Platform review
Mercor
High published rates for credentialed professionals, reliable weekly pay, projects that end without notice.
Mercor places credentialed professionals into contract work training and evaluating AI models for labs and enterprises, and it is one of the few platforms in this category that prints a rate on every listing before you apply. If you hold a real credential in medicine, law, finance, software or a research field, the top of its board pays more than any general annotation platform, and contractors say repeatedly that the money lands every Wednesday in the amount expected. The trade is that “project-based” bites hard here: Business Insider reported that contractors on a canceled Meta project were offered a near-identical successor at $5 an hour less, and reviewers describe projects ending while they are still onboarding. You also accept a mandatory desktop tracker that screenshots you, a government-ID background check, and a company whose systems were breached in March 2026. This suits a working professional who wants high-rate contract work alongside other income, not someone who needs a predictable monthly paycheck.
Key facts about Mercor
- Pay
- $12.60/task to $200/hr, printed on every listing
- Application
- Interview / vetted
- Availability
- Global
- Specialties
Read this first
The things that change how you should read everything else on this page.
- The $112 an hour average contracted rate is a marketing figure on Mercor's own experts page with no methodology behind it. It sits well above the per-listing pay on Mercor's own board and far above the $16 to $21 rates in Business Insider's reporting on the Musen and Nova projects. Never treat it as an earnings expectation.
- The high rates circulating on Blind come from referral posts. Posts advertising software engineering contracts at $150 to $210 an hour and evaluator work at $50 to $100 an hour are recruitment promotions whose authors are paid a bounty for sign-ups, and the same author is the source of a claim of over $40,000 in three months. These are advertised rates with a financial incentive behind them, not verified earnings.
- A May 11, 2026 post on the Breaking Even blog reports two contractors on Mercor's Project L saying they were paid $100 an hour for onboarding reading, and that contractors who passed the assessment but got no work were still paid five hours. That is one blog interviewing two people, and the post explicitly argues against a critical narrative about the company. Useful as a counterweight, not as evidence of a pattern.
- The scope of the March 2026 breach is disputed by the two parties who talk about it. Mercor's June 25, 2026 post says only a very limited subset of its nearly five million experts had sensitive information affected, that it notified those people on June 25 and 26, and that it offered TransUnion identity protection. Plaintiff-side law firm pages soliciting claims describe a far larger scope including Social Security numbers, government IDs and interview video. Those firms have an obvious commercial interest, and no independent count has been published.
- Mercor publishes no acceptance rate and no figure for what share of applicants are ever matched to a paid project, despite publishing the number of experts on the platform. A Trustpilot reviewer reporting 200-plus applications against one offer suggests that ratio matters, but that is one account.
- Mercor's Trustpilot listing sits under mercor.io, not mercor.com. Anyone re-checking the count needs that URL.
- The board figures move. The open-role count, the top and bottom rates, and the Trustpilot review count all shift within weeks.
What the work is
Mercor matches professionals to contract work for AI labs and enterprises. You score model output against a rubric in your own field, and you write the worked examples that show how someone with your training reasons through a problem. Its board at work.mercor.com/explore runs to about 24 pages across medicine, law, finance, consulting and software, and every card prints a rate: on September 12, 2026 those went from $12.60 per task at the bottom to $200 an hour at the top. The board splits listings into Talent Network, Project-based and One-time, but nothing Mercor publishes explains what that distinction changes for the person doing the work.
Who they want
Mercor's experts page sets the floor at undergraduate-level expertise and says many projects want years of professional experience or an advanced degree in the relevant domain. It organizes its categories as business operations, creative, finance, healthcare, law, management consulting and software engineering, and prints example ranges by role: $110 to $150 an hour for law experts, $200 to $250 for cybersecurity research, $70 to $250 for machine learning engineers. The target is a professional treating this as contract work alongside a career, not a generalist looking for task volume. The first real gate is administrative: a text-based PDF resume of one to two pages, under 2 MB, and not a scan.
Step 1
Sign in and upload a resume
A text-based PDF, one to two pages, under 2 MB, and not a scan.
