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Mercor is a marketplace, not an employer. AI labs bring it projects that need human judgement (reviewing model output, writing reference answers, evaluating reasoning inside a specific field), and Mercor matches those projects to people whose background fits. You apply once and Mercor puts you forward for the projects you fit; you do not browse and pick.
Mercor engages people as independent contractors rather than employees, which means no benefits, no paid leave, and your own tax to manage. Its talent documentation sets out the onboarding path in writing: interviews and assessments, identity and background checks, and country-specific guidance for people working in the United States on a student visa. Payment is for services rendered rather than hours booked, and the first payout is held longer than later ones while the payment provider completes its checks.
Mercor also runs an open referral programme. Its own policy states you do not need to be employed by Mercor to take part, and that a referrer earns a share of their referral's earnings up to a cap set by that person's first accepted offer.
Mercor is not open worldwide. It publishes separate lists of the countries where it can and cannot onboard experts, and both run to well over a hundred entries. The lists are too long and change too often to reproduce here, so check your own country against Mercor's talent documentation before you invest time in an application.
This is a platform-level restriction, and it sits on top of the per-project country limits described below.
Mercor is a real and heavily funded company. It was founded in 2023 by Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha and is based in San Francisco. On 27 October 2025 Mercor announced a $350 million Series C at a $10 billion valuation, led by Felicis with Benchmark, General Catalyst and Robinhood Ventures, which TechCrunch reported the same day. In July 2026 TechCrunch, citing Bloomberg, reported that Mercor was in talks to raise at a $20 billion valuation; we could not confirm that round had closed.
It publishes research as well as recruiting. Mercor's AI Productivity Index (APEX) is a set of benchmarks measuring how well AI models handle expert work in fields such as investment banking, law, consulting and medicine. The first APEX paper went on arXiv in September 2025, and Mercor has since added variants including APEX-Agents and APEX-SWE. Its talent documentation, which this page draws on, is also public.
Two legal matters are worth knowing before you hand over documents. In September 2025 Scale AI sued Mercor and a former Scale employee, Eugene Ling, in federal court in San Francisco, alleging Ling took more than 100 confidential documents while talking to Mercor. Mercor co-founder Surya Midha told TechCrunch that Mercor had "no interest in any of Scale's trade secrets" and had never accessed the documents. We could not find a reliable report of a ruling or settlement as of 25 September 2026. Separately, on 31 March 2026 Mercor told TechCrunch it was "one of thousands of companies" affected by a compromise of the open-source LiteLLM project, while declining to say whether contractor data had been taken; the extortion group Lapsus$ claimed to hold Mercor data. TechCrunch reported on 9 April 2026 that five contractors had sued and that Meta had paused its work with Mercor, and PYMNTS reported later that month at least seven class actions, which Mercor says it "strongly dispute[s]".
None of that makes Mercor a scam, and the screening opacity and gaps between projects are covered under Worth knowing below. For the general checks that separate a real platform from an imitation, see our guide to spotting fake AI training jobs.
Good:
Less good:
Facts above come from Mercor's own talent documentation at talent.docs.mercor.com (its payments, earnings, referral and supported-countries policies), last checked 6 September 2026. The "Is Mercor legit?" section draws instead on Mercor's own Series C announcement and APEX pages, the APEX paper on arXiv, and reporting by TechCrunch and PYMNTS, and those facts were last checked 25 September 2026.
Mercor publishes no platform-wide pay rate. Rates are set per project and stated in each listing, and they vary widely with the expertise a project needs, so the typical-pay fields on this page are empty rather than averaged across projects that have nothing in common. Every Mercor listing on this site carries the rate stated in that ad, and says so when no rate was stated.
The eligibility grid above reads "Applicants worldwide" because we hold no country list for Mercor, not because Mercor accepts everyone. The section near the top of this page is the accurate statement; treat Mercor's own list as the authority.
Worker reports are drawn from Trustpilot and from press coverage, and are attributed in the sentence that makes the claim rather than folded into the facts on this page. We are not affiliated with Mercor as an employer and we do not process applications; the sign-up link above is a referral link, which is disclosed on the page.
