Last updated: September 2, 2026
A plain-language summary so you can understand the deal quickly. It is a summary only and is not part of the contract — the numbered sections below are. Where the two differ, the numbered sections govern.
1.1 Piper ("Piper", "we", "us") is a research panel. Businesses ("customers") bring us questions. You answer the ones that match your profile, and you earn money for answers that are accepted.
1.2 These terms govern your panelist account and your participation in surveys. By creating an account you agree to them and to our Privacy Policy.
1.3 Our role. We operate the panel and route surveys. We do not write our customers’ surveys, and we are not responsible for their content or for a customer’s conduct. Where a survey is run by a customer, your participation in it is between you and that customer, and these terms govern only your relationship with us.
1.4 Who you are contracting with. Piper is operated by a company incorporated in the United States, and that company is the other party to these terms. Email [email protected] and we will tell you its legal name and registered address.
2.1 To have a Piper account you must be at least 18 years old, live in the United States, and be able to enter a binding contract. We may open other countries over time.
2.2 One account per person. Not one per email address, per device, or per household — one per person.
2.3 Your account is personal to you. You may not sell, rent, lend, share, or transfer it, and you may not use anyone else’s.
2.4 If we close your account under section 9, you may not open another one, and we may close any account we determine you have opened in breach of this term.
3.1 You sign in through our authentication provider using Google, Apple, or an email and password. You are responsible for keeping your sign-in method secure and for all activity under your account.
3.2 Tell us at [email protected] as soon as you believe someone else has accessed your account.
3.3 You must keep your profile information accurate and current. Inaccurate profile information is a breach of section 7.
4.1 We match surveys to you using the profile information you have shared. When one matches, you can claim it.
4.2 Claiming reserves a spot for you for a limited window shown in the app. If you don’t finish within that window, the spot is released and you don’t earn the reward.
4.3 We don’t guarantee you any surveys. Not a minimum number, not a minimum amount, not a particular frequency, and not any level of earnings. Surveys depend on what customers are asking and who they need to hear from.
4.4 Surveys can fill up or close early.
4.5 Some surveys begin with screening questions. If your answers mean you are not the person that study needs, the survey ends there. Screening questions do not earn a reward.
4.6 We may change the panel. We may add, change, limit, suspend, or discontinue any part of the panel, any survey type, any reward level, or your ability to participate in any of them, at any time. If we discontinue the panel entirely we will give you notice and a window to redeem your available balance.
5.1 Each survey shows its reward before you start. That is what you earn if your answer is accepted.
5.2 The customer decides. For most surveys, the customer who commissioned the survey — and not Piper — decides whether your answer is accepted or rejected. An answer may be rejected if it misses an attention check, does not respond to the question asked, is duplicated, appears to be machine-generated, or does not meet requirements the customer set out in the survey.
5.3 We may also reject an answer ourselves where it breaches section 7 or where our quality or fraud systems identify it as inauthentic.
5.4 Approval. A reward is credited to your available balance when you submit your answer, and may be reversed if the answer is rejected within twenty-one (21) days of submission. After twenty-one days the reward is final and cannot be reversed except under section 9.4.
5.5 A rejected answer earns no reward. Where a dispute arises between you and a customer about a rejection, we may choose to look into it, but we are not obliged to and we do not act as arbiter between you and a customer. Rejection decisions are final.
5.6 Your status. Rewards are a thank-you for taking part in research. You choose which surveys to take and when. Nothing here obligates you to take any survey, or us to offer you one, and there is no minimum or maximum amount of participation expected of you. Participating in Piper does not make you an employee, contractor, agent, partner, or joint venturer of Piper or of any customer, and rewards are not wages, salary, or compensation for services. You may not represent yourself as any of those things.
6.1 You can redeem your available balance through our payout partner once it reaches the minimum shown on your earnings page. Per-payout and daily limits are shown in the app.
6.2 Verification. We may require you to verify your identity, your contact details, or your payout details before or after any payout. Verification may include confirming a phone number or providing government-issued identification to us or to a verification provider. We may withhold, restrict, or decline a payout, and restrict or suspend your account, until verification is completed to our satisfaction.
