Mercor vs Turing
Based on 713 real listings - last verified 27 July 2026
Mercor's typical rate is $65-$90/hr across 440 listings, versus Turing's $15-$15/hr across 21 listings. Mercor pays more on average.
Head to head
| Mercor | Turing | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical rate | $65-$90/hr | $15-$15/hr |
| Highest observed rate | $2,200/hr | $150/hr |
| Listings tracked | 443 | 270 |
| Reliability | Very Reliable | Very Reliable |
| Onboarding time | 1-3 weeks (interview + assessment + trial) | 5-14 days |
| Screening | AI interview | Technical vetting |
| Difficulty | Hard | Hard |
| Founded | 2023 | 2018 |
| HQ | San Francisco | Palo Alto |
| Best for | Software engineers, domain experts (medicine, law, finance), data scientists and ML engineers who can pass AI interviews and technical assessments. | Software engineers and ML specialists seeking long-term, higher-paying projects. |
Pay by category
Only categories both platforms actually run, so the comparison is apples-to-apples.
| Category | Mercor | Turing |
|---|---|---|
| Model evaluation | $63-$90/hr | $15-$15/hr |
Where each one stands out
Mercor matches vetted professionals to short-term AI training and evaluation work through an AI-led interview. Roles skew toward domain experts and engineers grading frontier-model outputs, with specialty premiums for finance, law and medicine.
Turing vets developers and places them on LLM training and engineering projects worldwide. Referral crediting runs on a strict 30-day window from first click to application.
Bottom line
Mercor comes out ahead on both pay and listing volume, based on what we track today. That can change as either platform's hiring shifts - re-check the numbers above before deciding, they update as we do.