We're excited that you want to sign up and take part in studies here on Prolific!

Before you can begin you'll need to verify your account by doing the following things:

  • Verify your account email address
  • Verify your phone number via SMS
  • Verify your identity

You can verify your Prolific account on the General Account settings page.

When you begin verification, you should see this:

Here's some more information on each of the verification steps:


Verifying my email

On sign up, we send you an email asking you to verify your email address. Click the 'Verify Email' button, or use the URL in the email to verify your account.

Please note

On occasion, your email won't show as verified straight away. If this is the case, try logging out and logging back in after a few minutes and your account should be updated.

Once that's done you can then verify your phone number and link your PayPal address through your Account page.

Verifying my phone number


To verify your phone number you need to choose the country code from the dropdown menu and then write the rest of your phone number.

In order to maintain data quality, your phone number must have a country code that matches your country of residence in order to be verified and VOIP phone numbers can't be used.

If you have a German phone number and are having trouble, try entering an additional '0' before your phone number. If you still need help, please just message our Support Team using the button at the bottom of the page.

If you've previously deleted a Prolific account and want to sign up again using the same phone number you used before, you'll need to contact our Support Team using the link at the bottom of this article.

Please know that your phone number is collected for verification purposes only. This information will not be used for marketing purposes in any way.


Verifying my ID

Data quality is really important at Prolific so we ask you to confirm your identity by completing an identity check. This way, we know you are who you say you are, researchers get better data and we're able to keep giving our participants access to the studies they love.

You can read more about how to verify your ID and any problems you might be having here: Verifying your identity FAQ

What happens if I fail verification?


If you've completed each verification step and you pass our verification steps, you should see this in your account:

If you fail our verification checks, then we won't be able to offer you a participant account. If this is the case, then you'll see this message:


Signing up via URL from a researcher

Some participants may not be asked to complete these verification steps when they first sign up if they are invited to sign up by a researcher using a URL. You can find more info on this in our Verification FAQs.

Verification FAQs

You can find more info about verification on our Verification FAQ page, and general info in our FAQ sections.


If you've followed the guidance above and you're still having difficulties, click below to send a message to our Support Team.

Need further help?
Click here to contact us