Is Mercor legit? Yes, but read this before your AI interview

Yes. Mercor is a real company, Mercor.io Corporation of San Francisco, and it pays its hourly contractors every week. Its own policy says it never asks them for money. But what it offers is contract work training AI, not a job, and in 2026 it had a security breach that it says touched sensitive information for a small share of the people on its platform.

We make Apiva. Read this knowing that.

Apiva applies to jobs for people, which is a different business from Mercor's, and we have no deal with them. Everything below about Mercor comes from its help center, its terms, its own blog, two Trustpilot pages and named news outlets. We read all of it on 17 October 2026.

Is Mercor legit or a scam?

It's legit in the way that matters most to someone worried about a scam: you won't be asked to pay. Mercor's time and pay policy says "Mercor never requests or requires any payment or fee from talents." The same page says there's no fee to apply, and none to start working.

Mercor earns money from the companies instead. Its page on AI and data says it "applies a margin to companies' pay rates once you accept a role."

The company is Mercor.io Corporation at 181 Fremont St., San Francisco. That's the name and address in its terms of service, last updated 26 August 2026. It's also well funded. CNBC reported in October 2025 that Mercor raised $350 million at a $10 billion valuation, in a round led by Felicis.

So why do people keep asking? Its application guide says it can't give feedback on rejections "due to the high volume of applications", so plenty of people never learn why they weren't picked. Others describe contracts ending with little warning in reviews on Trustpilot (more on that below). And scammers pretend to be Mercor. The same pay policy says real messages only come from addresses ending in @mercor.com, and that any payment request claiming to be from Mercor "is not legitimate."

What Mercor actually is

Mercor pays people with expert knowledge to help train and test AI models. Its homepage lists recent roles such as Spanish tutors at $60 to $65 an hour and clinicians at $120 to $150 an hour, and shows an average contracted rate of $111 an hour. We read those figures on the Mercor homepage on 17 October 2026, and they change as listings come and go.

It's contract work, and Mercor says so plainly. Its page on US contract types says "Mercor does not offer W2 positions," and US citizens and residents get a 1099-NEC at the end of the tax year. Mercor also says it can't verify employment for you, because the work doesn't count as employment.

Contracts come in two kinds. Hourly ones are the most common, and each sets a maximum number of hours per week. Deliverable-based ones pay a fixed amount, and Mercor's contracts page says "Payment is only issued upon successful completion" and "There is no minimum hourly guarantee."

How Mercor pays

Hourly contractors are paid "every Wednesday around 12:00 PM PST," according to its payments guide. Each payout covers the week before.

That week runs Saturday to Friday on India Standard Time. So if you're in the Americas and log hours late on a Thursday, they can land in the next week's pay. Mercor's own policy calls this out.

Money goes out through one of two payout services, picked by your country. With the main one, your very first payout is held for 7 days. Standard transfers are free, and instant payout costs a 1% fee.

Hours only count if a desktop app called Insightful is tracking them. The time policy says it "may take periodic screenshots to confirm you are working," and you can't add time by hand. Hours can be withheld if you break a policy or log time while not working. The policy says a human reviewer looks at screenshots and activity before any pay is withheld.

What happens to your AI interview

This is the part people worry about most, and it's fair to.

Mercor's AI interviewer asks questions built from your résumé and the job description, then transcribes and scores your answers. Most interviews take about 20 minutes with your camera and microphone on. Some ask you to share your whole screen.

Here is what Mercor's AI interview guide says:

• It keeps "your video/audio recordings and an AI-generated transcript of official interviews to evaluate your candidacy and to recommend your profile to potential employers."
• You can't get a copy. Mercor says "we're not able to share interview recordings or transcripts."
• You can retake an interview up to three times, but hiring managers can see how many times you did.
• The practice interview is free, can be repeated, and isn't shared with companies.

