xAI is the one large employer that hires under the title AI Tutor: 32 open roles on 3 October 2026, mostly language audio work at $35–45 an hour in the US, with specialist roles up to $100. This guide covers the roles and terms, the 2025 layoff of generalist tutors, and the same work at other platforms under other names.
Multimango is not a company you apply to. It is a web tool where contractors rate and annotate AI outputs, and its terms say you are engaged and paid by a separate administrator: in practice the vendor you already work through, such as Outlier, TELUS Digital, RWS, Mercor or CrowdGen. Here is what its terms say, how people get access, and what changed in 2026.
Outlier pays weekly on Tuesdays through PayPal, Airtm or ACH, at a rate set per project and shown before you start. Some projects pay hourly, some per task, with mission bonuses on top. Here is what its terms say can hold pay back, what it does not publish, and the bonus disputes and rate cuts contributors reported in 2026.
If DataAnnotation has gone quiet, rejected you or never replied, there are more than twenty other platforms paying for AI training work. They differ on entry gates, published pay, payout rails and where they accept people from. Here they are grouped by who they suit, with the four names that turn out to be the same company as a platform you already know.
DataAnnotation and Outlier are the two names people weigh most often when they start AI training work. They differ in who they accept, how you get in, how pay is shown and how you are paid. Here is a side-by-side from each platform's own pages, what contributors report about each, and which suits whom.
Outlier is a real platform operated by Scale AI through a subsidiary called Smart Ecosystem Inc., and it pays weekly through PayPal, Airtm or ACH. Its degree rule, unpaid onboarding and uneven task supply are what catch people out. Here is what Outlier publishes about itself, what happened at Scale AI in 2025, and what contributors say.
Mercor, Alignerr and DataAnnotation all verify identity through Persona, and Outlier asks for ID and a phone from your country of residence. What each check involves, why a VPN breaks it, how it differs from a background check, and where your data goes.
Outlier and Mercor both publish the conduct that gets accounts removed: VPNs, second accounts, AI-written work, padded hours and leaked task content. What their rules say, what workers report about suspensions, and the habits that keep an account in good standing.
Being accepted on Outlier, DataAnnotation, micro1 or Handshake AI and then seeing no tasks is common, and the platforms say so in their own help pages. The four causes they name, what workers report, and what you can change.
Getting accepted on AI training platforms is mostly automated matching, and the platforms publish what their matching reads. Five things that shorten the path on Mercor, micro1, Alignerr, Outlier and DataAnnotation, each taken from the platform's own help pages.
No AI training platform promises work after acceptance, so applying to several at once is the sensible default. How to shortlist, reuse one CV and one round of preparation, sequence the unpaid steps, and avoid the rules that catch people working several platforms.
AI training platforms pay through Stripe, Wise, PayPal and a few others, and each of those services has its own list of countries it serves. Which platform on this site pays through what, and where each payout service says it is unavailable or limited, from the services' own pages.
An AI training resume is read first by a parser and a fit check, then by a person, and later by a background check. What Mercor, Outlier and Alignerr say they do with your CV, and illustrative before-and-after bullets for three common backgrounds.
Most AI training assessments give you one attempt, forbid AI help and are graded against guidelines you were just handed. What Mercor, Outlier and DataAnnotation publish about their tests, and the habits that follow from it.
Five platforms come up again and again in remote AI training work in 2026, and each gates entry, publishes pay and pays out differently. Here is a side-by-side of what Mercor, micro1, Outlier, Alignerr and Handshake AI publish about entry, pay, payouts and eligibility, and which to apply to first depending on who you are.
The category is real: Scale AI, Labelbox and Handshake all run one, and micro1 publishes peer-reviewed research on its own interviewer. That is exactly why the imitations work. Here is what a genuine platform does, the things that feel wrong but are normal, and the signals that mean stop, drawn from what the five platforms on this board actually publish.
Every listing on this board advertises an hourly rate, and almost none of them pay by the hour. What you are really agreeing to is a per-task rate, a payout schedule, and a payment rail that has to reach your country. Here is what each platform publishes about all three, and the gap between the number in the ad and the number in your account.
Every platform runs the same five steps in a different order: profile, eligibility, assessment, onboarding, then a wait. Most people do them backwards and burn an evening on an unpaid AI interview for a project their country was never open to. Here is the sequence that fails fast and cheap, with what each of the five platforms actually asks for.
"AI training" covers three different jobs: labeling data, judging what a model produced, and doing your own professional work so a model can learn from it. They pay differently, screen differently, and want different people. Here is what separates them, and which one the listings on this board are actually offering.
Country eligibility is decided at two gates: whether the platform can engage you at all, and whether the specific project is open where you live. Of the five platforms we track, two publish a policy you can check in advance, and only one tells you, on the listing itself, which country a given project is open in. This guide sets out what each actually says.
Zara is the AI interviewer standing between you and almost every micro1 role, and it turns up at Alignerr too. micro1 has published a research paper describing how it works, including a free practice mode and a feedback report that only one rejected candidate in ten ever asks for.
Every listing shows its pay and who it is open to.