Field Notes: Running the Same Survey on Survey Mars and Questant

Reviews are easy to write from a spec sheet. Feature lists, however, do not tell you what it feels like to run a real survey. So I did the next best thing: I built the same customer-feedback questionnaire on both Survey Mars and Questant, distributed it to the same audience, and compared the experience end to end. What follows are my field notes — the setup, the frictions, the dashboards, and the bills. If you are trying to decide between a free AI-first tool and a Japanese research-platform classic, this is what the difference looks like in practice.

The test setup

The survey was a 10-question customer feedback form: two satisfaction ratings, an NPS-style question, two multiple-choice items about usage, a ranking question, and three open-ended fields. My audience was a bilingual group of roughly 200 customers — mostly Japanese speakers, with some English speakers in the mix. I gave myself one evening to build both surveys and one week to collect responses.

I deliberately kept the questionnaire identical — same wording, same order, same answer options — so that the only variable was the platform itself, not the survey.

I chose this shape for a reason. Ten questions is a realistic size for a real-world feedback form: long enough to test question variety, short enough to complete in under five minutes. The mix of scales, single choice, ranking, and open text exercises the features most teams actually use, rather than the exotic ones that look good in a demo. It also mirrors the most common use case for both tools — a business owner or marketer who wants customer input without hiring a research agency.

First ten minutes: setup

Survey Mars won the opening round hands down. I typed a one-line topic into the AI generator, and it returned a complete draft with well-formed options in seconds. I adjusted two questions, set the language to Japanese for half the audience, and was ready to share within about five minutes. There was no signup wall, no payment step, and no limit dialog. The whole flow felt designed for someone who needs to ship a survey today, not next week.

To be fair to the AI output: the draft was not perfect. One question used wording I would have tightened, and the ranking options were slightly repetitive. But it was a genuinely usable starting point, which is the entire point. Editing a good draft is far faster than inventing ten questions from nothing, and for non-researchers the AI also explains why certain question formats are better than others.

Questant took longer. There is no AI to lean on, so I worked through the question bank and templates manually. The interface is clear but Japanese-only, and building the same 10 questions took roughly 25 minutes once I accounted for configuring the rating scales and branching. Not painful — just slower, with noticeably more steps for a task the other tool completes from a single sentence. If you are an experienced researcher, the manual workflow is comfortable; if you are a busy marketer, the difference is real.

Designing questions

Both tools handled the essentials. Single choice, multiple choice, ranking, and open text worked fine on each platform. Survey Mars went further: I added a MaxDiff-style preference item and a rating scale with granular labels without hunting for settings, and the 50+ question types meant I never had to compromise on format. The AI's follow-up suggestions also caught one leading question I had drafted — a small but genuinely useful nudge during design.

Questant covered the core types with solid branching logic, and its 70+ templates were useful for the ranking and satisfaction sections. The question bank is a nice shortcut for standard market-research wording. The main gap is that there is no equivalent of the more advanced formats, so a complex preference study would need a different tool. For the feedback survey I actually ran, both platforms were adequate; Survey Mars simply required less effort to reach the same result.

One design note carried through the whole test: open-ended questions were the hardest to get right on both platforms. Survey Mars made it easy to set optional text fields and even suggested a better phrasing; Questant's text boxes were fine but less guided. In the end, both collected usable open answers — the difference was in how much help the tool offered while I was building, not in the quality of what came back.

Distribution and collection

Sharing was nearly effortless on Survey Mars. I used a direct link for the email blast, a QR code for the in-person event I ran mid-week, and an embed for a landing page — all generated automatically. Response capture is real-time, and the dashboard updated as the numbers climbed. Watching responses arrive live is useful, not just satisfying: I could tell within hours which channel was performing and where to push.

Questant also offered email invitations and QR codes, and the distribution worked reliably. Where it shines is targeting: I tested a small panel job for a specific demographic — women in their 30s in the Kansai region — and Questant's integration with the MACROMILL panel handled the screening and delivery smoothly. That is something Survey Mars cannot do out of the box; it collects from whoever you bring to the link.

It can, however, be paired with Prolific: paste the survey link into a Prolific study to recruit screened, paid global participants with demographic filters. For reach you already own, both tools work; for a Japan-specific panel, Questant remains the only one of the two that does it natively.

Response rates followed the channels, as they always do. The email blast brought in the largest share, the QR code at the event added a steady trickle, and the embed converted visitors who were already on the page. Across both platforms the completion rate was similar, which tells me the questionnaire itself was the variable that mattered — not the tool behind it. The practical difference was setup time and the ability to react mid-week, where Survey Mars's live view made it easy to see which channel needed a nudge.