Step 2
Apply Now on a listing
Generates a checklist for that role: assessment forms and work authorization.
Step 3
One-way AI interview
About 20 minutes on camera and mic; up to three attempts across all applications.
Step 4
Wait for a decision
Mercor says two to four weeks, gives no rejection reason, and allows no withdrawal.
Step 5
Verification, then the tracker
Persona ID, a Zinc or Certn background check, then Insightful before hour one.
How you get in
You sign in, upload a resume, then browse listings and hit Apply Now, which generates a checklist for that specific role. The checklist usually contains assessment forms, work authorization, and a one-way AI interview that asks role-specific questions and scores you. Most interviews run about 20 minutes and need a working camera and microphone, with full-screen sharing for some roles; Chrome is recommended, Edge and Safari are supported, and Firefox and mobile browsers are not. You get up to three attempts at a given interview across every application that uses it, and Mercor does not publish how multiple attempts are scored or which one counts. Completed assessments carry over to compatible roles, so you are not re-interviewed for every application. Mercor says it usually takes two to four weeks to hear back, that it will not tell you why you were rejected because of application volume, and that you cannot withdraw an application once submitted. Matching also runs in the other direction: Instant Work Offers surface prequalified profiles to hiring teams, so an offer can arrive without an application at all. Once you are matched, onboarding adds identity verification through Persona and a background check run by Zinc or Certn covering legal name, date of birth, government ID, education and criminal records, and Mercor does not reimburse costs you incur obtaining requested documents. Before you can log an hour you install Insightful, a desktop time tracker that takes a few screenshots an hour. Since July 17, 2026 Mercor blocks sign-ins over VPNs, proxies and other anonymizing networks, with no individual exceptions granted.
How it pays
- $0 to $24 an hour: 16 listings.
- $25 to $49 an hour: 32 listings.
- $50 to $74 an hour: 100 listings.
- $75 to $99 an hour: 91 listings.
- $100 to $124 an hour: 97 listings.
- $125 to $149 an hour: 19 listings.
- $150 to $174 an hour: 15 listings.
- $175 to $199 an hour: 6 listings.
- $200 to $224 an hour: 3 listings.
- $225 to $249 an hour: 1 listing.
- $250 to $274 an hour: 1 listing.
Contracts are denominated in USD, and hourly contractors are paid weekly, released Wednesdays around 12:00 PM PST for a work week that runs Saturday 12:00 AM to Friday 11:59 PM IST. Payouts go through Stripe Connect where Stripe supports your country and Wise elsewhere, where you must accept the transfer by email before the money moves; standard Stripe payouts are free, instant payout costs 1 percent, and a first payout carries a mandatory seven-day Stripe hold. Hours come out of Insightful and are reconciled on Mercor's Spend page. Mercor's experts page claims an average contracted rate of $112 an hour, over $4 million in daily payouts, and a role range of $60 to $250 an hour; those are company marketing figures with no methodology attached, and they sit well above what the same company's own board prints on most listings. A weekly hour cap applies to every project, and Mercor confirms the cap exists without publishing the number, so you cannot work out your earnings ceiling before you start.
What workers say
The public record on Mercor
Mercor's Trustpilot score is bimodal rather than average: 73 percent five-star and 13 percent one-star, with almost nothing in between, which usually means two different experiences rather than one middling one. The pool also mixes two subjects. Some reviewers are rating the AI screening and onboarding they just went through and have never been paid a cent, while others are rating months of actual contract work, and the headline number averages the two together. The positive half is consistent and specific about weekly payment arriving on time; the negative half is equally specific about projects ending without notice, hours being removed, and applications disappearing into silence. What lifts the negatives above ordinary review-site noise is that the loudest one is corroborated by named reporting: Business Insider on the Musen-to-Nova rate cut, and TechCrunch on the breach.
