Mercor lists more open roles than any other platform this site tracks. It hires professionals as remote contractors for AI training projects, screens almost entirely through a short AI interview, and pays weekly.
This page walks through the process. For a verdict, pros and cons and whether Mercor is legit, read the Mercor review.
Every figure below comes from the roles this site checks each morning, or from Mercor’s own published policies.
The numbers
Mercor has 223 open roles carrying 139,655 stated openings.
Of those roles, 198 list an hourly rate, 25 pay per completed task, and 0 pay a fixed amount per session.
Among the hourly roles, the median advertised ceiling is $95 an hour. A quarter of them cap at $60 or below, a quarter at $130 or above, and the highest runs to $450.
For comparison, micro1 lists 253 open roles here with 19,306 stated openings. The micro1 and Mercor comparison sets the two side by side.
The work is broader than “technical”
Mercor has a reputation for engineering and PhD-level work, and it does post plenty of that. But the spread across the roles open now is wider than the reputation suggests.
The largest groups are generalists (15 roles), business and operations (18), accountants and finance experts (11), bilingual speakers (10) and lawyers (12). Engineers account for 35 and software engineers for 13, with doctors and clinicians at 19 and life scientists at 20.
If you have a professional background in a white-collar field, there is probably something here aimed at it. The qualification is usually knowing a subject well, not knowing how to code.
Screening is one AI interview
Mercor’s published process is: upload a resume, complete whatever assessments the role requires, verify your work authorisation, then sit an AI interview.
Mercor says that interview takes about 20 minutes for most people and is the only way it screens candidates. There is no option to request a human interviewer. You can retake an interview up to three times.
Mercor gives no general time to hear back. After you submit, a confirmation screen shows the expected timeline for that role, and the decision arrives by email. Mercor says it cannot give feedback on individual applications.
Some people receive offers for roles they never applied to. Mercor calls these instant work offers, and they follow from the same screening. Completing interviews and assessments builds a profile its matching system can mark as prequalified, so a hiring team can send you an offer without an application ever existing. Declining one does not count against you, and Mercor says so directly.
That sharing runs deeper than most applicants realise. Completed steps carry across every application on your account and never expire, and the three interview retakes are three in total rather than three per application. How a Mercor application is put together covers what that changes about how you apply.
Hourly, per task, and why the difference matters
Most Mercor roles pay hourly, which its own documentation describes as the standard format. The 25 task-based roles work differently, and the difference decides how much of your time actually pays.
On a task-based contract you are paid for accepted output, not for time spent. Your submission goes to a reviewer, and if it comes back with corrections, the rework is unpaid. Contractors have raised a structural complaint about this: reviewers are typically paid hourly while the person doing the task is not, so the cost of another review round falls entirely on the task worker. Some also report that a resubmission can reach a different reviewer who flags a different set of issues.
We have not worked on these projects and cannot verify how common that is. But the asymmetry is real on its face. Weigh a task-based offer against an hourly one at a similar headline rate before you accept it. An hour spent reworking a task pays nothing; an hour on an hourly contract pays the rate.
Getting paid
Mercor pays weekly, processed on Wednesdays through Stripe. Where Stripe is unavailable, it uses Wise.
Weekly payment is faster than most of this market, and a real advantage over platforms running fortnightly or monthly cycles.
Where you need to be
Mercor sets eligible countries per role, and it can only onboard and pay experts in the countries on its supported list.
Mercor is the only platform this site tracks that publishes a default that narrow. AfterQuery says it welcomes experts worldwide, and micro1 and Terac set eligibility per role without naming a fallback. So read the role’s own eligibility line before assuming you qualify.
The part people underestimate
Being accepted is not the same as having steady work, and the gap between the two is where most frustration with Mercor comes from. Applications sit in review. Projects end without much warning. Contract hour caps can be lower than you expect, so an accepted offer does not always mean a full week.
None of that is unique to Mercor, and it is covered in more detail in whether AI training can be a full-time income. The short version: treat a first Mercor contract as the thing that unlocks later work, because performing well on one project is what causes more to be routed to you.
One thing does help here, and Mercor permits it: you can hold more than one hourly contract at a time, as long as each project lead knows your availability. Each contract sets its own weekly maximum.
Reading further
Mercor publishes a lot about how it runs projects. These pages pull out the parts that decide whether you get paid and whether you stay on a project.
- How a Mercor application is put together: synced steps, three shared retakes, and instant offers
- From accepted offer to first task: tax forms, background checks, and the waits that are not yours to fix
- The Mercor pay week: why the cutoff runs on Indian time, and what delays a payout
- Which hours get paid: the three reasons time is ever removed, and how to dispute it
- Pauses, endings and getting back on: what each kind of ending says about you
Who Mercor suits
It is a reasonable fit if you have a professional credential or a specific domain background, can wait for a decision without a stated timeline, and want a platform that pays weekly once you are working.
It is a poorer fit if you need work immediately, if you live outside the countries it can pay, or if you are looking for the high-volume generalist annotation work that micro1 carries more of.
Browse the Mercor roles open now, or read the micro1 and Mercor comparison if you are deciding between the two.