By Mufy Pachorawala, founder of getAIwork · Last updated: September 24, 2026
Remotasks works today, and Scale AI’s own app says it is moving people to Outlier. Since one Terms of Use covers Remotasks, Outlier and Scale’s HFC platform together, switching between those three is not a real alternative. The genuine options are Prolific, Clickworker and UHRS, DataAnnotation, Mercor, Mindrift, CrowdGen and DataForce, and they differ most in when they pay.
Listen to this article, about 11 minutes. A synthetic voice reads the article and announces each section title as it begins; tables are read row by row and the questions at the end are left out.
Recorded 3 October 2026 from the article as published that day. Press a chapter to jump there; the highlighted line is what is playing. A play button sits beside every section heading, and once you scroll past this player a bar at the bottom of the screen keeps the controls in reach. Tap or click any sentence to hear the reading start from there.
Key facts, checked September 24, 2026
- Remotasks is live and open. Status page: all systems operational. No shutdown notice anywhere
- Scale AI’s Outlier app tells Remotasks users “we will be transitioning you over shortly”, with no date published
- One Terms of Use, effective May 11, 2026, governs Remotasks, Outlier and Scale HFC together
- Remotasks publishes no threshold, no hold and no rates. Only weekly PayPal or AirTM and a 2 percent PayPal fee
- Its working location policy has not been updated since February 14, 2023
- Our board lists 1,662 live AI listings today, free at getaiwork.com/board/
What is actually happening to Remotasks
Start with the facts, because the internet on this subject is mostly guesswork. On September 24, 2026:
- remotasks.com loads normally and redirects to its English homepage
- Signup is open. The call to action reads “Start earning today”
- Its public status page reports all systems operational, with no incidents in the preceding fortnight
- Its homepage claims “Available in 90+ countries, backed by Scale AI, taskers paid weekly via PayPal or AirTM”
- Its counters read 15 million dollars total earnings, 240,000 or more total taskers, 90 or more countries
So the “Remotasks is dead” posts are wrong. What is true is stranger and more useful. Scale AI’s Outlier application carries a page for people who arrive with an existing Remotasks account, and it says this:
“Please hang tight! We noticed you already have a Remotasks account, so for now, continue to work from remotasks.com. We will be transitioning you over shortly!“
That is Scale AI’s own product surface stating that Remotasks accounts are being moved to Outlier. There is no press release, no blog post and no dated announcement anywhere on scale.com, outlier.ai or remotasks.com that we could find. We are not going to invent a transition date, because none is published, and anyone who quotes you one is guessing.
A couple of smaller signals in the same direction. The FAQ accordion on the Remotasks homepage currently contains placeholder Lorem ipsum text rather than real answers. The working location policy was last updated February 14, 2023, while the terms that govern the platform were refreshed in October 2025 and again in May 2026. That is the pattern of a product being legally maintained while its public surface stops being edited, which is usually what a wind-down looks like from the outside long before anyone announces one.
The alternatives that are not alternatives
Search results for this question are full of lists that put Outlier at number one. Here is why that is a weak answer.
Outlier’s Terms of Use, effective May 11, 2026, opens by describing itself as a binding agreement with “Scale AI, Inc., a Delaware corporation, and its affiliates, including Smart Ecosystem Inc., doing business as Outlier AI”, and states that the terms govern “https://outlier.ai/, https://www.remotasks.com/, and https://platform.hfc.scale.com/”. One document, three platforms, one counterparty.
Moving from Remotasks to Outlier is a change of interface, not a change of employer. If your reason for looking is that you want a second source of work in case something happens to the first, those three do not give you one. That is not an argument against Outlier, which is a real platform with real volume and is where Remotasks users are apparently going anyway. It is an argument for having something outside Scale AI as well.
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Take the 2-minute match quiz →Eight real Remotasks alternatives
1. Prolific, if you did surveys and studies
The closest replacement for the academic and research end of Remotasks, and the best-documented platform in the entire category. It publishes a payout threshold of 6 pounds or 6 dollars, combined across currencies, and pays on demand into PayPal within 24 hours. It charges no cash-out fee. It also publishes a researcher-facing minimum pay rate of 6 pounds or 8 dollars an hour, which participants can see, and a full list of eligible countries rather than a vague count. The trade-off: approval can take up to 22 days, and a rejected submission never pays.