Scores, and what each one measures
- Trustpilot (listed under mercor.io, not mercor.com) ↗4.3 out of 5 (73% five-star, 10% four-star, 3% three-star, 1% two-star, 13% one-star)
What it measures. A mixed pool rather than a rating of the job. Reviews dated August 16 to September 11, 2026 split between applicants rating the automated screening, AI interview, background check and onboarding, many of whom never reached paid work, and contractors rating actual project work on payment timeliness, project-manager quality and sudden project termination. The 73/13 split at the two extremes means the 4.3 headline describes almost nobody's experience.
Our read of it
Pros
- Payment reliability is the single most repeated positive across Trustpilot reviews, which return again and again to money arriving weekly, on time, and in the amount expected.
- Every listing on Mercor's own board prints a rate before you apply, which is rare in this category and lets you decide whether a role is worth the application time.
- The specialist ceiling is genuinely high: Mercor's board printed figures up to $200 an hour on September 12, 2026, against $12.60 per task at the low end of the same board.
- The pay mechanics are written down rather than left to discover. Payout day and time, the pay-week timezone, processor fees, the seven-day first-payout hold, the hour-removal review process and the one-week dispute window are all documented in Mercor's talent docs.
- Mercor's time-tracking policy states that low-quality output does not invalidate legitimate time already logged in Insightful, and that those hours remain payable; hours are excluded only for policy violations, spam, or non-project activity.
- Assessments carry across compatible roles, so the AI interview is not repeated per application, and Instant Work Offers can put a contract in front of you without an application. The structure is async and remote, which fits around existing professional work.
Cons
- Projects end abruptly and the replacement can pay less. Business Insider reported in November 2025 that Mercor contractors on a Meta project codenamed Musen, which had more than 5,000 people on it at peak according to two workers, were told it was ending and offered a similar new project called Nova at $16 an hour, $5 below the Musen rate. Mercor's answer was that its role descriptions and onboarding materials state the work is temporary and project-based.
- Logged hours can be removed and payment withheld. Mercor's own policies permit reductions or reversals of payment tied to work affected by conduct violations, including what it calls misuse of LLMs. Trustpilot reviewers between June and August 2026 describe hours being deleted after work was delivered, and one describes an accusation of AI use made without evidence being offered, followed by non-payment.
- The application pipeline is automated end to end and frequently silent. Mercor states two to four weeks to hear back, gives no rejection reason, and does not let you withdraw. Trustpilot reviewers in that same window describe rejections with no rationale given, one applicant reporting 200-plus applications and a single offer, onboarding loops running two weeks with documents requested repeatedly and no access granted, and no human contact anywhere in the process.
- Screenshot surveillance is mandatory and there is no way around it. Insightful is required for Mercor projects and captures periodic screenshots, a few per hour. Manual time entries are generally discouraged, need your project lead, and are not guaranteed to be approved even with documentation. Since July 2026 you also cannot sign in through a VPN or proxy.
- The March 2026 breach hit exactly the category of data this platform requires you to hand over. TechCrunch reported on April 9, 2026 that an attack on March 31 traced to a compromised version of the open-source tool LiteLLM, that a hacker group claimed 4 TB including candidate profiles, personal information, source code and API keys, that five contractors filed suit, and that Meta paused its contracts indefinitely while OpenAI investigated its exposure.
- You accumulate nothing. There is no seniority, no benefits, and no guarantee of future work: Mercor's offboarding docs say continued eligibility means only that your profile stays open to new listings and offers. Combined with an hour cap whose number is not published, you cannot plan income around this.
Who it fits, and who should skip it
Best for
- Credentialed professionals in medicine, law, finance or engineering with other income
- People who want to see the rate before spending time on an application
- Specialists who can work async around a full-time career
- Anyone who values being paid on a fixed weekly cadence
Who should skip it
Skip Mercor if you need income you can count on, because the thing reviewers and reporters agree on is that projects end without warning and the replacement can pay less. Skip it if screenshot monitoring is a dealbreaker, since Insightful is required and the VPN block closes the obvious workaround. And think carefully before handing over a government ID, education records and a criminal check to a company that had that category of data stolen in March 2026.
Provenance
Where all of this came from
Every source behind this review
What each one says, and how much weight it deserves.
