Is Mercor Legit? What It Pays and What to Watch For

Yes, Mercor is a legitimate company. It’s a venture-backed San Francisco startup, valued at $10 billion in its last funding round, that pays experts by the hour to help train AI models for big AI labs, and it pays every week. The caveats are real, though: projects can end early, a time tracker takes screenshots while you work, Mercor had a data breach in 2026, and it faces lawsuits over that breach and over contractor status. Here’s what we found on its own pages, in court records and in news reports.

Mercor at a glance

Run by	Mercor.io Corporation, San Francisco, founded in 2023
What you do	Review and improve AI answers in your field, from medicine and law to coding and languages
Pay	It says its average contracted rate is $110 an hour; listings run from about $10 to $450 an hour
Paid	Weekly on Wednesdays, through Stripe or Wise, in US dollars
To join	A 20-minute AI interview, then ID and background checks after an offer
Cost to join	None. Mercor says it never asks workers for any payment or fee
Trustpilot	4.5 from 1,194 reviews (read October 18, 2026)

Who runs Mercor

Mercor was founded in 2023 by three Thiel Fellows: Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath and Surya Midha. Foody and Hiremath now sign as co-CEOs on its mission page. It’s based in San Francisco, with offices in New York and London.

Big investors back it. Mercor raised $100 million at a $2 billion valuation in February 2025, TechCrunch reported, and $350 million at a $10 billion valuation in October 2025, led by Felicis with Benchmark and General Catalyst, according to CNBC. TechCrunch reported in July 2026 that it was in early talks at a $20 billion valuation; we found no confirmation that the round closed.

How Mercor works

• Profile and AI interview: you create a profile and take an AI interview of about 20 minutes, which Mercor says is its only screening method. You get three retakes, and hiring managers can see how many you used. Mercor says your interview isn’t used to train AI.
• The work: reviewing AI answers in your area of expertise, on projects that “can be extended, shortened, or concluded early.”
• Who they want: at least undergraduate-level expertise. Many projects need years of professional experience or an advanced degree.
• After an offer: an ID check through a company called Persona, and a background check that takes one to two weeks.

What Mercor pays, and how you get paid

Pay depends on your expertise, the project and demand. Mercor’s site claims an average contracted rate of $110 an hour, and the listings we track run from about $10 an hour to $450 an hour for medical specialists.

• Payday: every Wednesday around noon Pacific time, for the previous Saturday to Friday.
• Methods: Stripe or Wise, in US dollars. Stripe holds your first payout for 7 days. Standard payouts are free; instant payouts cost 1%.
• Time tracking: you log hours in a tracker called Insightful, which takes a few screenshots an hour while it runs. You can’t add time by hand, there’s a weekly hours cap, and hours that break the rules can be withheld after a review.
• Rates: fixed for the length of a project, though a project can switch between hourly and per-task pay for future work.
• Taxes: US workers get a 1099-NEC. Mercor offers no W-2 jobs.
• Where: 107 countries are supported. China, Pakistan, Kenya and Ukraine are not.

Complaints and lawsuits

• Data breach (2026): Mercor confirmed a cyberattack on March 31, 2026, through a compromised open-source software library called LiteLLM. TechCrunch reported that Meta paused its work with Mercor afterward. Mercor says only a limited subset of its nearly five million experts were affected, and it offered identity protection. The breach lawsuits were combined into one case in May 2026 and paused in July for mediation.
• Contractor lawsuit (open): White v. Mercor, filed in May 2026 in Texas federal court, claims Mercor misclassified about 30,000 workers as contractors. Mercor is seeking to move it to arbitration, and there’s no ruling yet.
• Lower pay on a replacement project (2025): Business Insider reported in November 2025 that after a Meta project ended, Mercor offered workers a new one at $16 an hour, $5 less. Mercor called the report inaccurate.
• Scale AI lawsuit (ended): Scale AI sued Mercor in September 2025, alleging it tried to take trade secrets and customers. Scale dismissed the case in January 2026; the terms weren’t made public.

Some unpaid time is real, too. Mercor’s own help pages say work done before your setup is finished doesn’t count, though mandatory trainings logged in the tracker are paid.

How to spot a fake Mercor offer

• Mercor says it never requests or requires any payment or fee from workers.
• Official emails come from the mercor.com domain, and its official site for jobs, payments and account setup is work.mercor.com. Set up Stripe or Wise only there.
• One wrinkle: Mercor’s breach notices came from an identity-protection company’s email domain, not mercor.com. If you get one, log in at work.mercor.com to check rather than clicking its links.
• Got a Mercor offer by text or a chat app? Paste it into our free job scam checker before you reply.

Should you sign up?

If you have professional expertise, Mercor publishes some of the highest rates in AI training work, and it pays weekly. Go in knowing you’re a 1099 contractor, projects can end without much warning, and the company holds your ID, video and bank details after a breach this year. Compare Mercor with Outlier, DataAnnotation, Alignerr and others on our AI training jobs page.

Sources

• Mercor: experts page, mission, AI interview, project onboarding, payments, time tracking and pay, supported countries, security incident update
• TechCrunch: $100M at a $2B valuation (February 20, 2025), Scale AI’s lawsuit (September 3, 2025), the cyberattack (March 31, 2026), after the breach (April 9, 2026), $20B talks (July 9, 2026)
• CNBC, October 27, 2025: Mercor’s $350M round at a $10B valuation
• Business Insider, November 12, 2025: Mercor cuts contractors, then offers a new project for less money
• Court records: Deboni v. Mercor, White v. Mercor, Scale AI v. Mercor
• Trustpilot reviews of Mercor

Checked against Mercor’s own pages, court records and news reports on October 18, 2026. Terms and pay change often, so check Mercor’s site before you apply.

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Frequently asked questions

Is Mercor a scam?

No. It is a venture-backed company that pays weekly, and it says it never asks workers for any payment or fee. Fakes use other email domains and websites; Mercor's official site is work.mercor.com.

Does Mercor pay weekly?

Yes. It pays every Wednesday for the previous Saturday to Friday, through Stripe or Wise. Stripe holds your first payout for 7 days.

Does Mercor record your screen?

Its time tracker, Insightful, takes a small number of screenshots per hour while the timer is running.

Was Mercor hacked?

Yes. Mercor confirmed a cyberattack in March 2026 through a compromised open-source library. It says a limited subset of experts were affected, and it offered identity protection.

How long is the Mercor AI interview?

About 20 minutes. It is Mercor's only screening method, and you get three retakes.