A project is one audience and everything you learn about them. It’s the container for your research and the unit your plan counts. This article covers what goes in one, how the project page changes as the work progresses, and how to close a project down when it’s finished.
A project holds exactly one audience. Everything built on that audience lives inside it: the groups, the synthetic participants, the research plans, every run, and every report.
The two are created together on one screen. You name the project and describe the audience in the same setup, so a project never exists without an audience and there’s no separate step for creating one.
That makes the split easy to reason about. Same people, different questions is one project with several interview runs. Different people is a new project, because a different audience needs its own research from the ground up.
The project page isn’t one fixed screen. It shows you the stage you’re at.
Your plan includes a number of active projects. Archived ones don’t count. When every slot is full, you can add another slot for an extra monthly charge, or free one by archiving a project you’ve finished with.
Prices and included counts are on the pricing page, and your own limits are in Settings under Billing. See Plans and billing for how the plans differ.
Setting up a project and its audience takes a few minutes, and the slot isn’t claimed until you press Generate audience and participants. So on a shared workspace it’s possible to start with a slot free and find it gone by the time you finish.
Candor stops you at that last step and says what happened, so you’re not left guessing why you’re being asked for a slot you thought you had. From there you can add one or archive a finished project.
One thing to know: adding a slot can send you to a payment page, and leaving the setup screen clears what you typed. If you’d rather not retype it, copy your answers somewhere first. Buying a slot without leaving the page keeps everything you entered.
Archiving does two things: it frees the project’s slot, and it makes the project read-only. A yellow banner saying so appears on the project page and on every page under it: the participants, the audience, each participant’s profile, the research plans, the interview runs and the reports.
Nothing is deleted. The audience, the participants, and every past interview and report stay fully viewable, and exporting still works. What you can’t do is run new interviews or regenerate anything until you unarchive: the buttons that would start research (Start research, Create a research plan, Launch interviews, Interview 1:1, Refresh industry context) stay on screen but are greyed out.
This is the right move on a project whose question you already answered. Keeping a finished project active is paying to hold a slot you aren’t using.
Bringing a project back makes it active again, so it starts counting against your limit again. If you’re already at your limit, the Unarchive button is disabled and tells you why. Archive something else or add a slot first.
Worth knowing before you need it. The usual way people hit this is archiving several projects to get under a limit, then trying to reopen one.
Owners, admins, and editors can create, rename, and delete projects, and run research in them. Editing a project means renaming it: the name is the only thing a project carries, since industry and region belong to the audience. Viewers can read a project and its results without changing anything.
A second layer sits on top of that. Owners and admins see every project in the workspace automatically. Editors and viewers only see projects they’ve been added to as members. So a project missing from your list is about membership, and a button missing from a project you can see is about your role.
The four roles and their permissions are in Inviting your team and choosing roles.
One project holds one audience. Everything built on top of that audience, meaning the synthetic participants, the research plans, the runs, and the reports, lives inside it. So the question to ask is whether you're researching the same group of people. Testing three concepts with the same audience is one project and three interview runs. Researching small-business owners and then enterprise buyers is two projects, because those are different people and each needs its own audience research.
A project and its audience are created together on one screen: you name the project and describe the audience in the same setup, so a project never exists without an audience. Once you submit it, generation runs in the background for roughly 25 to 35 minutes and the project page shows a progress screen. When that finishes, the same page becomes the working hub for everything else.
It makes the project read-only and frees the project slot it was using. A yellow banner saying so appears on the project page and on every page under it. The audience, the synthetic participants, and every past interview and report stay fully viewable, and exporting still works. What you lose is the ability to run new interviews or regenerate anything until you unarchive: the buttons that would start research stay on screen but are greyed out. Nothing is deleted. Think of it as closing a finished project rather than throwing it away.
Only if you have a free slot. Unarchiving puts the project back to active, which means it starts counting against your plan's limit again. If you're already at your limit, Candor blocks the unarchive and tells you so, and you'll need to archive something else or add a slot first. This catches people out when they archive several projects and then try to bring one back, so it's worth knowing before you need it.
New workspace owners see a two-step welcome dialog once, on their first visit to the dashboard. The first step explains that the first project is free and where to find pricing. The second asks three optional questions: your company name, your role, and how you heard about Candor. Answer what you like and press Get started, or press Skip to leave them blank. The answers help the Candor team understand who is using the product; they don't change anything in your workspace. If you'd rather have a hand setting up your first project, both that screen and the empty dashboard link to a short setup call with the team.
Editing a project means renaming it: the name is the only thing a project carries, since industry and region belong to the audience and are set during audience setup. Owners, admins, and editors can all create, rename, and delete projects, and run research in them. Viewers can read a project and its results but can't change anything. There's a second layer on top of that: owners and admins see every project in the workspace automatically, while editors and viewers only see the projects they've been added to as members. So if a project you expect isn't listed, that's membership. If a button you expect isn't there, that's your role.
Start with a free project, or walk through Candor with us first.