Claimed $112/hr average contracted rate, $4M+ daily payouts, $60-$250/hr role range with per-role examples ($110-150 law, $200-250 cybersecurity research, $70-250 ML engineer). Minimum qualifications typically undergraduate-level expertise, many projects requiring years of experience or an advanced degree. Domain categories listed.
How to read it. The rate figures are company marketing with no methodology published, and sit above Mercor's own per-listing board pay.
Live listings with pay printed on each card, running from $12.60 per task to $200 an hour on September 12, 2026, across roughly 24 pages, filtered into Talent Network, Project-based and One-time.
How to read it. A live board. The extremes and the page count change week to week, and the board does not explain what the three listing categories change for the worker.
Interviews run approximately 20 minutes, need a camera, microphone and in some cases full-screen sharing. Chrome recommended, Edge and Safari supported, Firefox and mobile unsupported. Up to three attempts across all applications for that interview. Two to four weeks to hear back.
How to read it. The page states the retake limit but says nothing about how multiple attempts are scored.
Text-based PDF resume, one to two pages, under 2 MB, not a scan. Applications cannot be withdrawn once submitted. No rejection feedback given, attributed to application volume. Completed assessments are reused for compatible roles.
How to read it. Company documentation describing its own process.
Wages paid Wednesdays around 12:00 PM PST for a Saturday 12:00 AM to Friday 11:59 PM IST work week. Stripe Connect or Wise, Wise requiring email acceptance. Instant payout 1.0% fee, standard free, seven-day Stripe hold on the first payout. All contracts in USD with automatic conversion for contractors outside the US.
How to read it. The page defines the IST cutoff but does not flag what it means for workers in other timezones.
Insightful is required and captures periodic screenshots, a few per hour. A weekly hour cap exists. Flagged hours go through human review of screenshots and activity, with email notice before payout and a dispute window of the following pay period. Low-quality output does not invalidate legitimate logged time. Manual entries are generally discouraged and not guaranteed.
How to read it. The cap is confirmed but no number is published anywhere on the page.
Sign-ins through VPNs, proxies and anonymizing networks blocked effective July 17, 2026 at 23:59 UTC, no individual exceptions. Prohibits work that does not reflect genuine effort or reasoning, including misuse of LLMs. Consequences escalate from payment reductions or reversals to project removal to platform suspension.
How to read it. Company policy. It establishes that the payment-reversal mechanism reviewers describe exists, not how often it is used.
Background checks run by Zinc or Certn covering legal name, date of birth, government ID, education and criminal records. Costs incurred obtaining requested documents are not reimbursed.
How to read it. Does not state whether checks recur per project.
Mercor uses Persona, a third-party identity verification service. Required before you can be onboarded to a project and before referral payouts can be issued.
How to read it. Company documentation.
Contracts end on completion, scope alterations or budget constraints, and also for policy violations or performance issues. Normal endings do not affect standing; continued eligibility means your profile stays open to new listings and offers. Conduct violations may result in payment being withheld and removal from the project.
How to read it. Company documentation, and the framing of 'standing' is Mercor's own.
Mercor calls it a supply chain attack in which attackers published compromised versions of LiteLLM designed to exfiltrate credentials. Says it has nearly five million experts and that only a very limited subset had sensitive information affected, that it notified those people June 25 and 26, 2026, and that it offered TransUnion identity protection. Says no evidence the data was used fraudulently and no employee data affected.
How to read it. The company's own account of an incident it is being sued over. The scope figure is its characterization, not an audited count.
4.3 out of 5 from 676 reviews with a 73/10/3/1/13 star distribution. Recent reviews dated August 16 to September 11, 2026 split between people rating the application and onboarding process and people rating paid project work.
How to read it. Unverified open reviews, and the pool mixes applicants who were never paid with working contractors. A platform that pays on a fixed weekly cadence generates a lot of short satisfied reviews, and offboarded workers write when angry.
Reviews from June 28 to August 29, 2026. Most common themes are abrupt project cancellation without explanation, logged hours deleted or payment withheld after work was delivered, rejection with no rationale, onboarding loops running two weeks with no access granted, and no human contact. One reviewer describes an AI-use accusation made without proof followed by non-payment.