On AI training, two of its pages use different words. The interview guide says "Your interview data will not be employed to train AI models." The data page says Mercor uses your data to "Train our internal recommendation models" and never to train outside large language models. The two don't quite match. What both pages agree on is that Mercor doesn't sell your interview data or use it to train outside AI models.

You can delete your account from settings, and Mercor says that removes your account data, including the interview and its transcript. Deletion is refused while you still have an active contract or a payout being processed. An offer you haven't answered blocks it too. And the data page adds that deleting "does not remove data from companies that may have already accessed it."

The 2026 data breach

On 31 March 2026 Mercor confirmed to TechCrunch that it was "one of thousands of companies" hit through a compromised open-source software library. A hacking group claimed to have Mercor data. TechCrunch reviewed a sample that included two videos said to show conversations between Mercor's AI systems and contractors.

Within a week, contractors had filed five lawsuits, Business Insider reported on 7 April 2026. The suits allege the breach could have exposed personal details, including Social Security numbers and recorded interviews. Those are claims in court filings, not findings.

Mercor's own update of 25 June 2026 says its investigation is complete. It says that of "nearly five million experts, only a very limited subset had sensitive information affected," and that there is "no evidence that any of this data has been used fraudulently." Affected people were emailed on 25 and 26 June from mercor@notifications.cyberscout.com, with an offer of identity protection. If you were on Mercor before April and want to know whether you were one of them, that's the sender to search your inbox for.

What people who worked there say

Two Trustpilot pages carry Mercor's name, and they read very differently. The mercor.io page showed 4.5 out of 5 from 1,189 reviews on 17 October 2026. That profile pays for a Trustpilot subscription and invites people to review, and it had replied to 4% of negative reviews.

The mercor.com page showed 2.5 from only 5 reviews, and Trustpilot notes Mercor hasn't invited reviews there recently. Four of the five came in the last year, and all four are 1 star. One from August 2026 describes being "suddenly removed without a clear explanation" as payment time approached.

Who Mercor suits

Mercor makes the most sense if you have expert knowledge that AI labs want, in medicine, law, engineering or a language, and you'd like paid contract hours on top of a job or between jobs. The roles on its homepage when we looked paid $60 to $150 an hour, and hourly pay arrives weekly.

It's a poor fit if you need a steady employer. There's no W-2, and Mercor says it can't verify employment for you. Contracts can also end early, as some Trustpilot reviewers describe. It's also not for you if a recorded video interview you can't get a copy of, or screenshots of your screen while you work, would bother you. Better to know that before the interview than after.

How to use Mercor without getting burned

• Trust only email from addresses ending in @mercor.com, and never pay anyone who says they're from Mercor.
• Take the free practice interview first. Use Chrome on a computer, in a quiet room, because hiring managers see your retakes.
• Before you accept, check whether the contract is hourly or deliverable-based, and what the weekly hour cap is.
• Keep your own note of the hours you work. If hours are removed, the policy gives you until the end of the following pay period to dispute them.
• When you're done, close out contracts and payouts, then delete your account.

If Mercor is one stop in a wider job search, our pieces on how many jobs to apply to and how long postings stay up may help with the rest.

If you want a job at Mercor, not contract work

Mercor also hires its own staff, through its careers page rather than the expert marketplace. On 17 October 2026, Apiva's Mercor page listed 31 open technical roles taken from that careers page, in San Francisco and New York City. Most were software engineering and product management.

Those are applied to through an ordinary online form, usually inside an applicant tracking system, and a typical form has a median of 23 fields. Apiva can do that part for you. You approve each role, and our AI fills in the form and submits it with your résumé tailored to that job. You get 25 free applications a month with no card. Paid plans are a monthly fee up front, and a credit is used only on a confirmed submission. Details are on the pricing page.

Checked 17 October 2026. Spot something outdated or wrong? Tell us and we'll fix it.

Mercor and its logo are trademarks of their owner, shown here to identify the company under discussion. We aren't affiliated with them and they haven't endorsed this.