The most common questions. Honest answers.

In three steps: create an account with your email address, pick an object type (website incl. landing page, ad, email, logo, social post, product, Proposal Check, or Ask the Room), then select Personas and define your Review Criteria. Setup takes about ten minutes; generating the report takes a few more. After about 20 minutes, the finished PDF is ready.

No. Your email address is all it takes. A credit card is only requested when you upgrade to Essential, Pro, or Business. No automatic plan conversion, no silent charges.

Yes, with the free plan: 2 Reviews per month, 2 Personas per Review — indefinitely. No trial period with an expiration date, no pressure to upgrade. You move up only when your volume grows.

Honest answer: review output is currently delivered primarily in German — the persona library is rooted in the German-speaking (DACH) market. An English-language rollout is in progress. If you need English reviews today, contact us before you subscribe and we'll tell you exactly what already works.

About 20 minutes from upload to finished PDF report (median). Traditional UX research projects take 42 days on average (source: Dscout, survey of 300+ UX researchers).

Synthetic personas are AI-modeled stand-ins for real target groups: fictional profiles built on eight psychological layers (values, behavior, cognitive biases, and more). At Radical Personas, human experts co-design them and audit them for bias — they are not raw prompt output. They complement real user research; they don't replace it.

Essentially the same thing: both describe AI-generated, non-real persona profiles. “AI personas” emphasizes the technology; “synthetic personas” emphasizes the origin — artificially created rather than distilled from real interviews. Radical Personas uses both terms interchangeably; what matters is the depth of the modeling, not the label.

Good for fast pre-launch tests, hypothesis building, and decisions before budget is committed — feedback on websites, ads, emails, and product ideas in minutes instead of weeks. Not a substitute for real user research when you need final validation or insight into rare, hard-to-reach segments: synthetic personas tend toward average responses.

No. Synthetic personas tend toward average responses and represent extreme positions less well (Nielsen Norman Group, 2025, nngroup.com/articles/synthetic-users). We are a complement to real research — not its replacement.

Stanford HAI (Park et al., 2024 — preprint, arXiv:2411.10109, n=1,052) found ≈85% replication accuracy, benchmarked against the test-retest reliability of human self-responses — that is, how consistently the same person answers the same question two weeks apart. Our internal comparison tests fall within that corridor; the methodology protocol is available on request.

Websites (including landing pages and user journeys across multiple pages — from Pro: up to 5 pages, from Business: up to 10, from Enterprise: up to 20), ads, emails, logos, social media posts, products, Proposal Checks (reviews of proposals and quotes), and Ask the Room (one question put to a panel of Personas for a quick Sentiment Snapshot).

Not in self-service right now. The over 60 library personas cover a broad range of Life-Worlds, cognitive biases, and decision styles — you select and filter. Custom-built Personas are available on request.

A Review is the evaluation of one object (for example a landing page, an email, or a logo) by one or more Personas. You get numeric Scores per criterion. Each Persona also delivers free-text answers in its own voice. An AI summary condenses the results across all Personas. Optionally, you can then chat directly with individual Personas.

Yes, from the Pro plan: user journeys across up to 5 pages (landing page plus follow-up pages). Business plan: up to 10; Enterprise plan: up to 20. Ideal for funnel analyses and checkout flows.

Our 8-layer engine combines the Big Five, Kahneman-style cognitive biases, distinct Life-Worlds, biography, and four further layers in a structured, internally validated interplay. ChatGPT gives you one one-dimensional answer per prompt. Details and a direct comparison at /en/vs-chatgpt.

A management summary (1 page), a detail report per Persona, and a summary across all Personas. Every PDF report includes Scores, free-text answers, and source references for the methodology.

Yes. From the Pro plan you can store your Workspace logo and company name — the generated PDF report comes out fully in your branding, without the Radical Personas logo. Ideal for agencies, consultants, and internal corporate reports that go straight to clients or stakeholders.