6.3 We do not currently charge a fee to pay you. If that changes we will tell you at least 30 days beforehand.
6.4 Your available balance does not expire — not on a timer, and not for inactivity.
6.5 If your account is inactive for twelve (12) months and holds a balance, we will email you. If we do not hear from you, we may close the account and send your balance to you through your linked payout method, or, where we cannot reach you, remit it to your state’s unclaimed property administrator as the law requires. We do not retain it.
6.6 Taxes. You are responsible for all taxes on rewards you receive. If your earnings in a calendar year reach a threshold at which we are required to report them, we will require the tax information we need — usually a Form W-9 — and we may withhold further payouts, apply backup withholding at the applicable rate, or suspend your account, until you provide it. We may issue you a Form 1099.
7.1 The panel only works if answers come from real people being themselves. Customers pay for that.
7.2 You agree not to:
7.3 Prohibited information. Do not submit financial account numbers, payment card numbers, government identification numbers, passwords or credentials, biometric identifiers, or health or genetic information in a survey answer — even if a survey appears to ask for them. No legitimate survey on Piper requires any of these. If a survey appears to request them, stop and report it to [email protected]. Information submitted in breach of this term is unauthorised use of the panel, and we have no responsibility or liability in connection with it.
7.4 We determine whether these terms have been breached, in our reasonable discretion, using the information available to us — which includes signals from our fraud and quality systems that we do not disclose.
8.1 You own your answers. By submitting one, you grant us and the customer who asked the question a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable licence to store, reproduce, analyse, adapt, and display it — for research, for building and improving products, and for that customer’s own internal business use, including quoting it in their own materials.
8.2 That licence has limits:
8.3 Answers reach customers with demographic context: a standard set reported on every survey — an age range, gender, racial or ethnic identity, education, and household income, where you have answered them — together with any additional demographics that customer purchased for their report, and the traits their survey screened on. They never reach a customer with your name, email address, or contact details, and you appear to a customer as a panelist identifier. Our Privacy Policy sets out what is shared, and with whom, in full.
8.4 Because answers travel this way, do not put personal information in the text of an answer that you would not want a stranger to read.
8.5 Customers as beneficiaries. Customers are third-party beneficiaries of sections 7 and 8 and may enforce them directly against you. Your obligations of confidentiality in respect of a survey’s content run to the customer as well as to us.
8.6 Any feedback you give us about the panel itself is non-confidential, and we may use it without restriction or compensation.
9.1 We may suspend, restrict, or close your account at any time if we determine that you have breached these terms, if we reasonably suspect fraud or other misuse, if verification under 6.2 is not completed, or if we are required to by law.
9.2 Investigation holds. While we investigate, we may restrict or suspend payouts, redemptions, survey access, or your account, in the amount and for the period we reasonably consider necessary. We are not required to explain the basis of an investigation while it is open, and we may withhold detail where disclosing it would compromise our fraud detection.
9.3 Forfeiture. If we close or suspend your account because of fraud, or a breach of section 7, we may withhold and cancel the balance of rewards in your account, including rewards credited but not yet redeemed. Where we close your account for any other reason, or where you close it yourself, your available balance remains payable to you under section 6.
9.4 Clawback and offset. Where you have received rewards you were not entitled to — including rewards obtained through fraud, multiple accounts, inaccurate profile information, or any breach of section 7 — we may recover them. We may reverse or cancel the credit, offset the amount against your existing or future balance, reverse a payout instrument to the extent the issuer permits, or recover the amount from you directly. This right survives the closure of your account.
9.5 We may report a breach, and information about you and your activity, to a customer, to a payment or verification provider, to a taxing authority, or to law enforcement, where we reasonably consider it appropriate.
9.6 If you believe an account action was made in error you may contact us once at [email protected]. We will consider what you tell us. We are not obliged to review, to explain our decision, or to respond further, and our decision is final.
9.7 You may delete your account at any time from your settings. Redeem your available balance first — we hold a deleted account’s balance for 90 days and will release it on request within that window; after that we can no longer identify it as yours.
10.1 Piper is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all warranties, express, implied, or statutory. We do not warrant that the panel will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure, and we are not responsible for the conduct of customers or of other panelists.
10.2 Limit of liability. Our total aggregate liability to you for all claims arising out of or relating to these terms or the panel, on any theory, is limited to the greater of one hundred dollars ($100) or the total rewards paid to you in the twelve (12) months before the event giving rise to the claim. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits or lost data.
10.3 Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including liability for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by our negligence.
