Mercor vs Outlier
Side by side from today's live listings and each platform's own documentation. Plenty of people work on both.
| Mercor | Outlier | |
|---|---|---|
| Live roles | 300 | Behind login |
| Median hourly | $80 | n/a |
| Top rate | $450 | n/a |
| How it pays | Weekly. Payouts for the prior work week are processed by Wednesday, mostly through Stripe (Wise where Stripe isn't offered). Stripe holds a first payout for 7 days, and banks can take 3 to 7 business days after a payout shows as paid. | Weekly. Outlier says payments are processed every Tuesday through PayPal, AirTM or ACH, and arrive anywhere from a few minutes to a few days later depending on the method. Its blog puts project pay between $10 and $50 an hour, with the rate shown before you start. |
| Hiring | You apply to a specific listing, upload a resume, then do a short AI interview. Some roles add a paid assessment or work trial. | Sign up at outlier.ai, complete onboarding and skill assessments, then projects appear in your dashboard. |
| Run by | Mercor, a San Francisco company that sells expert human data to AI labs. | Scale AI, which runs Outlier as its contributor platform. |
Median hourly by field
| Field | Mercor | Outlier |
|---|---|---|
| Medicine & health | $126 (26) | n/a |
| Mental health | $79 (2) | n/a |
| Law | $100 (13) | n/a |
| Finance & accounting | $90 (26) | n/a |
| Chemistry | $85 (12) | n/a |
| Biology & life sciences | $118 (5) | n/a |
| Physics | $95 (12) | n/a |
| Math & statistics | $70 (3) | n/a |
| General STEM | $50 (12) | n/a |
| Business & operations | $68 (22) | n/a |
| Engineering | $84 (26) | n/a |
| Software & coding | $65 (28) | n/a |
| Machine learning | $103 (6) | n/a |
| Data & analytics | $75 (4) | n/a |
| Cybersecurity | $81 (6) | n/a |
| Design & media | $63 (10) | n/a |
| Voice & audio | $43 (33) | n/a |
| Teaching | $60 (2) | n/a |
| Humanities & policy | $150 (5) | n/a |
| Generalist | $55 (9) | n/a |
Number of hourly listings in brackets.