How much does Mercor pay? Rates from 304 live listings

The short answer

Mercor does not publish a platform-wide pay rate. Each listing states its own, and on 3 October 2026 this site carried 304 open Mercor listings, every one of them with a stated rate in US dollars. Across those listings:

• 276 listings pay by the hour and 28 pay per task. None of the 304 leaves pay blank.
• The typical hourly listing states $70 an hour, measured at the midpoint of each listing's range (a $60–$80 listing counts as $70).
• Half of the hourly listings sit between $50 and about $91 at their midpoints.
• The lowest fixed rate is $12.68 an hour and the highest top of a range is $400 an hour. One listing states $0–$60, which is covered below.
• Medicine pays most (a median of $123.25), and audio, voice and language work pays least (medians of $41.50 to $50).

These are rates stated in ads, not earnings. Mercor does not say how many hours any project will give you, so a $100 listing with two hours of work a week pays less than a $40 listing with twenty.

How hourly rates spread

Banded by each listing's midpoint, the 276 hourly listings fall like this:

Most listings fall in the middle band, which holds the finance, law, engineering, software and PhD science listings sit, usually at ranges such as $70–$90, $80–$110 or $100–$120. The bottom band is almost entirely language and audio work, and nearly all of it is tagged Junior.

Pay by field

Mercor's listings do not carry a single field label, so we grouped them by the title of each listing, using the first keyword that matched in a fixed order (audio first, then software-use recordings, languages, medicine, law, software, finance, science and engineering, design, and a final generalist group). The full keyword rules and every listing's group are in the audit file behind this page. Medians and the middle half use each listing's midpoint; the lowest and highest columns are the lowest stated minimum and highest stated maximum in the group.

Notes on the table:

• Medicine is pulled up by imaging specialists and physicians. The pharmacy technician listing at $35 an hour is its floor; the nursing listings state $55–$65 and the medical coder listing $45–$65.
• Science and engineering has the narrowest spread. The physics PhD listings all state $80–$110, and the 24 per-task listings in this group are a single family of chemical, nuclear and safety red-teaming roles at $65–$75 per task, such as Chemicals Safety for Redteaming and Nuclear Security Engineer.
• Software runs from $25–$30 for a full-stack role limited to India up to $150–$210 for the Expert Senior SWE listing.
• Software-use recordings are Mercor's "Application Users" listings, where you work inside a named program (Excel, Blender, MATLAB, SolidWorks and others). They pay $30–$40 for creative tools, $45–$55 for STEM tools, $55–$65 for coding tools and $60–$70 for office and operating-system work.
• Generalist and other includes the $0–$60 listing (Google Workspace and Business Profile owners), which is why its lowest figure is zero. We report the range as the ad states it; its midpoint of $30 is included in the medians.

The highest-paying Mercor listings

Ranked by midpoint, these are the ten highest hourly rates on the site:

Most of the top ten are open worldwide, so a high rate does not by itself mean a US-only role. All ten are tagged Senior, most asking for a credential or a professional seat: a licensed physician, a practising analyst, a political-risk specialist.

Per-task listings are left out of this ranking because a task has no fixed length. The widest per-task range is the Agent Engineer listing at $100–$500 per task.

The lowest-paying Mercor listings

At the other end, the lowest hourly rate is $12.68, stated by five PDF annotation and transcription listings for Indian languages, such as PDF Annotation & Transcription Experts: Malayalam. All five are open only in India. The Korean listing in the same family states $33.58.

Next come a Punjabi music and lyrics listing at $15 and seven audiobook QA listings at $15–$20, such as Audiobook QA Expert: German. The lowest per-task rate is $12.60 per task, for a bilingual Thai generalist role that requires a MacBook.