10.4 Your indemnity. You will indemnify and hold harmless Piper, the company that operates it, its affiliates, and its customers against any claim, loss, liability, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of your breach of these terms, your misuse of the panel, information you submit in breach of 7.3, your infringement of a third party’s rights, or any tax obligation arising from rewards you receive.
PLEASE READ THIS SECTION CAREFULLY. IT REQUIRES MOST DISPUTES TO BE RESOLVED BY INDIVIDUAL BINDING ARBITRATION, WAIVES YOUR RIGHT TO A JURY TRIAL, AND WAIVES YOUR RIGHT TO PARTICIPATE IN A CLASS OR REPRESENTATIVE ACTION. YOU MAY OPT OUT UNDER 11.7.
11.1 Scope. This section applies to any dispute or claim between you and us arising out of or relating to the panel, these terms, your account, your answers, privacy or data practices, rewards, crediting, balances, forfeiture, clawback, payouts, account closure, or any communications between us.
11.2 Informal resolution first, as a condition precedent. Before starting an arbitration or a small claims action, you must send a written Notice of Dispute to [email protected], stating your name, the email address on your account, a description of the dispute, and the relief you seek. We will do the same before bringing a claim against you. Neither of us may begin arbitration for sixty (60) days after the notice is sent. Completing this process is a condition precedent to arbitration, and a court may enforce it, including by enjoining a premature filing.
11.3 Arbitration. If the dispute is not resolved, it will be settled by binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, before a single arbitrator. Claims under ten thousand dollars ($10,000) will be decided on the documents without a hearing unless the arbitrator determines a hearing is necessary. Any in-person hearing will take place in the county where you reside. AAA’s rules govern the allocation of fees; neither party bears the other’s costs by reason of losing.
11.4 Delegation. The arbitrator, and not a court, decides all issues relating to the interpretation, scope, applicability, enforceability, and formation of this section, except as stated in 11.5.
11.5 Class waiver. Claims may be brought only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate claims or preside over a representative action. Whether this waiver is enforceable is for a court, not the arbitrator, to decide; if it is found unenforceable as to a claim, that claim proceeds in court and the rest of this section still applies to all other claims.
11.6 Coordinated filings. If twenty-five (25) or more similar claims are submitted against us by or with coordinated counsel, the parties will jointly ask AAA to appoint a process arbitrator to determine whether each claimant has satisfied 11.2 and has provided the account email address, the approximate dates of the conduct complained of, and the relief sought, before the claims proceed.
11.7 Your right to opt out. You may opt out of 11.3 to 11.6 by emailing [email protected] with the subject line "Arbitration Opt-Out" within thirty (30) days of first accepting these terms. Include your name and account email. Opting out does not affect any other part of these terms, and we will not close your account for opting out. If you opt out, 11.9 governs.
11.8 Carve-outs. Either party may bring a qualifying individual claim in small claims court, and either party may seek injunctive relief in court to protect intellectual property rights or to address unauthorised access to the panel.
11.9 Governing law and venue. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Any claim not subject to arbitration will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts of San Francisco County, California, and each party waives any right to a jury trial.
11.10 Time limit. Any claim must be brought within two (2) years after it arose, or it is permanently barred, to the extent the law permits.
12.1 We may update these terms as the panel evolves.
12.2 If a change materially affects your rights, your earnings, or how your answers are used, we will email you at least 30 days before it takes effect. Other changes take effect when posted.
12.3 In that period you may redeem your available balance and close your account if you do not accept the change. Continuing to use Piper after a material change takes effect means you accept it.
12.4 Changes do not apply retroactively to rewards already credited to your account.
12.5 We will give 30 days’ notice of any material change to section 11, and you may reject that change by written notice within that period, in which case the version of section 11 in force before the change continues to apply between us.
13.1 Change of ownership. If Piper is acquired or the panel is merged into another panel, your account and available balance transfer with it, and we will tell you before that happens. We may assign these terms in connection with such a transaction; you may not assign them.
13.2 Severability. If any provision is held unenforceable, it is modified to the minimum extent necessary or severed, and the rest remains in force — except as 11.5 provides for the class waiver.
13.3 No waiver. Our failure to enforce a term is not a waiver of it.
13.4 Entire agreement. These terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us about the panel, and supersede the summary above and any prior statements.
[email protected]. Dispute notices under 11.2 go to the same address.