Labeling Jobs does not give financial or tax advice.
Write and review Lean 4 proofs for a leading AI lab, formalize informal mathematics and judge whether a model's proof actually proves the right statement. A W-2 part-time employment position through Cincinnatus LLC, at least 20 hours a week and up to 40, paying $90–110/hour.
A short, one-off evaluation task for mental health professionals: compare pairs of simulated clinical conversations and judge which is more realistic. The ad says it takes up to 30 minutes. Remote contract at $100/hour, for clinicians with a relevant degree and practical clinical experience.
US-based pharmacists and pharmacy technicians listen to short audio clips of spoken medication names and score whether each is pronounced accurately and clearly, using a rubric. Remote contract at $70/hour for an AI healthcare project, with a calibration exercise first.
Write research questions, answers and evaluation material that benchmark AI models for a leading lab, 10 to 20 hours a week. Open to postgrad students or people with 2 to 3 years of experience, but you must own an Apple Silicon MacBook to do the tasks.
Economists with a Master's or PhD and a year or more at a top research institution (World Bank, IMF, the Fed, a graduate school) work on a research project for a leading foundation-model AI lab. Remote contract at $120–150/hour, at least 10 hours a week for a minimum of four weeks.
High energy and nuclear theorists create, solve, review or audit research-level problems for CritPt, a public benchmark testing whether frontier AI models can do real physics research. Seven narrow areas, from AdS/BCFT to quasi-PDFs and dark photon searches. Remote hourly contract at $80–110 per hour.
Researchers who have published on stochastic autocatalytic growth create, solve, review or audit research-level problems for CritPt, a public AI physics benchmark. A single narrow area: chemical master equations, branching processes and reaction-network moments. Remote hourly contract at $80–110 per hour.
Mathematical physicists create, solve, review or audit research-level problems for CritPt, a public AI physics benchmark, where the standard of proof sits closer to mathematics than physics. Four narrow areas, from hypergeometric identities to Fefferman-Graham geometry. Remote hourly contract at $80–110 per hour.
AMO physicists create, solve, review or audit research-level problems for CritPt, a public benchmark testing whether frontier AI models can do real physics research. Seven narrow areas, including levitated optomechanics, cavity QED and ultracold atoms in optical lattices. Remote hourly contract at $80–110 per hour.
Condensed matter PhDs create, solve, review or audit research-level problems for CritPt, a public benchmark testing whether frontier AI models can do real physics research. Nineteen narrow research areas, from bosonization to SYK. Remote hourly contract at $80–110 per hour.
Hands-on structural, thermal, mechanical design and dynamics engineers review and write hard engineering problems about real hardware (loads, margins, heat transfer, vibration, tolerances) for an AI research initiative. 5+ years with 3 recent hands-on. Remote contract, $100–120/hour.
Hands-on systems, integration, reliability and manufacturing test engineers review and write hard engineering problems about real hardware (V&V, qualification, FMEA, root-cause analysis) for an AI research initiative. 5+ years with 3 recent hands-on. Remote contract, $100–120/hour, weekly via Stripe or Wise.
Embedded firmware, FPGA/RTL, flight software and hardware test automation engineers review and write hard problems about software that runs on real hardware (timing, race conditions, interfaces, bring-up) for an AI research initiative. 5+ years, 3 recent hands-on. Remote contract, $100–120/hour.
Hands-on RF, power electronics, analog/mixed-signal, PCB and signal integrity engineers review and write hard problems about real hardware designs, measurements and bring-up for an AI research initiative. 5+ years with 3 recent hands-on. Remote contract, $100–120/hour, weekly via Stripe or Wise.
Share your personal ChatGPT history with an AI research organization through Mercor, with possible paid follow-on project work. For native Spanish speakers based in Mexico with a heavily used personal account. $50/hour.
Build enterprise legal evaluation tasks for AI: realistic Fortune 500 scenarios, model-grade reference work and criterion-referenced rubrics. For in-house counsel or AmLaw 100 lawyers with an active bar admission, US-based, 20+ hours a week. $110–150/hour.