What language roles pay

89 Mercor listings require a language other than English. The 88 of them paid by the hour have a median midpoint of $41.50, against $80 for the other 188 hourly listings. Much of the gap is the language itself: Mercor runs the same job in many languages at different rates:

• AI Safety Experts: English and another language (18 listings): $16–$22 for Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Urdu and other South Asian languages; $17–$25 for Indonesian, Vietnamese and Malay; $24–$35 for Thai; $29–$45 for Portuguese; $48–$62 for Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish.
• Bilingual STEM Expert (PhD): AI Safety (12 listings): from $23–$27 for Hindi to $77–$81 for Norwegian. Most European and East Asian languages sit at $48–$72.
• Bilingual Generalist Expert: AI Safety (11 hourly listings): from $18–$22 for Thai to $58–$62 for Norwegian, with most at $48–$52.
• Sonic Audit Specialist (9 listings): from $18 for Hindi to $41.50 for French and German.
• ChatGPT User listings for Japanese, Indonesian, Korean and Mexican Spanish all state $50 an hour (for example Japanese ChatGPT User).
• Voice Actor: CX Agent Voice Cloning listings mostly state $50–$100, and all but one are limited to the country of the accent.

If your language is one of the higher-paid ones, the bilingual STEM and generalist listings are where it shows. For how this compares with other platforms, see our guide to bilingual AI training jobs.

Country restrictions

197 of the 304 listings are open worldwide. 71 are open only in the United States, 25 more are limited to one other country (India, the UK, Mexico, Belgium and others), and 11 list several countries.

US-only hourly listings have a higher median ($80) than worldwide ones ($60), but that reflects the kind of role: the US-only set is mostly law, finance and medicine, while the worldwide set includes almost all the language and audio work. It is not evidence that Mercor pays US residents more for the same job.

"Worldwide" on a listing is the listing's own scope. Mercor separately publishes lists of countries where it can and cannot onboard anyone, so check the Mercor company page and Mercor's own list before applying.

Seniority and contract type

By the level each listing states, Senior hourly listings have a median of $95 (104 listings), Medium $60 (90), Entry $55 (34) and Junior $22 (48). Junior sits below Entry because most of the $15–$25 language and audio listings are tagged Junior, while Mercor's $50 ChatGPT-user listings are tagged Entry. 34 of the 48 Junior listings are language or audio roles.

247 of the 304 listings are contract work. 37 are part-time and 20 full-time, and at least one part-time listing is W-2 employment through a third party rather than contracting, so read the employment line on each listing.

How Mercor pays

According to Mercor's talent documentation (its payments and earnings policies, as summarised on our Mercor page):

• Payouts run weekly, every Wednesday.
• Money goes out through Stripe or Wise.
• Your first payout is held longer than later ones while the payment provider completes its checks.
• Pay is for services rendered rather than hours booked, so the hourly rate applies to work you log and deliver, not to time you are available.
• Most work is independent contracting, with no benefits, no paid leave and your own tax to handle.

For how per-task, hourly and output-based pay play out in practice, see how you actually get paid.

What Mercor does not publish

• A platform-wide rate. There is no Mercor pay scale; every figure on this page comes from an individual listing.
• Hours or task supply. No listing guarantees weekly hours, and Mercor publishes nothing on how much work a project will have. Workers on Trustpilot describe gaps between assignments.
• How many people each listing takes, so a busy $18 listing and a rare $270 one count the same here.
• Whether a rate can change during a project. Contractors quoted in 2025 press coverage objected to replacement work offered at a lower rate.
• Why an applicant was rejected. Screening runs through a recorded AI interview; our guide to the Mercor AI interview covers what it checks.

How we worked this out

We took every published Mercor listing on Labeling Jobs on 3 October 2026 (304, cross-checked against our database) and read the pay line exactly as each listing states it. Two expired Mercor listings are excluded. All rates are in US dollars, so no currency conversion was needed. A single figure counts as both minimum and maximum. Hourly statistics use the midpoint of each range and exclude the 28 per-task listings, which have no fixed length. Field groups come from title keywords, as described above, and each listing is counted in one group only.

These numbers describe listings, not people or earnings. For the same analysis across every platform on the site, see how much AI training jobs pay.

Sources

• The 304 open Mercor listings on Labeling Jobs, as of 3 October 2026, each linked from our Mercor page
• Mercor talent documentation (talent.docs.mercor.com): payments, earnings and supported-countries policies, as summarised on our Mercor page, last checked 6 September 2026
• Worker reports on Trustpilot and 2025 press coverage, as attributed on our Mercor page

Labeling Jobs does not give financial or tax advice.

Data from 304 Mercor listings published on Labeling Jobs, as of 3 October 2026. We are not affiliated with Mercor as an employer and we do not process applications.