Common questions
FAQ
Is distil free?
Yes. Creating a study, sharing the link, and answering interviews are all free. No account, no credit card, no trial period.
Do I need to create an account?
No. You type a question, talk it through, and get two links — one to share and one private link back to your results. That's the whole interface. You can optionally add an email to recover your private link if you lose it.
How long does an interview take?
About five to ten minutes. The AI interviewer asks follow-up questions based on what the person actually says, then closes the conversation on its own.
Is it private?
Conversations go to the person holding the study's private link, and the distil team may read them to improve distil. Nothing is public: respondent and creator pages carry a noindex tag and are never linked from any public page, so they don't appear in search results. Respondents can choose to give a name, but nothing is required — no signup, no login.
What does the output look like?
A living understanding of what people said — findings with attributed quotes, where respondents disagreed, and what to do next. It updates as conversations land.
How is this different from a survey?
A survey collects the answer you thought to ask for. distil follows the thread — when someone gives an interesting answer, the interviewer asks what they mean and why. You get depth at scale instead of rows of checkbox data.
Surveys vs AI interviews →How is this different from doing interviews myself?
You don't schedule calls. Share one link and everyone is interviewed on their own time, in parallel. The findings are generated automatically. You keep the depth of a real conversation without the calendar cost.
AI vs traditional interviews →Who can see the responses?
The person with the study's private link, and the distil team, who may read conversations to improve distil. Respondents never see each other's conversations. If the creator chooses, they see a summary of what everyone said. There is no public directory of studies.
How many people can I interview?
As many as you want — share the link with anyone. There is no cap on responses.
Can I try it before creating my own study?
Yes. The Try page has a small set of curated questions you can answer right now to see what the interview experience is like from the respondent's side.
Try being interviewed →Still have a question?
The fastest way to understand distil is to try it.