Alignerr

Alignerr is a contributor network built and run by Labelbox. The site says it is "powered by Labelbox", and the work happens on Labelbox's annotation platform.

Labelbox is a San Francisco training-data company founded in 2018 by Manu Sharma (CEO), Brian Rieger and Dan Rasmuson. Its last announced priced round was a $110M Series D on Jan 6, 2022, led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Total funding is about $189M. The valuation was reported as roughly $1B+ but not disclosed by the company. [official/press]

Work: expert and generalist data for frontier AI labs: designing code challenges that stress-test models, grading outputs against rubrics, writing domain prompts, and audio or voice data.

Clients: not named for Alignerr work. Labelbox claims more than 90% of leading US AI labs "post-train and evaluate on Labelbox", which is a company claim.

Current coding listings on alignerr.com: the jobs feed showed 5,659 open listings on 2026-10-14. The top "Coding" entries are about 25 city-targeted copies of "Software Developer: Get Paid to Build Your Own Project with an AI Coding Assistant", at $60–120/hr. In this work you build features on a project you personally own, using an AI coding assistant. At each step you compare two assistant responses, pick the better one and write a short rationale. Payouts are weekly and AI token costs are covered.

Eligibility rules for that listing: the project must be personally and solely owned, or open source under an approved licence. Employer, client, university or startup code is excluded, as are NDA projects, AI model training or eval work, ML infrastructure, exploit tooling and anything processing other people's personal data. Session transcripts are used to train AI and cannot be withdrawn after submission. You must write your ratings without AI help.

Headline pay claims: the alignerr.com homepage claims an "average pay of $80/hr" and about "$1M" paid weekly. These are marketing figures.

Contract type: independent contractor ("1099 independent contractors" for US residents), not an employee. Freelance, no minimum hours. Alignerr says many contributors work 20–25 hrs/week. You can hold another job.

Monitoring: on hourly projects Hubstaff must be running, and the Labelbox editor blocks work without it. Hubstaff takes periodic screenshots and records the URLs and apps used.

Countries: the FAQ welcomes "applicants from around the world" who meet skill and communication requirements.

Access is blocked in some countries "for legal, regulatory, and security reasons". Users there see a "Location Denied" error, and the list is not published.

The Persona FAQ lists accepted documents as "Driver's Licenses, State IDs, Work Permits, and Permanent Residence Cards". It also says that if your country is not on the list, documents from there are not accepted. It allows a UK e-visa share code.

The visa FAQ says "we only accept US Driver's Licenses, US State IDs, US Work Permits or US Permanent Residence Cards". That entry was last edited in April 2025 and conflicts with the "around the world" wording.

Screening formats: only some jobs require extra steps. These are a "Zara™" AI interview (live, camera-on and full-screen; questions are generated from your profile and answers; coding roles "can require LIVE coding exercises") and/or a domain skills assessment. The standalone Assessments tab was removed; assessments are now triggered per job. AI tools and outside help are prohibited. You can retake only after a documented technical failure. A disabled camera counts as a fail, and phones and tablets are discouraged.

Time to project: "depends on current demand and your skillset". Projects are demand-driven and "not assigned on a frequent or periodic schedule", and you may sit on a general waiting list. Assignment is based on skills, assessment results, availability and past performance, which Labelbox tracks as a composite quality and speed score.

Schedule: weekly. The billing cycle runs Monday–Sunday, and payment is made by the following Friday. The Earnings tab updates only once a payment is fully released.

Provider: set by your identity-verification country. Only one provider is enabled per country, either Stripe Connect or PayPal, and you cannot choose. Stripe holds the first payout for 7 days. Changing your payment method requires redoing Persona. People hired through Upwork are paid by Upwork. Some contributors were paid through Deel, and 1099-NECs are issued only for Deel payments. PayPal users may get a 1099-K from PayPal.

Alignerr's payment FAQ says you may use someone else's bank account, at your own risk. Mercor forbids this.

One blog says in practice payments go out by PayPal on Wed–Fri and that the author never saw Stripe used. Anecdotal.

Official position: the work is project-based and cyclical. A help-center article tells contributors to expect "periods of waiting followed by periods of intense activity" while Alignerr waits on customer datasets, and that onboarding-to-first-project time "can vary".

Inactivity: accounts may be suspended for inactivity, policy violations or low-quality work.

The work is described as "feast or famine", with empty project boards for weeks. Per-task projects that stop early can leave unreviewed work unpaid. The March 2026 sentiment tracker found empty queues in 9% of posts.

Deactivations are the most-cited complaint. A review of 306 Reddit discussions from May 25 to Aug 16, 2026 (by the Breaking Even newsletter, as summarized by datalevo) found account deactivation was the most common complaint. In one BBB complaint, a deactivation followed shortly after the worker asked support about a missing week of pay.

Terms that limit recourse: binding JAMS arbitration in New Castle County, Delaware, with a class-action waiver. Contributors are independent contractors and must sign the Alignerr Consulting Agreement.

Interview recordings used for AI: the terms' "Interview; Release" section lets Alignerr use video-interview materials "to train or improve artificial intelligence technology". The privacy policy lists biometric data and "photos, videos, and recordings of you and your environment" as collected categories. This is unlike Mercor, whose docs say interview data is not used to train external models.

Unpaid work risk: unpaid evaluation phases, no pay for unaccepted tasks on pay-per-accepted-task projects, and forfeiture of pay after a failed appeal (see section 5).

BBB: rating F, not accredited, 8 complaints in 3 years. A third-party summary says all 8 are marked unanswered by the company.

Official: no referral program is described anywhere on alignerr.com, its FAQ or the Alignerr help center as of 2026-10-14.

Ratings: Trustpilot shows 4.5/5 from 2,967 reviews (2,224 in the last 12 months), 82% 5-star and 9% 1-star. Many 5-star reviews were posted right after the Zara interview, so they rate the interview, not the paid work. The company has not replied to negative reviews. BBB: F.

Positive: the AI interview feels natural and questions are relevant. Some well-placed experts report good hourly rates.

Negative (strongest theme): payment problems. Reports include multi-week delays, unpaid hours after removal from a project or deactivation, and slow support.

Negative: thin or irregular work after onboarding, empty queues, and long waits for a first project.

Negative: sudden deactivations (fraud flags) with a limited appeal process.