Residency-trained physicians in any specialty write grading criteria, evaluate multi-turn clinical dialogues and annotate clinical reasoning for AI systems. Shared pool with several workstreams. US only, 3+ years post-residency, 20 hours a week minimum, $150/hour.
Two to three paid one-hour video interviews with Mercor about how enterprise security work is done and judged, feeding a benchmark for AI cyber defense agents. $125–175/hour, US-based, no prep and nothing to label or submit.
Take recorded one-on-one Spanish lessons with experienced tutors so a language-learning platform can capture authentic learner conversations. For native English speakers with a degree and at least a year of Spanish study. About 7 hours a week for roughly three weeks, $30–37/hour, remote.
Build HR evaluation tasks for AI on a US employment-law track, an international (UK/EU) track, or both: scenarios, reference policies and investigation reports, and rubrics. For HR leaders and CHROs with 5+ years at large companies. Remote hourly contract at $70–80/hour.
Engineers with propulsion, initiation or effects test experience red-team frontier AI models: write benign, dual-use and adversarial prompts, judge the replies against a policy standard, and write reference answers with the reasoning. Remote contract at $65–75 per task.
Remote hourly contract for 3D artists who already use Blender on their own Windows PC. $30–40/hour, paid weekly via Stripe or Wise. Blender is free, so the only real barrier is fluency and a screen above 2.5 megapixels. The busiest listing in this family: 38 hires this month.
Healthcare back-office specialists (coding, prior authorization, denials and appeals, payer operations) design realistic operational scenarios, build the supporting records, and author and evaluate tasks that train AI agents. 2+ years and currently in role, 10 hours a week. $50–65/hour.
Umbrella listing for Mercor's nuclear red-team panel: fuel-cycle engineers, safeguards inspectors, nuclear security, forensics and nonproliferation specialists write prompts, judge frontier AI replies against a policy standard, and write reference answers. Remote contract at $65–75 per task; 21 hired this month.
Design pricing, reserving and valuation scenarios, write golden actuarial answers, and grade AI responses for method, math and assumption quality. Open to actuaries in any practice area with 2+ years; credentials are a bonus. $80/hour, remote, minimum 20 hours a week.
Red-team AI chat models and agents in Thai and English, then document every jailbreak, injection or biased answer as reproducible safety data. Native Thai required, plus prior adversarial or security experience. Remote hourly contract at $24–35/hour, paid weekly; 205 hired this month.
Practising US hospitalists and inpatient internists review H&Ps, progress notes and discharge summaries, and judge AI-written inpatient documentation against what a hospitalist would chart. Needs C1 or better in one of 25 listed languages. 2+ years post-residency, 10 hours a week, a flat $170/hour.
Native Thai speakers write prompts on sensitive subjects, classify conversations and flag adversarial phrasing to make AI models safer in Thai. Business English and a bachelor's (in progress is fine) required. Part-time remote at $18–22/hour; Southeast Asia preferred, not required.
Remote hourly contract for people who run Ubuntu 24.04 as their everyday desktop OS: Linux users, sysadmins, DevOps and open-source developers. $60–70/hour, paid weekly via Stripe or Wise. No licence cost, but you need a display above 2.5 megapixels. Tasks are not described.
Edit, clean and QA French voice recordings for text-to-speech and speech AI datasets: trimming, de-clicking, de-essing, noise reduction, loudness checks, plus native-ear judgment of French pronunciation. For speech-focused audio engineers who know iZotope RX or Pro Tools. Remote hourly contract at $50/hour.
Build and evaluate training data for a frontier lab's materials science models: DFT, AIMD, classical MD, surface and adsorption modeling, reaction energetics. For US-based computational PhDs fluent in VASP, Quantum ESPRESSO, CP2K, LAMMPS or ASE. Long-term, 10–40 hours a week, $84/hour.
Full-time W-2 role (via Cincinnatus LLC) for counsel and senior associates with 8 to 15 years' practice, embedded with a leading AI lab in the Bay Area to review legal model outputs, write golden solutions and build benchmarks. Hybrid, 6-month initial term, $85–120/hour. US bar admission required.