Watching results come in

The dashboards tell different stories. Survey Mars shows live charts that update with every response, and the live polling wall made the mid-week event feel interactive — attendees watched their answers appear on the screen. For the open-ended questions, the AI report flagged themes and statistically significant differences between the Japanese and English subgroups — genuinely useful, and a task I would normally have spent an afternoon on.

Questant's aggregation is dependable and familiar: clean tables, cross-tabulation, and straightforward filtering. There is no AI layer, so interpreting the open-text answers was manual work. Nothing wrong with the numbers; they just do not interpret themselves. If you enjoy working in spreadsheets, this is not a drawback; if you want a summary before the weekend, it is.

On the open-text front, the contrast was most visible. Reading 140 free-text answers by hand takes the better part of a day, and that is exactly the work Survey Mars's AI report compressed into a few minutes, with the caveat that I still spot-checked the themes it pulled out. Questant's data export made the same job possible in a spreadsheet, just slower. For a team that runs surveys every month, that recurring hour or two adds up quickly.

The real cost

This is where the two tools diverge most sharply. My entire Survey Mars run — 10 questions, roughly 140 completed responses, unlimited questions and embeds — cost nothing. No trial window, no response cap, no surprise invoice at the end of the week.

Questant's free plan stops at 10 questions and 100 responses, which would have capped this project. The paid plans run from about ¥50,000 to ¥300,000 per year, and the panel job I tested was priced per response on top of that. For a one-off customer survey, that is a heavy bill; for a statistically rigorous market study, it is the price of access to a 10-million-person panel. The lesson: know which game you are playing before you pay.

I want to be precise about what "free" meant in practice on Survey Mars. The free tier included everything I used — the AI generator, all five question formats in my survey, real-time charts, the polling wall, and the embed — with no branding slapped on my results. The only things that cost money are advanced branding and enterprise-level support, neither of which a small team needs on day one. That is a materially different definition of free from a capped trial.

Small frictions worth knowing

A few small details shaped the experience. Survey Mars keeps everything in one place — create, share, analyze — with no learning curve; the trade-off is that you bring your own audience (or pair it with Prolific), so a survey with no channel behind it stays empty. Questant's richer settings, such as branding, quotas, and duplicate control, are powerful, but they sit behind a Japanese-only interface that takes time to learn. Neither platform broke anything during the test; both delivered clean data. The difference was speed and cost, not reliability.

Two small examples capture the frictions. Switching a question between Japanese and English on Survey Mars took one click, which mattered for my bilingual audience; on Questant I would have had to manage the wording more carefully inside the Japanese-only flow. And duplicate-response control, which Questant handles with cookies, was something I did not need for this survey but would want for paid panel studies — where Survey Mars has no equivalent control at all. Both platforms are honest about what they are built for.

The honest trade-offs

Survey Mars pros: completely free with no limits; AI generation and AI reporting; 50+ question types; real-time dashboards and live polling; multilingual including Japanese; QR, link, email, and embed sharing; anonymous mode; can be paired with Prolific for paid global participants.

Survey Mars cons: no built-in panel — you bring your own audience or pair it with Prolific for paid global participants; no Japan-specific panel like Questant's.

Questant pros: Japanese market heritage and credibility; access to MACROMILL's panel of 10+ million Japanese consumers; targeted demographic screening; solid branching and question bank; reliable email and QR distribution.

Questant cons: free plan capped at 10 questions and 100 responses; paid plans plus per-response panel fees; Japanese-only interface; no AI features as of 2026; steeper learning curve for advanced settings.

Who should pick which

Pick Survey Mars for everyday research: customer feedback, team decisions, event polls, website embeds, and anything where you control the audience and want zero cost. Pick Questant when you need a statistically representative Japanese sample, detailed demographic targeting, or the backing of a major research firm. For most teams, keeping both in the toolkit makes sense — the free tool for the fast stuff, the panel platform for the studies that need real samples.

Verdict

Both tools work. For my test — a bilingual customer survey with a modest budget and a tight timeline — Survey Mars was the faster, cheaper, and more pleasant experience, and the AI reporting saved a full day of analysis. Questant earned its place in the toolkit too: when I need reliable Japanese panel data, nothing in the free tier of any tool replaces it. Use each for what it is built for, and you will rarely be disappointed.

If you take one thing from these notes, let it be this: the best survey tool is the one that matches your audience model. If you have customers, an email list, or an event, Survey Mars gives you a free, fast pipeline from question to insight. If you need to reach people you do not know yet, Questant sells you that reach — at a price. Both are good tools; they are good at different jobs.