How to read it. Self-selected negative reviews. Useful for what complaints recur, not for how common they are.
Dated November 12, 2025, credited to Hugh Langley, Grace Kay and Shubhangi Goel of Business Insider. Reports that a Meta project codenamed Musen was ending, that more than 5,000 people worked on it at peak according to two people who worked on it, and that contractors were offered a similar new project named Nova at $16 an hour, $5 less than the Musen rate, with one contractor saying the tasks were the same.
How to read it. Reporting based on contractor accounts. Mercor disputes the characterization.
Dated November 14, 2025, by Sam Gillette, covering the Forbes and Business Insider reporting. Confirms the $21 to $16 hourly change affecting thousands of contractors and carries Mercor's response that its role descriptions and onboarding materials clearly state the work is temporary and project-based, with the company telling Forbes that contractor allegations were inaccurate.
How to read it. Secondary coverage. Does not name Musen or Nova and gives no contractor count beyond 'thousands.'
Breach dated March 31, 2026, traced to credential-harvesting malware present in the open-source tool LiteLLM for 40 minutes. A hacker group claimed 4 TB including candidate profiles, personally identifiable information, employer data, source code and API keys. Five contractors filed lawsuits. Meta paused its contracts indefinitely; OpenAI was investigating its exposure but had not paused. Mercor had raised $350M Series C at a $10B valuation six months earlier.
How to read it. The 4 TB figure is the attackers' claim, not a confirmed count.
Advertises software engineering contracts at $150 to $210 an hour, 10 to 20 hours a week, fully async, with the poster claiming over $40,000 in three months and describing the work as tedious.
How to read it. A referral post. The author earns a bounty for sign-ups and is also the source of the $40k claim. Treat as advertised rates, not verified earnings.
Advertises LLM output evaluator work at $50 to $100 an hour.
How to read it. A referral post opening with a recruitment pitch. Advertised rate only.
Mixed accounts. One poster reports multiple contracts and deposits that were never late; others report months of silence after interviews or never hearing back.
How to read it. Anonymous forum posts, unverifiable, and a self-selected sample of people motivated enough to post.
May 11, 2026. Two contractors describe being paid $100 an hour for onboarding reading on Project L, three paid assessment attempts, and five hours paid when weekend work did not materialize, with roughly 800 offboarded from a channel of 11,000-plus.
How to read it. A single blog interviewing two people, explicitly arguing against a critical narrative about the company. Carries no weight on its own.
Evidence scorecard
What we can back up about Mercor
20
0
Not one of them is work we've done ourselves. Read every line below as what somebody else states, discounted by its tier.
- Tier 1 · Verified first-hand0 accounts
We did it ourselves and can describe it, with a date. No dated first-hand account of Mercor's own process is on record here.
- Tier 2 · Platform-published11 statements
Stated on the platform's own site, board, or in writing to us. Read off Mercor's own pages, and cited to them.
- Tier 3 · Worker reports0 reports
Said by people who say they've done the work. We hold none for Mercor.
- Tier 4 · Unverified claim9 claims
Printed by a marketing or aggregator page with no sourcing behind it. We repeat these labeled so you can recognize them elsewhere, never as fact.
Listed pay
$80/hr median listed rateTier 2 · Platform-publishedThe median listing's own midpoint across the 381 of 405 open roles that publish an hourly figure, with the middle half between $60 and $100/hr. This is what Mercor advertises for a role, not what anyone has been shown to earn for working it.
Effective pay
Not knownNobody has published itWhat a person clears per hour of their life after unpaid application time, unpaid training, idle time between tasks and self-employment tax. Nobody publishes it for Mercor, and we can't tell you yet either.
Getting in
Interview / vettedTier 2 · Platform-publishedMercor's own material describes the step, and the review names the page it came from. What share of applicants clear it, Mercor does not publish.
Specialty labels
Our classificationOur inferenceMercor publishes no specialty for at least some of these roles, so the labels you see on this site are our inference from role titles rather than Mercor's own taxonomy.