Synthetic market research tests concepts, copy, or designs on AI-generated stand-in personas before real respondents see them. 73% of market researchers already use synthetic responses in some form (Qualtrics 2025). It delivers fast directional signals — it does not replace a real sample.

No — they are not raw prompt output. Our library personas are co-designed by hand by human experts, audited for cognitive bias (bias audits), and partly derived from real survey data — across eight psychological layers. This human-plus-AI approach makes them more consistent and less generic than one-shot generated personas.

We run several language models in parallel and orchestrate their interplay with our own persona-layer engine. Details at /en/science.

Three layers are externally peer-reviewed and validated: psychology (OCEAN/Big Five — personality model validated across 56 nations, n=17,837 (Schmitt et al., 2007)), cognitive biases (Kahneman/Tversky, Nobel Prize 2002), and cultural context (Hofstede's cultural dimensions, established in cross-cultural research). Five further layers (biography, emotional state, behavior, anti-patterns, language) are our own synthesis — we check them internally for consistency against the three external layers. Details at /en/science.

Biography, psychology (OCEAN/Big Five), cognitive biases (Kahneman), emotional state, cultural context (Hofstede's cultural dimensions, value-based Life-Worlds), behavior, anti-patterns, and language. Details at /en/science.

Persona answers are consistent within a run — with an identical prompt and the same Persona, you get the same Scores. Between runs, free-text answers vary by about 8–12%. Methodology: internal comparison measurement (n=120 Review pairs, identical inputs 24 hours apart, metric: semantic similarity via embedding cosine distance). Numeric Scores typically vary less. The full measurement protocol is available on request.

The Nielsen Norman Group (2025, nngroup.com/articles/synthetic-users) shows that synthetic personas tend toward average responses and represent extreme positions less well. Their conclusion: “Synthetic users cannot replace the depth and empathy gained from studying and speaking with real people.” We state this limitation openly and build around it: multi-persona Reviews, honest variance figures, no “AI replaces research” promise.

Yes — quarterly internal audits for typical large language model (LLM) biases (gender, racial, socioeconomic) plus a persona-stereotype check. An example from the Q1/2026 audit: personas from economically disadvantaged regions had value sets that were weighted systematically too conservatively — corrected through broader cultural-context sources and explicit correction guidelines. We also use multi-persona consensus (several Personas per Review), which makes stereotypical individual answers visible. Audit methodology and past reports are available on request, under NDA for Enterprise.

We don't run large-scale cross-validation studies ourselves — that would require the very panels we help complement. We anchor our approach in independent studies (Stanford HAI 2024: ≈85% replication accuracy relative to test-retest reliability; Qualtrics State of Synthetic Research 2025: 73% of market researchers already use synthetic responses; Nielsen Norman Group 2025). For Enterprise customers, we offer pilot validations against their own panels.

Hallucination is a known risk with large language models (LLMs). We mitigate it through: grounding each Persona in a fixed 8-layer profile (no free-form fact generation), multi-persona consensus per Review (a contradiction between Personas is visible, not hidden), and Score-range checks (implausible Score jumps get flagged). No system is error-free — which is why we work as a complement to real research, not a replacement.

In Austria and the EU (compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)). Details are in our privacy policy. We comply with the GDPR and the Austrian Data Protection Act (DSG).

No. Your content does not flow into the training of the underlying language models. We have contracts with our providers that exclude training AI on your data.

While your account is active: indefinitely — responsibility for retention is yours. After account deletion: a 30-day export window, then GDPR-compliant deletion (Art. 17). Invoice data is retained for 7 years (Austrian statutory retention requirement).

Yes. A data processing agreement (DPA under GDPR Art. 28) is available as a standalone agreement from Essential upward — the standard version can be requested by email; from Business it is individually negotiable. The subprocessor list (LLM providers, hosting) with jurisdictions is documented in the DPA. Change notifications go out 30 days in advance, with a right to object.

