cicada.buzz

What It Is

Cicada.buzz is a conversational polling tool from Cicada Bot, LLC built around the idea of “Stories, Not Surveys.” Instead of merely counting yes/no votes or option percentages, it uses open-ended questions to collect participants’ stories, reasoning, and context, helping communities identify genuine areas of consensus. It is aimed at product teams, community organizations, civic groups, and others who need to turn scattered opinions into decision-making input.

Core Capabilities

Based on the available site content, Cicada focuses on open-ended AI Polls and consensus synthesis. The page explicitly says it can capture the “why” behind every vote and supports AI summarization. Pro and above also include polling dashboards, Actions, and poll types such as Unique, Recurring, Live, and Geospatial; Enterprise supports merged polls, custom polls, and custom reports. However, the website does not disclose the specific AI models used, summarization methods, accuracy metrics, bias-control measures, or human review mechanisms, so the quality of its “consensus identification” still needs to be validated in real-world projects.

Pricing and Trial

The product offers four tiers: Free, Core, Pro, and Enterprise. The free plan lets users create public polls and use the Rolling Poll Type, making it suitable for trying out public community topics. Core starts at $9/month and adds private polls and Resolutions. Pro starts at $99/month and adds dashboards, multiple advanced poll types, and Actions. Enterprise starts at $999/month and is designed for organizations that need enterprise support, custom reports, and merged polls. The page does not specify quotas such as participant limits, number of polls, or AI summary usage.

Pros and Cons

Its strengths are a clear positioning and differentiation from traditional forms and multiple-choice surveys, making it better suited to scenarios where understanding reasons, context, and minority perspectives matters. The pricing tiers are straightforward, and the free plan makes it easy to get started. The downsides are that the public information is limited regarding the boundaries of its AI capabilities, data privacy details, API integrations, export options, Chinese-language support, and payment methods. Although the site links to a privacy policy and Responsible AI policy, the main content does not provide details on compliance, data retention, or whether user data is used for training.

Who It’s For and Access from China

Cicada is suitable for product feedback, community governance, local public-issue discussions, nonprofit deliberation, and internal enterprise opinion collection. If you only need a standard questionnaire, Google Forms, Typeform, or SurveyMonkey may be simpler; if real-time interaction is the priority, Slido and Mentimeter are worth comparing; if public consensus is the focus, Polis may be a useful reference point. Access and payment availability from mainland China are not disclosed in the main content, so china_access can only be rated as unknown. Before enterprise procurement, teams should confirm network availability, credit card payment support, data compliance, and how well it handles Chinese-language content.