micro1 vs Outlier
Side by side from today's live listings and each platform's own documentation. Plenty of people work on both.
| micro1 | Outlier | |
|---|---|---|
| Live roles | 24 | Behind login |
| Median hourly | $90 | n/a |
| Top rate | $240 | n/a |
| How it pays | Semi-monthly. Work from the 1st to the 15th is paid around the 20th, and work from the 16th to month-end around the 5th of the next month (Pacific time). | 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 | Sign up, take the AI interview (20-40 minutes), and some roles add a short skills assessment. Certified experts are matched to projects as they open. | Sign up at outlier.ai, complete onboarding and skill assessments, then projects appear in your dashboard. |
| Run by | micro1, an AI recruiting and human-data company. It certifies experts with an AI interview, then matches them to lab projects. | Scale AI, which runs Outlier as its contributor platform. |
Median hourly by field
| Field | micro1 | Outlier |
|---|---|---|
| Medicine & health | $90 (3) | n/a |
| Chemistry | $68 (2) | n/a |
| Biology & life sciences | $68 (2) | n/a |
| Engineering | $90 (3) | n/a |
| Software & coding | $92 (3) | n/a |
| Languages & translation | $82 (2) | n/a |
| Generalist | $87 (2) | n/a |
Number of hourly listings in brackets.