We pick the best available model per task so you get maximum review quality. With every model provider, we have contractually ensured that your content is not used for model training. Where contractually possible, we use the providers' EU endpoints; if processing takes place outside the EEA (for example via US endpoints), we secure it through EU Standard Contractual Clauses or the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. Which providers and processors we use — including their jurisdictions — is documented transparently in our privacy policy and the DPA. For Enterprise customers, an on-premises deployment is available on request — the data flow then stays entirely within your infrastructure.

Yes, from the Pro plan. Free and Essential are limited to 1 person (just you). Pro: up to 3 team members including the owner (owner + 2 invitees). Business: up to 6 (owner + 5 invitees). Enterprise: unlimited. All members work in one shared account with a shared pool of Personas, Reviews, and Templates — practical for agency teams working on client projects together.

Yes, from the Pro plan. Free and Essential are limited to 1 Brand Profile. Pro: up to 5 parallel Brand Profiles; Business: up to 10; Enterprise: unlimited. Each Brand Profile has its own Workspace — practical for agencies and consultants managing several client brands in parallel without switching accounts. The monthly Review quota is a shared pool across all Brand Profiles account-wide — not separate per brand.

Single sign-on (SSO — one central company login) is available from the Enterprise plan. Integrations with common corporate login systems such as Microsoft Entra ID, Okta, and Ping via SAML (the technical standard for single sign-on), plus automated user management (SCIM), are set up together with your IT team.

A developer API is planned — expected in Q4 2026. Intended scope: read access from Business, read and write access from Enterprise. To join the early-access list, reach out via /en/contact.

Email support is included in every plan. From the Pro plan, your requests are handled with priority. Enterprise customers additionally get a dedicated customer success manager (CSM) team. Target response times for critical incidents (P1 = priority 1) are tiered: Pro about 24 hours, Business about 8 hours, Enterprise about 4 hours; binding response times are agreed in the individual Enterprise SLA.

We run the service on modern, industry-standard infrastructure and aim for the highest availability we can deliver. We do not give a percentage uptime commitment in the standard plans. A binding uptime SLA with service credits is agreed individually for Enterprise. A public status page for incident history and real-time availability is in preparation.

Today: PDF report download in every plan from Essential (a basic PDF also in the free plan). Planned for Q4 2026: a developer API, webhooks for review-completion events, and a Zapier/Make integration. A Figma plugin and direct Slack/Notion integrations are at the concept stage — feedback and requests welcome via /en/contact.

The free plan includes 2 Reviews per month with 2 Personas each — indefinitely, no credit card.

Our introductory pricing runs through July 31, 2026: Essential €19/month (then €29/month), Pro €99/month (then €149/month), Business €499/month (then €749/month). From August 1, 2026, regular prices apply for new customers. If you subscribe during the introductory phase, you keep the introductory price for 12 months from the start of your contract — no automatic increase, no hidden clause. The free plan is not affected by the introductory price; it stays at €0. The annual discount (about 17%) applies on top and can be combined with the introductory price.

Yes. Monthly subscriptions cancel month to month; annual subscriptions at the end of the term. No hidden fees, no minimum commitment beyond the booked interval.

With annual billing, effectively about 17% off (two months included).

The Enterprise plan has no hard limits on Personas and Reviews. Fair use means you use the platform within the scope of your agreed use case. If usage becomes exceptionally heavy (e.g., automated bulk Reviews), our default is to reach out first before we restrict anything.

The full pricing FAQ lives at /en/pricing and covers payment methods (credit card, SEPA, invoice), VAT handling for Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, invoice downloads, the data processing agreement (DPA under GDPR), and our 60-day advance notice of price increases.

Anytime in your account area: CSV export of all Reviews, PDF download of every individual report, JSON export for developer API customers. No export paywall. Additionally, after cancellation: a 30-day window for a complete data download, then GDPR-compliant deletion.