Research Tribe Review: Why It’s Not Worth Your Time
If you’re looking to make some extra money online, Research Tribe might look appealing at first glance. It promises paid surveys, mystery shopping, product testing, and focus groups — all delivered straight to your inbox.
This Research Tribe review is based on actually joining, waiting, and seeing what happens. Spoiler: nothing did.
Research Tribe summary
Pros and cons:
✅ Errmm… quick to sign up
❌ Lack of earning opportunities
❌ Just refers you to other survey sites
❌ Not much to the website
Is Research Tribe worth it?
No.
Research Tribe doesn’t provide paid work directly. It acts as a middleman, emailing you links to other sites so it can earn referral commission. After months of membership, I earned £0.
That’s the short version. Here’s the detail.
A complaint (because there isn’t much else to review)
I’m starting this Research Tribe review with a complaint, mainly because there isn’t much to actually review.
I began this blog years ago because I was fed up with vague, misleading reviews written purely to earn referral bonuses. As someone who’s taken online surveys for years, I know when a site genuinely offers opportunities and when it’s just dressing things up.
After joining Research Tribe and getting nowhere for over a month, I looked up what others were saying. Unsurprisingly, most reviews were generic and useless. They said things like “it’s legit” or “you can make money”. That’s not helpful — especially when the reality is very different.
What is Research Tribe?
Research Tribe claims to help users earn money by emailing opportunities for:
• Mystery shopping
• Product testing
• Paid surveys
• Focus groups
According to its website, the company started as a mystery shopping provider over ten years ago and later expanded into other forms of market research.
That sounds fine on the surface. The problem is how it actually operates.
How Research Tribe really works
Once you sign up, you give Research Tribe your personal details. You might expect paid tasks to follow.
Instead, you receive emails linking you to other survey and mystery shopping websites. If you sign up to those sites, Research Tribe earns a referral commission.
That’s the entire model.
Research Tribe doesn’t run surveys. It doesn’t organise focus groups. It doesn’t offer product testing. It simply funnels users elsewhere and takes a cut.
This isn’t clearly explained on the website — and that’s the issue.
Is Research Tribe legit?
Technically, yes. Research Tribe is a real company and has been operating since around 2011. It’s not a scam in the sense that it steals money or personal data.
But it is misleading.
Because Research Tribe only promotes sites that pay referral fees, you’re not shown the best earning opportunities. One obvious example is Prolific — one of the highest-paying survey platforms available. It doesn’t run an affiliate programme, so Research Tribe never mentions it.
That tells you exactly where the priorities lie.
Research Tribe vs going direct
Here’s why using Research Tribe makes no sense:
• Research Tribe: £0 earned after 2+ months
• Direct survey sites: £6–£12 per hour when work is available
• Online focus groups: £30–£100+ for a single session
You don’t earn money from Research Tribe. You earn money despite it.
Can you make money with Research Tribe?
In theory, yes.
In practice, any money you make comes from the third-party sites they redirect you to — not Research Tribe itself. You could find those same sites with a five-minute Google search and skip the middleman entirely.
So the real question isn’t “can you make money?”
It’s “why would you bother?”
Which sites should you join instead?
If you want to make money online, go direct. I’ve personally tested and written guides on all of the following:
- Best paid survey sites
- Online focus groups and interviews for money
- The best mystery shopping companies
- How to become a product tester
These give you control, transparency, and a far better use of your time.
My Research Tribe review conclusion
Research Tribe isn’t focused on helping you earn money. It’s focused on earning referral commission.
After more than two months as a member, I received plenty of emails and earned absolutely nothing. No surveys. No mystery shops. No product tests. Just links to other websites I could have found myself.
If you want to make money from surveys or mystery shopping, skip Research Tribe and go straight to the source. It adds nothing, pays nothing, and wastes time you could spend actually earning.
