Polis Technology

What Polis Technology does

Polis Technology, legally operated by The Computational Democracy Project, is a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit headquartered in Seattle that has built and maintained an open-source civic deliberation platform since 2012. The platform enables governments, multilateral institutions, and civic organizations to collect and analyze viewpoints from thousands to millions of participants, revealing points of consensus and mapping areas of disagreement on complex policy issues without forcing binary positions. Customers include national governments in Taiwan, the UK, Finland, Singapore, and the Philippines, regional bodies (Finland's wellbeing services counties), local governments (Amsterdam, Bowling Green KY, multiple UK cities), citizens' assemblies (Austria's Klimarat on climate), and the United Nations Development Programme, which deployed Polis across Bhutan, East Timor, and Pakistan for 30,000 youth participants.

The product is delivered through two generations: Polis 1.0 (original 2012 platform using statistical algorithms for opinion grouping, with a largest deployment of 33,547 participants) and Polis 2.0 (a 2024 upgrade). Polis 2.0 is a cloud-native, distributed platform that scales to support millions of simultaneous participants and combines Dynamic Opinion Mapping, semantic topic clustering via the EVōC library from the Tutte Institute for Mathematics and Computing, AI-assisted moderation including toxicity detection, multi-lingual auto-translation, and automated narrative report generation drawing on multiple large language model providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini) with statistical grounding and citation-backed outputs. Supporting infrastructure includes Heroku for hosting and database, AWS for email and storage, Cloudflare for caching, and Jigsaw's Perspective API for content moderation. Participants engage via web at pol.is, voting agree/disagree/pass on short statements, with no reply function by design.

The business model combines public donations (via pol.is/donate), institutional grants for large-scale deployments, and a reserved option for fee-based access to certain features per the Terms of Use. The organization operates with 1-10 employees and no disclosed venture or institutional funding; the platform is distributed as open-source software with both self-service and facilitated deployment paths. GTM is community-led, relying on published case studies (compdemocracy.org), earned media in MIT Technology Review, Wired, The Economist, The New York Times, BBC, and PBS, and organic government-to-government adoption.

Name

Polis Technology

Legal name

The Computational Democracy Project

Website

https://pol.is

Company type

Private

Founded year

2012

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Polis Technology, operated by The Computational Democracy Project (a U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit), provides an open-source civic deliberation platform used by national, regional, and local governments worldwide to map public opinion and identify consensus on complex policy issues.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Civic Deliberation Software

SIC

Services-Computer Integrated Systems Design (7373)

akta.pro primary industry

Democracy, Voting Rights & Civic Participation Advocacy (BPAGAFAJ)

akta.pro secondary industries

Democracy, Human Rights & Governance Assistance (BPADABAG), Human Rights, Democracy & Rule of Law IGOs (BPADAAAG)

Keywords

• Civic deliberation platform
• Democratic participation software
• Opinion mapping technology
• Consensus building tools
• Citizen engagement software

Headquarters

HQ city

Seattle

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Donations and Charitable Contributions: As a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit (The Computational Democracy Project), Polis accepts donations from the public to support platform development and operations. A public donate page (pol.is/donate) indicates a direct public contribution mechanism.
2. Fee-Based Access (Conditional): The Terms of Use state that 'Access to the Service, or to certain features of the Service, may require you to pay fees.' Fees are quoted in U.S. Dollars, are non-refundable, and can be changed on a going-forward basis. This suggests a tiered model where core platform usage is free (open-source) but advanced features or enterprise deployments may carry fees.
3. Institutional Grants: The platform is described as being 'powered by support from people like you' indicating individual donations, while institutional backing (e.g., UNDP, government deployments) may involve grant or contract funding for large-scale deliberation exercises.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels3 records

Core offering

Polis is an open-source civic deliberation platform that collects and analyzes viewpoints from participants at scale to reveal consensus and map disagreement on complex policy issues. It groups participants using statistical opinion mapping, organizes discussions via semantic topic clustering (EVōC), and generates narrative reports with multiple LLMs. The platform is offered in two versions: Polis 1.0 (original 2012 release) and Polis 2.0 (2024 upgrade supporting millions of simultaneous participants with end-to-end automation).