2. Clickworker and UHRS, if you did micro-tasks
The highest published micro-task volume, and the most transparent payment terms after Prolific. Five exact thresholds, a weekly bill run starting every Wednesday, and no need to request a payout. Access to Microsoft’s UHRS platform comes through the same account. Two things to know before you start: UHRS earnings are held exactly 39 days before becoming payable, and outside the US, Canada and Mexico Clickworker keeps 4 percent of them for currency conversion. Both are published by Clickworker and almost nowhere else.
3. DataAnnotation, if you write well
Publishes rate bands rather than a vague promise: general work from 25 to 30 dollars an hour and up, multilingual from 20 dollars, coding and STEM and licensed professional work from 50 to 100 dollars an hour and up, all as listed by the vendor. Payment is PayPal only, delivered “within a few days after you request them”, with no published threshold or hold. The gate is a one-shot starter assessment: its own FAQ says “You can only take the Starter Assessment once. There are no retakes or second chances.”
4. Mercor, if you have a real professional background
Hourly contracts rather than piece rates, weekly payouts every Wednesday around noon PST, and by far the most complete payment documentation of any platform here. It assigns you Stripe Connect or Wise by region, charges nothing for a standard payout and 1 percent for an instant one, and holds only your first Stripe payout for 7 days. It also states plainly that there is no minimum hourly guarantee and that it applies a margin to the rate the client pays.
5. Mindrift, if you want scheduled pay dates
Toloka’s worker-facing brand, owned by Toloka AI BV in Amsterdam. Pays twice a month on fixed dates, the 5th and the 20th, for cycles running the 1st to 15th and the 16th to month end, through Payoneer or Tipalti. Each task carries a fixed reward visible before you start. It publishes no threshold and no numeric acceptance window. Worth knowing: it publishes a sensitive-content policy capping contributors on those projects at two hours per UTC day, with a one-day opt-out.
6. CrowdGen by Appen, if you want breadth
Appen’s contributor platform, and the place Appen now sends people since connect.appen.com started returning a 503. Signup is open with no waitlist. Its job feed carried 32 live postings across 27 countries in late September 2026, and it publishes the only itemised payout fee table in the category. The cost is speed: payment is monthly, typically by the 14th of the following month.
7. DataForce by TransPerfect, if you want to see the rate first
Sixteen live projects, almost all of them carrying an actual dollar figure on the project page before you apply, which is rare enough to be the whole reason to look. Named payment methods, published payout windows in business days, and a 50 dollar floor on wire transfers. The catch is a quality check of two to six weeks that runs before the payment window even starts.
8. Welocalize and TELUS Digital, if you have a language pair
Both staff large language pools and both publish almost nothing about payment, which is the honest warning to attach. Welo Data says only that payments go “through secure, verified online payment platforms” and that details are confirmed at onboarding. TELUS publishes that it uses Hyperwallet and little else. Treat these as pools you join and wait in, and cap the unpaid qualification time you give them.
Side by side
| Platform | Best for | Pays | Threshold | Independent of Scale AI? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prolific | Surveys and studies | On demand, 24h to PayPal | £6 / $6 | Yes |
| Clickworker and UHRS | Micro-tasks, volume | Weekly, after a 7 to 39 day hold | €10 to €20 | Yes |
| DataAnnotation | Writing, coding, STEM | On request, a few days | Not published | Yes |
| Mercor | Professional expertise | Weekly, Wednesdays | None, weekly release | Yes |
| Mindrift | Fixed-reward tasks | 5th and 20th monthly | Not published | Yes |
| CrowdGen by Appen | Speech, language, breadth | Monthly, by the 14th | Fee-based hold | Yes |
| DataForce | Seeing the rate first | Per project, 7 to 30 business days | $50 for wire only | Yes |
| Outlier | The same work, new interface | Weekly, Tuesdays | Not published | No, same terms as Remotasks |
All payment terms as published by each vendor on September 24, 2026. Nothing here is a promise of earnings.
