Koji vs EUSurvey for Course Evaluation (2026)

The short version

EUSurvey is the European Commission''s own survey application, built and run by DG DIGIT and released free of charge as open-source software under the EUPL. For a course-evaluation team that needs a compliant, no-licence-fee questionnaire — and has the analyst time to read the results by hand — it is a genuinely strong option. Koji takes a different approach: it replaces the static Likert form with an AI-moderated interview that probes each student''s answers, then performs the thematic analysis and reporting for you, and tracks the actions your committees commit to afterwards.

Neither tool is "better" in the abstract. The right choice depends on whether your bottleneck is budget and hosting (EUSurvey''s strengths) or the quality, depth, and usability of the evidence you get back (Koji''s strengths). This guide compares them fairly on both.

What EUSurvey is

EUSurvey began as an ISA/ISA² interoperability tool for Europe-wide public consultations and surveys, and it is now widely used by EU institutions, public administrations, and universities. Key facts, verified against the Commission''s own documentation:

Cost: free of charge. There is no per-response or per-seat licence fee.
Licence and hosting: open source under the European Union Public Licence (EUPL), downloadable from the Commission''s Joinup platform. You can use the Commission-hosted instance or self-host the open-source version on your own infrastructure.
Question types: single- and multiple-choice, free-text fields, rating elements, matrices and editable tables, comparison questions, gallery elements, and dependent (conditional) questions.
Survey management: scheduled publishing, anonymous forms, saved draft contributions, invitations sent from within the app, and customisable look and feel.
Analysis: results display as histograms, percentages, or full detail, and export to Excel.
Languages: a multilingual interface across many EU languages.
Data lifecycle: to comply with data-protection rules, the Commission-hosted service automatically deletes surveys that have been inactive for 365 days.

In short, EUSurvey is a capable, standards-conscious form builder with solid quantitative reporting. What it is not is an analysis engine: there is no built-in AI, no automated qualitative or thematic coding of free-text comments, and no closing-the-loop workflow. Those tasks fall to your team.

What Koji is

Koji for Education is an AI-native course-evaluation platform. Rather than sending a fixed questionnaire, Koji runs a short, AI-moderated interview with each student. The AI asks a consistent core of questions — so results stay comparable across cohorts — but follows up on vague or interesting answers the way a skilled human interviewer would ("You said the labs felt rushed — which part specifically?"). It then:

performs automatic thematic analysis, clustering thousands of open comments into ranked themes with representative quotes;
applies bias-aware, standardised moderation so every student is probed to a comparable depth, reducing the interviewer and question-wording effects that distort free-text surveys;
supports formative, in-semester collection as well as end-of-module summative evaluation; and
provides closing-the-loop action tracking, so the commitments a programme team makes in response to feedback are recorded and revisited.

Koji is EU/GDPR-focused in its data handling and shares its AI interview engine with the main Koji platform used for customer and user research — the same conversational engine, tuned for the higher-education evaluation context.

Side-by-side comparison

Capability	EUSurvey	Koji
Cost model	Free (EUPL open source)	Commercial SaaS (paid)
Collection method	Static questionnaire (Likert + free text)	AI-moderated adaptive interview
Adaptive follow-up probing	No	Yes
Qualitative / thematic analysis	Manual (export to Excel)	Automatic, with representative quotes
Standardised, bias-aware moderation	Depends on question wording	Built-in consistent probing
Quantitative reporting	Histograms, percentages, Excel export	Dashboards + theme-level analytics
Formative (in-semester) feedback	Possible but run manually	Native
Closing-the-loop action tracking	No	Yes
Hosting	EC-hosted or self-hosted	EU-based SaaS
Languages	Multilingual UI	Multilingual interviews and analysis
AI features	None	Core to the product
Best fit	Zero-budget, form-first, self-hosting teams	Depth, scale, decision-ready evidence

As of publication, EUSurvey is documented as a free, open-source tool; Koji is a commercial platform with quotation-based pricing. Verify current details with each provider.

Where EUSurvey is the better choice

We build course-evaluation software, and we will still say plainly: for some institutions EUSurvey is the right answer.

