User test referrals

Let the people who know your users send them to your tests.

Add anyone as a referrer and Usero emails them a personal link to your paid user tests. They earn a bonus you set for each person they send, owed only once you pay that person. You pick who gets a link, the bonus and the cap.

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The slow part of a user test is finding the next five people. The person who gave you a sharp session last week probably knows them.

Recruiting on a small team usually means a post in a Slack community and a spreadsheet of who said yes. That works for round one. By round three you have asked everyone you know, and the people who reply are the ones who always reply. A paid panel fixes the numbers but sends strangers who have never used anything like your product. The people with real reach into your users are already close to them, like the organiser of the meetup your customers go to, or a past participant who works with ten people just like them. Asking them to send people is easy. The work is tracking who sent whom, whether that person finished, whether you paid them, and what you now owe the person who sent them. That part ends up in a spreadsheet nobody keeps current.

How it works

User test referrals in Usero.

Disclosure: I build Usero, so weigh that. Referrals sit on top of user testing. On a paid test you switch on Referrals and set a bonus (it suggests 25% of the reward, so $5 on a $20 test) and a cap per referrer, 5 by default. Then you add referrers by name and email. They do not need to have taken a test. Usero emails each one their link and a private page that shows who signed up and what they have earned. Someone who opens the link sees your open tests, picks one, passes the screener if it has one, and takes it like any other participant. Nothing is owed yet at that point. When you approve their session and mark it paid, the referrer’s bonus becomes ready to pay, or goes to review if a fraud check fired. You send the bonus yourself, the same way you pay a session reward, and click Pay bonus. Usero emails the referrer and keeps the ledger. It never moves money.

A referrer can be anyone you trust

Add a past participant, or a friend who runs a design meetup and has never seen your product. One person gets one link, and it leads into every test you have with referrals on, so the invite you send for this round still works for the next one. You can also add a participant straight from a session you just paid.

A bonus is owed only after you pay the person they sent

A sign-up earns nothing. A finished session earns nothing until you approve it and mark it paid. If you reject the session, the referral goes back to signed up and nobody is owed anything. Each referred person earns their referrer one bonus, however many of your tests they take.

Fraud checks run before you pay

Self-referrals and people who already took one of your tests are blocked outright. When you pay a referred person, Usero checks for a payout email that matches the referrer, the same device or network as the referrer, a throwaway inbox, and more than 10 sign-ups through one link in a day. Any hit moves the bonus to Needs review with the reason in words. The cap, 1 to 50 bonuses per referrer per test, bounds what a link posted somewhere public can cost you.

Run it from your editor

add_referrer, list_referrals, review_referral and release_referral_bonus are on the Usero MCP server. Ask Claude Code which bonuses need review and why, then pay the clean ones. The agent confirms each payment with you before it marks anything paid, because that emails the referrer.

The Referrals switch under a $20 reward, with a $5 referral bonus, a cap of 3 per referrer and the cost worked out as $25 per referred tester — Referrals live under the reward on each test. The box under the bonus does the sum before you save: $20 to the tester, $5 to whoever sent them.

The Referrals section on a test, with one referrer, one bonus ready to pay and one referred friend still taking the test — The Referrals section on a test’s Sessions tab, from our preview deploy with test data. One bonus is ready to pay. The other friend is still testing, so nothing is owed for them yet.

A referral landing page reading Dev thinks you would be good at this, with one $20 test and a Start this test button — What a referred person sees: the referrer’s first name, your open tests and what each one pays. The test then runs like any other.

A referrer’s private status page showing $5 paid and two friends with partly hidden emails and their status — The referrer’s private page. Friends’ emails are partly hidden, and each row says where things stand, down to the day the bonus was paid.

The limits

What referrals do not do

Worth knowing before you switch it on, so the first referral that goes sideways does not come as a surprise.

Usero does not pay anyone
Bonuses are a ledger, the same as session rewards. You send each one yourself, by gift card or transfer, and then mark it paid. If you need automated payouts to participants, a research platform with a payout rail is the better fit.
It cannot tell flatmates from fraud
Two people on the same home wifi trip the same-network check. One person with two phones on mobile data does not trip anything. The checks flag, you decide, and nothing is marked paid until you click.
Past participants cannot be referred back in
A referral is never created for someone who already took one of your tests. To bring a past tester back, send them the test link yourself, or add them as a referrer so they can send others.
It does not find referrers for you
You add each referrer by hand or through the MCP. Usero never invites people on its own, and a tester being paid does not make them a referrer.

The honest objection

Won’t people game a referral bonus?

Some will try. The cheap tricks are blocked before a referral exists: referring yourself (emails are compared after dropping +tags and Gmail dots), re-referring someone who already tested with you, and two referrers claiming the same person. The rest only matters at payment time, and nothing is paid until you click. The fraud checks put a suspicious bonus in front of you with the reason, the cap limits how many bonuses one link can earn on a test, and if a link ends up on a public forum you switch it off in the referrer list. Unpaid bonuses on it are cancelled and paid ones stay paid.

Built on Usero user testing

Referred people take the same unmoderated test as everyone else: screen and voice recorded, transcribed, findings filed into your feedback inbox, and a finding can become a GitHub pull request you review.

How user testing works

FAQ

Quick answers about user test referrals.

How much does a referral cost?

The test reward plus the bonus, for each referred person you pay. On a $20 test with a $5 bonus that is $25. With the default cap of 5, one referrer can earn at most $25 in bonuses on that test. Usero adds no fee per referral.

Who pays the referrer?

You do. Usero tells you the bonus is owed and where to send it, you send it off-platform, and you click Pay bonus to mark it paid. Usero then emails the referrer. The invite and the bonus email both say the money comes from you.

Does a referrer have to take the test?

No. A referrer is anyone you add by name and email. They get a link and a private status page, and never have to take a test themselves.

When does a referrer earn the bonus?

When you pay the person they referred. Signing up and finishing a session earn nothing on their own. A referred person earns their referrer one bonus, on the first of their sessions you pay, and only up to the cap you set for that test.

What does the referred person see?

A page with the referrer’s first name, your open tests with referrals on, and what each pays. They pick one, pass its screener if it has one, and take it like any other participant. The entry page shows who invited them. They are never told if a referral was refused, and their entry into the test is not affected by it.

Can an AI agent run referrals?

Yes. The Usero MCP server has add_referrer, list_referrers, set_referrer_disabled, list_referrals, review_referral and release_referral_bonus, and the test tools take a referral bonus and cap. Agents confirm with you before marking a bonus paid.

Turn that feedback into a pull request.

Free tier. No credit card. Two-minute install. The AI opens the PR, you merge it.

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