 2026. Its pricing page names no free plan and no trial, and offers a 30-minute demo instead. |
| Paid plans | Core $29 and Pro $69 a month, published, flat per account. | Annual only, from a published floor: its pricing page says plans start at $12,500 a year, sold as one pool of research tokens rather than as named tiers, with up to 20% of unused tokens rolling over at renewal. |
| Seats | None. Share with as many people as you like on every plan, including Free. Unlimited editors from Core. | None either. Its pricing page says collaborative seats are always unlimited, and that you pay for depth rather than seats. |
| Unmoderated methods | 18 method blocks, every one on every plan. Card sort, tree test, first-click, five-second, preference test and click heatmap among them. | Problem exploration interviews, concept testing and custom script interviews, all answered by synthetic participants. No card sort, tree test, first-click, five-second or preference test. |
| AI moderator | None. Fiuto runs unmoderated studies and AI respondents, not a live moderated interview. | None either, in the sense of a live interviewer for real people. Both sides of its interview are AI: the questions and the answers. |
| AI respondents | Up to five per run before real people see the study, up to two of them experts in conversion, usability, copy or SEO. | The whole product, and deeper than ours. Distinct brainscan-powered individuals rather than personas, enrichable with your own documents, at 85 to 92 percent parity with organic research in the independent comparison studies it cites. |
| Study drafting | AI drafts the whole study from your URL and goal, on every plan including Free. | Custom script interviews let you bring your own guide, and its templated study types set the questions otherwise. |
| MCP server | Read and write: create, launch and read results. Seven coding agents. Every plan including Free. | No MCP server published as of September 2026. It documents an API with Python and TypeScript SDKs. |
| Recruitment | Prolific's panel of 300,000+ participants across 38+ countries, ordered from the launch page. Or share the link with your own people. | None, by design. Its pricing page lists participant recruitment as not needed, because the participants are generated rather than found. |
| Participant price | US$7.00 per respondent on the 5-minute band, US$14.00 on 12, US$21.00 on 20. The unused screen-out reserve is refunded when the run settles. | Published, for a synthetic participant: $2 to $60 per interview, drawn from the annual token pool, with a standard-depth interview burning about 10,000 tokens. |
| Instrumented build | @fiuto/runner is on public npm and attaches to any live URL. Clicks and events come back in the same export as the answers. | Not published as of September 2026. Its pricing page says a live website can be shown as stimulus inside an interview. |
| Templates and product memory | 24 curated templates plus the ones you save, on every plan. Fiuto remembers your product, your audience and what you are trying to learn between studies. | Your own documents can enrich a participant through its RAG enrichment, and each participant holds a stable profile across a study. Study templates and cross-study memory not published as of September 2026. |
Sources: Synthetic Users' pricing page, Synthetic Users' homepage and Synthetic Users' API documentation.
MCP for user research
Your data is yours. Stay in Claude Code
Create, launch, and read back studies over MCP from the coding agent you already build in. Every result is yours, out through a per-study token or MCP, on every plan including Free.
Create studies from
Claude Code
Cursor
Codex
Lovable
v0
Replit
BoltWho fits which tool
Fiuto fits people for whom research is not the job
You are building the thing and you have a question about it you would rather not guess at. Fiuto writes the study, runs it, and hands back findings, and it still serves you when research is your job.
Fiuto fits the decision that needs real people on the record
You have narrowed it down and now you want the answer to come from people who will actually use the thing, with their clicks and their words in the same export.
Choose Synthetic Users if you are still mapping the problem
You want to front-load the problem space and sharpen your questions before you spend anything on recruiting, which is the job its own pricing page describes it doing.
Choose Synthetic Users if you cannot reach the audience at all
Your users are oncologists, offshore engineers or procurement officers, finding ten of them takes weeks, and a grounded simulation this week beats a real study next quarter.
Frequently asked questions
01Is Fiuto a Synthetic Users alternative?
Only for part of the job. For research answered entirely by AI participants, Synthetic Users is the specialist and Fiuto does not compete: its own FAQ calls it a discovery co-pilot and says real user research stays essential for validation. Fiuto runs the AI pass too, up to five respondents per run, and then puts the same study in front of real people, so the rehearsal and the answer live in one place.
02Does Synthetic Users have a free plan or a published price?
It publishes a floor and no free plan, as of 11 September 2026. Its pricing page says plans start at $12,500 a year, sold as one annual pool of research tokens, and puts an interview at $2 to $60 from that pool. There is no free plan or trial on the page, and the call to action is a 30-minute demo. Fiuto's free plan needs no card and runs 1 live study a month with every method and the AI included, and Core and Pro are $29 and $69 a month on the pricing page.
03Does Synthetic Users have an MCP server?
None is published as of September 2026. It documents an API with Python and TypeScript SDKs, and its documentation names no MCP server. Fiuto's MCP creates, launches and reads back studies from seven coding agents on every plan including Free.
04Are Fiuto's AI respondents the same thing as synthetic users?
They are the same idea used for a different job. Fiuto sends up to five AI respondents through the study before anyone else, so you get a read in minutes and catch a confusing task early, and up to two of the five can be experts in conversion, usability, copy or SEO judging the surface. Then real people answer the same study. Synthetic Users goes deeper on the simulation itself, with brainscan-grounded individuals and your own documents folded in, and stops there.
05What does it cost to recruit participants on Fiuto?
US$7.00 per respondent on the 5-minute band, US$14.00 on 12 minutes, and US$21.00 on 20, ordered from the launch page and paid per order outside your AI credits. A reserve covers screen-outs, and whatever the order does not use is refunded to the original payment method when the run settles. You can also share the study link with your own users at no cost.
06Do I need research experience to use Fiuto?
No. Paste your URL and say what you need to learn. Fiuto writes the study, runs it with AI respondents, recruits real people if you want them, and reads the results back into findings and a deck. You review each step before it launches, and it serves the researcher just as well.
07Which methods does Fiuto support?
18 method blocks on every plan: prototype and live website tasks, first-click, click heatmap, five-second tests, preference and design feedback, card sort, tree test, matrix, ranking, rating scales, open text, and copy tests among them.