You have no budget. EUSurvey is free. If procurement cannot fund an evaluation platform this cycle, a well-designed EUSurvey form is far better than nothing.
Data sovereignty is your single hardest constraint. Because EUSurvey is open source under the EUPL, you can self-host it entirely on institutional or national infrastructure, with no third-party processor at all. For institutions with absolute on-premise mandates, that can be decisive.
Your evaluation is genuinely simple and quantitative. If you only need a few Likert items and a comment box, and you have analyst capacity to read the comments, EUSurvey''s reporting is adequate.
You already run it for consultations. Many EU public bodies already operate EUSurvey; reusing it avoids a new vendor relationship.

If those describe you, EUSurvey is a sensible, honest choice — and you should not pay for more tool than you need.

Where Koji pulls ahead

The limitations that matter for course evaluation specifically are not about form-building; they are about what happens after the form closes.

Free-text comments are where the insight is — and where static surveys drown. A large module can generate thousands of open comments. EUSurvey will store and export them; it will not read them for you. Koji''s automatic thematic analysis turns that volume into ranked, evidence-backed themes in minutes — the difference between "we collected feedback" and "we know what to change."
Depth without losing comparability. A fixed questionnaire either asks shallow closed questions (comparable but thin) or open ones (rich but unstructured). Koji''s AI-moderated interview gets follow-up depth and keeps a standardised core, so you get both.
Response quality, not just response rate. Conversational, adaptive prompts tend to elicit more specific, actionable answers than a wall of Likert items — the vague "the course was fine" gets a follow-up.
Closing the loop is documented, not remembered. Quality-assurance and accreditation reviewers increasingly ask for evidence that feedback led to action. Koji records those actions; EUSurvey has no such workflow.

GDPR, hosting, and data residency

Both tools take European data protection seriously, in different ways. EUSurvey''s advantage is architectural: as EU-hosted or fully self-hostable open source, it can remove third-party processors from the equation, and the Commission-hosted service enforces data-minimisation rules such as auto-deleting dormant surveys. Koji is a commercial EU-based SaaS with GDPR-aligned processing, a data processing agreement, and role-based access — the trade-off any managed platform carries in exchange for doing the analytical heavy lifting for you. If your compliance model forbids external processors outright, EUSurvey''s self-host path wins; if you can work with a GDPR-compliant EU processor under an Article 28 DPA, Koji''s capabilities are available to you. Our GDPR-compliant course evaluation guide walks through the questions to ask any vendor.

How to decide

Ask two questions. First: is your binding constraint budget or hosting? If yes, and your needs are quantitative, EUSurvey is likely your tool. Second: is your binding constraint the quality and usability of the evidence — depth of qualitative insight, analyst time saved, and demonstrable closing-the-loop? If yes, an AI-native platform like Koji will repay its cost in staff hours and better decisions. Many institutions run EUSurvey for ad-hoc consultations and a dedicated platform for the high-stakes course-evaluation cycle; the two are not mutually exclusive.

Frequently asked questions

Is EUSurvey really free?

Yes. EUSurvey is provided free of charge by the European Commission and released as open-source software under the European Union Public Licence (EUPL). There are no per-response or per-seat fees, whether you use the Commission-hosted instance or deploy the open-source version yourself.

Can EUSurvey analyse open-ended student comments automatically?

No. EUSurvey stores free-text responses and exports them to Excel, but it does not perform automated qualitative or thematic analysis; coding and interpreting comments is a manual task. Koji performs automatic thematic analysis of open responses across a cohort.

Is EUSurvey GDPR compliant?

EUSurvey is designed with EU data-protection rules in mind — for example, the Commission-hosted service automatically deletes surveys inactive for 365 days — and because it is open source you can self-host it to keep all data on your own infrastructure. As with any tool, compliance also depends on how your institution configures and operates it.

Does Koji replace a survey, or is it a different thing?

Koji replaces the static questionnaire with an AI-moderated interview. Students still answer a consistent set of core questions, so results stay comparable, but the AI follows up on individual answers for depth — then analyses everything for you. It is a course-evaluation platform, not just a form builder.

When should we choose EUSurvey over Koji?

Choose EUSurvey when budget is zero, when you must self-host with no external processor, or when your evaluation is simple and quantitative and you have analyst time to read comments. Choose Koji when you need depth at scale, automated analysis, and documented closing-the-loop for quality assurance and accreditation.

Can we use both?

Yes. Some institutions keep EUSurvey for one-off consultations and use Koji for the formal course-evaluation cycle, where analysis and accreditation evidence matter most.