How to pick, without signing up for twelve things
The instinct after a platform goes wobbly is to register everywhere. It is the wrong move, and it is the single most common mistake we see people make in this category. Signing up for twelve platforms multiplies your unpaid qualification hours by twelve and dilutes your visibility in every pool. The people who get steady volume are usually deep in one or two queues, not present in all of them.
- Split your Remotasks hours by task type, not by “task work”. Surveys go to Prolific. Categorisation and annotation go to Clickworker and UHRS. Written and subject-matter work goes to DataAnnotation or Mercor. The right answer depends entirely on what you were actually doing
- Pick one platform outside Scale AI and qualify there now. Not on the day something changes, because that is when everyone else applies
- Check the payment cycle against your own cash flow before the rate. Monthly on the 14th and on-demand in 24 hours are very different jobs at the same rate
- Cap unpaid qualification time per vendor. Four hours is a reasonable ceiling. When you hit it with no paid work, stop accepting new invitations from that vendor
- Ask one direct question before any assessment: is there live volume on this project right now, and what is the expected weekly hours range. A vendor with real work answers it
And do not delete your Remotasks account. It is operational, it is paying weekly, and Scale AI has said it intends to move you rather than close you. The sensible position is to keep working there while you build a second queue somewhere that is not owned by the same Delaware corporation.
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See the free board →Frequently asked questions
Is Remotasks shutting down?
Remotasks has published no shutdown notice. The site loads, signup is open, and its status page reported all systems operational on September 24, 2026. But Scale AI’s own Outlier app carries a message for existing Remotasks users reading ‘We noticed you already have a Remotasks account, so for now, continue to work from remotasks.com. We will be transitioning you over shortly!’ No date for that transition is published anywhere.
Are Outlier and Remotasks the same company?
Legally, close to it. One Terms of Use document, effective May 11, 2026, governs outlier.ai, remotasks.com and Scale’s Human Frontier Collective platform together, and names the counterparty as ‘Scale AI, Inc., a Delaware corporation, and its affiliates, including Smart Ecosystem Inc.’ They are one legal relationship with three front doors, so moving from one to the other is not diversification.
What is the best Remotasks alternative?
It depends what you did on Remotasks. For survey and study work, Prolific is the closest replacement and publishes the most complete payout terms in the category. For annotation and categorisation, Clickworker and UHRS carry the highest micro-task volume. For written and subject-matter work, DataAnnotation and Mercor pay at the higher end, as listed.
Does Remotasks still pay?
Its homepage states taskers are paid weekly via PayPal or AirTM, and its own FAQ publishes a 2 percent PayPal transaction fee. It publishes no payout threshold, no holding period and no pay rates. Its working location policy has not been updated since February 14, 2023.
Which countries can use Remotasks?
Remotasks claims availability in 90 or more countries on its homepage but publishes no list. Its working location policy requires you to work only from the primary country assigned at onboarding, verified by government ID, and states that generative AI projects are available in ‘limited countries’ which it does not name.
Should you sign up for a Remotasks alternative or wait?
Qualify somewhere else now rather than later. Review queues in this category get slower when a well-known platform changes, and Scale AI has said in its own product that Remotasks accounts are being moved. Applying in parallel costs a few evenings and puts you ahead of that wave instead of behind it.
Is there a Remotasks alternative that pays faster?
Prolific pays on demand once your approved balance reaches 6 pounds or 6 dollars, and states funds arrive in PayPal within 24 hours. That is the fastest published cycle of any platform we checked. The trade-off is that approval of a submission can take up to 22 days first.
Mufy Pachorawala · Founder, getAIwork
My AI scans thousands of AI-job posts (42,827 screened so far) and I personally approve every listing before it reaches the board. I write these articles by the same rules: pay quoted only as listed, and no income promises. Read our editorial rules.
Related: Is Remotasks still active? · Outlier alternatives · Scale AI remote tasks · AI work payout thresholds · Prolific review · Clickworker review
Platform statuses and listed pay change without notice. Pay figures are quoted only as listed by the poster on the date shown and are never a promise of earnings. This page was verified on the date shown and is rechecked on the weekly refresh.
