How much does a focus group cost in the UK?

What a focus group costs in 2026

One online group of six to eight people, 90 minutes to two hours, with recruitment, participant payments, moderation, analysis and a findings summary: from £5,500 with us.

A series of three or four groups, usually to hear from different audiences or test more than one idea: from £9,500.

Groups in person add £1,400–£1,800 a day for the venue, travel and facilitation on site. Two groups in a day is a sensible maximum, so four groups means two days.

Participant payments sit inside all of those figures. For the general public they usually run at £300 to £400 for a group of eight.

When two quotes for "one focus group" are thousands apart, the difference is almost always in the parts you can't see from the brief: who does the recruiting, whether anyone analyses the session or you just get the recording, and whether the participants' payments are in the price or billed afterwards.

Where the money goes

The two hours in the room are the smallest part of the job. Here is what sits behind one online group done properly.

Analysis is the line most often cut from a cheap quote. A group throws up a lot of talk, and the loudest person in it is rarely the most representative. Someone has to go back through the transcript, separate what was said from what the room agreed to go along with, and tie it back to the decision you need to make. Without that you have a recording and some quotes that support whatever you already thought.

The four things that push the price up

1. How many groups. One group tells you what one room thought on one night. Groups have their own dynamics, and a single confident voice can tilt the whole conversation. Two groups per audience is the minimum for telling a pattern from a one-off. If the budget forces a choice, two groups each with two audiences will teach you more than one group each with four.

2. Meeting in person. Some topics need the room: handling a product, tasting, looking at physical packaging, or people who would struggle on a video call. In person adds £1,400–£1,800 a day for venue, travel and facilitation. For most other questions, online groups give you the same answers, cost less and recruit more easily, because nobody has to cross a city on a weeknight.

3. Who is in the room. The general public are quick to find and are paid at public rates. Professionals cost more to find and expect to be paid like professionals: on our panel, £75 an hour for officer level up to £200 for directors, and £200–£350 an hour for doctors. Eight GPs for 90 minutes is £2,400 to £4,200 in fees before anyone has written a discussion guide.

4. Health and regulated topics. Groups about health conditions, medicines or clinical services need more care with consent, safeguarding and what happens if someone becomes distressed. Our calculator adds 15% for this. If the group is part of patient and public involvement for a funding bid rather than market research, it is priced as PPIE, which has its own cost guide.

Four worked examples

Each figure comes straight out of our cost calculator, which uses the same pricing as our service pages. Participant payments are included in every one.

The upper end of each range allows for what only becomes clear once we see the brief, such as a tight screener or a longer session.

When a focus group is the wrong thing to buy

Groups are good at a few things: the words people use for a problem, first reactions to an idea, the range of views in an audience, and what people think is normal. They are poor at others, and buying a group for those is the most expensive mistake on this page.

If you want to know whether people can use something, watch them use it, one at a time. People in a group will say a website is easy and then fail to find the button on their own. That is usability testing.

If the topic is personal, or you need to understand individual decisions, such as money, health or why someone left, people are more honest one to one. That is in-depth interviews, and they cost about the same per study.

If you want people to make something with you, such as a priority list, a journey map or a new service design, that is a workshop, not a focus group. The two get confused all the time, so we wrote up the difference between a workshop and a focus group.

Spending less without wasting the groups

Run them online. Unless people need to touch something, this is the biggest single saving, and recruitment gets easier too.

Cut audiences, not groups. Two groups with one audience beats one group each with two. You can add the second audience later if the first set of findings says it matters.

Buy the recruitment on its own. If you have someone who can moderate, we can supply the people. From the general public that is £750 to set up plus £125 a head, so eight people is £1,750, with their payments passed through at cost plus a 12% handling fee. See participant recruitment.

Don't fill the room with whoever is easiest to reach. Staff, friends of staff and people who do every survey going are cheap and give you a comfortable, wrong answer. It is the one saving that makes the rest of the spend pointless.

Questions buyers ask us

Does the price include paying the participants? Ours does, apart from recruitment-only work, where payments pass through at cost. Not every agency includes them, so ask.

How much do focus group participants get paid? On our panel, £27.50 to £50 for a group of 60 to 120 minutes. Professionals and clinicians are paid at their own rates, which are much higher.

How long does it take? Two to three weeks from brief to findings for a standard audience. Specialist or hard-to-reach groups take four to six weeks, almost all of it recruitment.

How many people should be in a group? Six to eight. Fewer and one person can dominate; more and the quieter half stops talking. Online, six usually works better than eight.

Can our team watch? Yes. Online, observers join with camera and microphone off, and participants are told who is watching before they agree to take part.