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title: "Minds AI vs Koji: Synthetic Panels vs AI-Moderated Real Interviews | Minds"
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May 12, 2026·Comparison·Minds Team

# **Minds AI vs Koji: Synthetic Panels vs AI-Moderated Real Interviews**

Minds vs Koji. Synthetic AI customer panels for same-day insight vs autonomous AI-moderated real-customer discovery interviews.

[Try Minds free](https://getminds.ai/?register=true)

# Minds vs Koji: Synthetic Panels vs AI-Moderated Real Interviews

Koji and Minds are sometimes shortlisted together for "AI customer research." They do different things. Koji moderates interviews with real humans. Minds simulates synthetic personas. Picking the right one depends on whether you need real-respondent provenance or same-day directional insight.

## What Koji does

Koji is an AI-native interview platform that conducts and moderates customer discovery calls autonomously. You define the research goal, Koji runs the interviews with real participants (recruited or invited from your list), and the AI synthesizes the transcripts into themes and recommendations.

Best for: product and research teams that want the depth of real qualitative interviews without the operational cost of recruiting, scheduling, moderating, and synthesizing each one manually.

The job it does well: scaling discovery interview volume from "10 per quarter, manually moderated" to "50 per month, AI-moderated, AI-synthesized."

## What Minds does

Minds is a synthetic customer simulation platform. You build digital twins of your customer types and run them as panels of 8, 15, 50, or 100. The panels return aggregated, structured insight in minutes.

The job it does well: replacing 3 to 4 weeks of exploratory market research with same-day directional insight at 80 to 95 percent accuracy against historical human data.

## The fundamental split

Koji uses real humans. Minds uses synthetic personas.

That single decision drives most of the trade-offs:

| Dimension | Koji | Minds |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Respondent type | Real humans | AI personas |
| Moderation | Autonomous AI | Conversational chat with persona |
| Speed | Days (recruit + interview) | Minutes (build + run) |
| Cost per study | Mid (participant incentives + platform) | Low (subscription) |
| Iteration cost | Per-study | Effectively zero |
| Best for exploratory pre-test | Overkill | Ideal |
| Best for go/no-go validation | Strong | Use as pre-test, escalate to real humans |

## When Koji wins

- You need real-respondent quotes and transcripts for stakeholder decks
- You are validating a product concept with high-stakes investment behind it
- The output will be cited third-partyly and needs real-human provenance
- You are doing customer discovery on a brand new market segment where synthetic personas would lack grounding

## When Minds wins

- You are pre-testing a message, headline, ad, or pricing change
- You need to filter 10 ideas down to 2 before spending real-human research budget
- The decision is happening this week, not in six weeks
- You want a persona library that multiple teams use over time
- You are a marketing, product, or growth team without dedicated research-ops

## The combined pattern

The sharp move is to use both at different stages:

1. _Minds upstream._ Run synthetic panels on 10 ideas, kill 8, surface the 2 strongest.
2. _Koji downstream._ Take the 2 survivors into real-customer discovery interviews to validate before committing real money.

This is exactly the pattern we describe in [How to simulate customers with AI: the 2026 playbook](https://getminds.ai/blog/how-to-simulate-customers-with-ai). Synthetic for exploration and filtering. Real humans for validation.

## Pricing

Koji is mid-market priced, structured per study or per seat with participant incentives separate.

Minds is self-serve from 5 EUR per month for individuals, 20 EUR per month for teams, 30 EUR per month for premium individuals. Enterprise plans for full panel research and SSO start at 15,000 EUR per year.

## Bottom line

Koji is for when the value of a real-human transcript is worth the time and cost of recruitment. Minds is for when the speed and unlimited iteration of synthetic panels is worth the trade-off of "synthetic, not real."

For most marketing and pre-test work in 2026, the right starting point is Minds. Escalate to Koji (or Remesh, or traditional research) when the decision warrants real-human evidence.

[Try Minds free](https://getminds.ai/?register=true). For the wider category, see [Best AI customer simulation platforms in 2026](https://getminds.ai/blog/best-ai-customer-simulation-platforms-2026).