Product overview

Polis is an open-source civic deliberation platform operated by The Computational Democracy Project. The platform consists of Polis 1.0 (original 2012 platform using statistical algorithms for opinion grouping) and Polis 2.0 (major 2024 upgrade featuring scalable cloud infrastructure supporting millions of participants, Dynamic Opinion Mapping, Semantic Topic Clustering via EVōC library, real-time LLM-generated summaries, end-to-end automation of moderation and reporting, and multi-lingual capabilities). Polis 2.0 modules include Invite Trees for participant management, Topic Clustering for semantic organization, Moderation Suite with AI-assisted toxicity detection, and automated Report Generation using multiple LLM providers. The platform is used by governments worldwide for democratic participation, legislation crafting, and citizen engagement.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Polis 2.0: An enhanced version of the original Polis 1.0 platform with massive participation capacity supporting millions of simultaneous participants, automated mapping of hundreds of thousands of individual viewpoints, real-time LLM-generated summaries, and indefinite conversation capabilities.

Products and services

• Polis 1.0 Open-source civic deliberation platform launched in 2012 that uses statistical algorithms to group participants by voting similarity and submitted statements, revealing consensus and mapping opinion across participants. Foundation version of the Polis platform, deployed by national, regional, and local governments worldwide.
• Polis 2.0 Enhanced version of the Polis platform combining massive participation capacity (millions of simultaneous participants), automated mapping of hundreds of thousands of viewpoints, real-time LLM-generated summaries, semantic topic clustering via the EVōC library, end-to-end automation of moderation and reporting, and multi-lingual capabilities. Built and maintained by The Computational Democracy Project for governments and organizations running civic deliberation at scale.

Quantifiable outcome

• 10+ million participants engaged across tens of thousands of conversations since 2012
• +3 more outcomes

Named customers9 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration6 records

AI capability9 records

Feature8 records

Partnerships

One partnership is on record.

• Tutte Institute for Mathematics and ComputingcoreTechnology or IntegrationPolis 2.0 is the first platform to use the Embedding Vector Oriented Clustering (EVōC) library from the Tutte Institute for Mathematics and Computing to automatically organize conversations into evolving topic hierarchies. This is a foundational technology partnership enabling Polis 2.0's semantic clustering capability.

Scale indicators7 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• Decidim: Open-source participatory democracy platform originally developed for the City of Barcelona. Directly comparable to Polis as a free, self-hostable civic deliberation platform used by municipalities and governments worldwide.
• CONSUL (Madrid): Open-source citizen participation platform forked and developed by Madrid's city government. Competes with Polis for municipal and regional deliberation deployments across Europe and Latin America.
• CitizenLab: Commercial SaaS civic engagement platform serving 300+ governments. Closest commercial analog to Polis, targeting the same municipal and regional buyer with a paid, managed product versus Polis's open-source model.
• LiquidFeedback: Open-source liquid democracy platform originally developed for Germany's Pirate Party. Comparable as a deliberation and proposal-voting tool aimed at party-internal and civic decision-making at scale.
• Loomio: Cooperative-owned deliberation and group decision-making platform. Comparable as a tool for structured group discussion, proposals, and consensus-building among civic organizations, cooperatives, and governments.
• Delib: UK- and Australia-based civic engagement platform used by central and local governments for consultations. Comparable as a direct competitor in the government deliberation and consultation market, particularly in Commonwealth countries.
• Ethelo: Group decision-making and deliberation platform for organizations and governments. Comparable to Polis in its focus on structured facilitation and consensus surfacing for multi-stakeholder decisions.
• Your Priorities: Open-source citizen engagement platform from the Citizens Foundation in Iceland. Comparable as an open-source alternative to Polis used by municipalities and civic groups for priority-setting and deliberation.

Broad incumbents

• Bang the Table (EngagementHQ): Established commercial civic engagement vendor serving hundreds of local governments with surveys, forums, and idea walls. Competes with Polis in the public-consultation buyer segment with a broader, less deliberation-specialized feature set.

Regional players

• vTaiwan / g0v (gov-zero) civic tech ecosystem: Taiwanese civic-tech ecosystem built around the vTaiwan deliberation process, historically a flagship Polis deployment. Comparable as an adjacent regional civic-tech community that both consumes Polis and develops complementary tools.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks7 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/usepolis

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Polis Technology