Write point-in-time forecasts on specific swing-state Senate, governor and statewide races, and grade AI political analyses against your own. For state pollsters, campaign analysts and political scientists with live-race experience. US or Canada residents, $150–250/hour.
Build AI evaluation tasks set inside Fortune 500 insurance: commercial underwriting, claims adjudication, reserving, reinsurance and NAIC compliance scenarios, with reference guidelines and rubrics. Needs 5+ years at a major carrier or reinsurer. $50–60/hour, remote contract.
The highest-paid generalist role in Mercor's bilingual AI safety series: native Norwegian speakers write sensitive-topic prompts, classify conversations and flag adversarial phrasing. Bachelor's (in progress is fine) and business English. Part-time remote at $58–62/hour; Norway preferred, not required.
Materials science PhDs author original, executable research problems for a scientific-computing AI benchmark, with depth in both semiconductor materials and molecular modeling. Tasks ship only when frontier models fail them more often than not. 6 weeks, 20+ hours a week, Git and Docker workflow. $70/hour, 212 hired this month.
The top tier of Mercor's embedded legal expert role: a full-time W-2 job (via Cincinnatus LLC) with a leading AI lab in the Bay Area, reviewing legal model outputs, writing golden solutions and building benchmarks. For partners and general counsel. Hybrid, 6-month initial term, $100–150/hour.
Ukrainian-speaking PhD chemists and biologists write specialised science prompts in Ukrainian and grade AI answers for accuracy and safe handling of dual-use topics. Part-time remote at $48–52/hour, $10 above the Ukrainian generalist role. Eastern Europe preferred, not required; 11 hires this month.
Germany-based native German speakers record one session of about four hours, which a Mercor client uses to clone the voice for its internal customer-experience AI agent. $50–100/hour in USD, no acting experience required. You are licensing your voice; the ad limits its use but leaves duration and withdrawal open.
Radiological emergency planners, field monitoring teams and consequence modellers red-team frontier AI models: write benign, dual-use and adversarial prompts, judge model replies against a policy standard, and write reference answers. Remote contract at $65–75 per task.
A hybrid, Bay Area-based W-2 role embedded with a leading AI lab: senior software engineers vet model outputs, write instruction specs and golden solutions, and build engineering benchmarks. 4+ years, senior-level progression and a CS or engineering degree. 40 hours a week for an initial 6 months, $65–105/hour.
Audit Brazilian Portuguese speech data for Amazon's Sonic project: check transcripts against audio with fixed error codes and pass/fail verdicts, and fix word-level timestamp alignment. Native Portuguese as spoken in Brazil is a hard requirement; rationales are written in English. Remote hourly contract at $25/hour.
Quality-check AI-narrated audiobooks in German (Germany): pinpoint mispronounced, missing or extra words, wrongly read numbers and abbreviations, unnatural prosody and audio artefacts, and judge the overall listen. For native German audiobook listeners. Remote hourly contract, about 20 hours a week, $15–20/hour.
Native Odiya (Oriya) speakers in India annotate the layout of real Odiya PDF pages and transcribe each text region exactly in Odiya script, handwriting included, to build training data for document AI. Remote hourly contract at $12.68/hour, with every task reviewed by a second Odiya expert.
Japanese-speaking PhD chemists and biologists write specialised science prompts in Japanese and grade AI answers for accuracy and dual-use safety. Part-time remote at $68–72/hour, second-highest in the series and $20 above the Japanese generalist role. East Asia preferred, not required.
Remote hourly contract for FPGA, digital design and embedded hardware engineers who already run Intel/Altera Quartus II on their own Windows PC. $55–65/hour, paid weekly via Stripe or Wise, $10 more than the sister Vivado listing. Needs a display above 2.5 megapixels.
Native or near-native English editors, proofreaders and linguists evaluate LLM-generated English, rewrite it to a high stylistic standard, annotate grammatical and stylistic features, and give feedback that guides model training at a leading AI lab. Remote, flexible hours, $50/hour.
A paid expert conversation for engineers who build and run LLM agents in production: a short AI screening interview (no coding), then, if selected, a 30-minute live call on agent reliability, evaluation and internal adoption, paid $100–500 depending on depth of experience.
See what the other platforms pay and who they accept.