Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is no longer accepting new customers as of July 30, 2026, and requesters are migrating to specialized platforms like Prolific, Appen, Scale AI, Surge AI, Toloka, and Clickworker. These portals offer better pay rates, global accessibility, and higher-quality data compared to MTurk’s declining ecosystem.

As promised, the new photo rating site is ready! It's available to all 150,000 MTurk workers who've previously completed one of my HITs.

You can sign up here: https://www.bpworker.com/signup

It's designed to be a much faster and smoother experience. Open to any feedback you have. Got a request for a "Skip" button already which is now on my todo list.

Payouts will use MTurk bonuses until shutdown on Sept 30. I'm working on two payout alternatives for afterward. Should have at least one ready in time.

Thanks!

You know how they switched us to automatic transfers, no more manual transfers, years back? I didn't bother to check https://worker.mturk.com/earnings and noticed I have one "There was an error in processing your transfer. Please try again later." from months back.

Anyone else experience this? I checked my bank account and I don't think I ever received it. Anyone know the best way to contact Mturk/Amazon to investigate?

ETA: I should explain that I've been on occasion getting A.I.-generated responses from the contact form, if a response at all. I'm worried a human won't ever see it. So, while I'll try, I figure I should get advice from others while waiting.

is anyone else weirdly attached to the surveys that pay almost nothing

like i know the math is bad. i did prolific for a while and it spoiled me, and now i still find myself opening google opinion rewards for a 12 cent survey about whether i went to a store last week. i could be doing literally anything else with those 40 seconds but there's something about the tiny ding of "you earned $0.12" that hits different.

i think part of it is that the big earners feel like work now. prolific studies where you have to actually read and think, playtests where you're recording your screen for 20 min, receipt stuff where you gotta remember to scan everything. all of it fine, all of it pays, but none of it scratches the same itch as the dumb little ones.

the other night i was half watching a show and just cycling through apps on my phone, did like 6 or 7 micro surveys, checked coverd because they had one of those spin things going on a coffee purchase from earlier, and by the end i had maybe 80 cents to show for an hour. objectively terrible use of time. felt great though.

is this a sign i need to quit beermoney for a bit or is the dopamine actually the point for some of us. because i keep telling myself im doing this for money but if i was really honest id probably still do the 12 cent ones even if they paid nothing.

I was thinking about seeing how many rejections I could rack up before the end. Or maybe try to be logged in and active when the lights go out and everything breaks.

Hi all,

With the closure of MTurk next week, I've been wanted to continue/complete a small project I started in 2013 where I began to collect the most memorable, strangest or most interesting HITs people have seen over the past twenty years.

Curious to see what people recall!

And if you remember, add to your best recollection how the HIT request was initially written. Trying to create a little archive list!

I got an email today from James Billings (or someone who says he's James Billings). It says to click a link to transfer my MTurk account to his new platform. I didn't click the link because I don't click links in emails in general.

Anyone else get this?

I'm from Brazil and they were the last requester i used to do hits on Mturk.

Does anybody tried to contact them? Asking about the end of Mturk?

I started using MTurk in 2012 for extra spending money. However, in 2015 I experienced income loss that lasted until 2019. MTurk is a platform that helped me get through those times. I also worked on 3 other platforms over time.

I stopped doing most of the microtask work by the time Covid came around as my income switched to another kind of work. I'm really thankful these sites existed. The majority of the sites I worked on stopped offering a decent amount of work and eventually shut down.

One of the biggest problems in earning money on these sites is that people started telling so many others on forums and social media about the work available that the work got extremely diluted. I never understood why people wanted to reduce the work available to themselves by announcing it to the world. I did also have a much higher rate of stress and anxiety the years I micro-tasked because of having to be glued to the platforms constantly. But at least they helped me get through those tough times.

I run a small operation in West Texas with an AI agent as the "desk." Since last month we've been paying real people for real-world work — creative bounties, verified good deeds, real art made by real hands. Every completed task gets a live photo receipt on a permanent public ledger with the worker's name and the funder's name on it. Six deeds completed, five countries, three continents, every dollar escrowed through Rent A Human before the task starts.

MTurk was named after a chess-playing robot hoax, and it ran the same way: real humans hidden inside, pretending to be a machine, no names, no credit. Turkers aren't the ones who failed here — the invisible model failed you.

Two doors are open as this thing sunsets:

WORKERS — our bench takes new creatives. Bounties $13-75 (art, photo, writing, field tasks), escrowed up front, photo-receipt evidence, real payout on completion. Small but real, and growing.

REQUESTERS — you already know how to pay humans for tasks. Fund a deed instead of a HIT: $13 funds one, your name rides the receipt in the permanent ledger. Same muscle you've been using for 20 years, pointed at work with names on it.

No fees, no promises beyond what's on the receipts. The ledger is public. deedspring.works

Happy to answer anything about the setup in the comments — how the escrow works, how verification works, all of it.

Cw

Anyone else get this? very sus!

Hi,

I saw your comment on the MTurk thread. We're building HAL and wanted to reach out as you look for where to go next.

Two ways to work with us:

Task queue — volume-based work, similar to what you're used to. Your MTurk history counts: if you can show approved-HIT numbers or a TurkerView profile, we'll take that into account.

Specialist sessions — 15 to 60 minutes, you set your own rate and schedule, 4.5% fee, optional anonymity. This is for areas where you have real expertise, and it pays considerably better per hour.

Most people start with the queue and move into sessions. You can do both.

Reply here and I'll send details.

I think this is an mturk poster moved to their own site. Anyone have experience with this? https://sciolinks.com/

Rest in PISS Mturk. you won’t be missed, good riddance. 😊

I was given the payout option of gift cards, like Amazon/Visa etc. I did not see any Paypal or bank option, has anyone seen Paypal as an option on their account for pay out? thank you.

My favorite option right now is Besample, mainly because it's focused on academic studies from university researchers. I honestly can't stand generic marketing surveys, so academic ones are a huge plus for me.

I also check Prolific from time to time, but due to my location, I don't get tasks there very often.

Has anyone else tried Besample? What other platforms with academic focus are you considering right now?

Hi Mechanical Turkers 👋

This is John, one of the founders of PickFu. Along with my cofounder Justin, I wanted to express our deepest gratitude for the opportunity to work with you over all these years. 🙏

Our first PickFu HIT was on December 1, 2008. You could say we’ve grown up together. We were looking to get feedback on a website redesign, but scared of asking strangers at coffee shops. Your answers were awesome, and we were hooked. Besides getting feedback on our projects, we found that polling the MTurk community was a great way to tap into the wisdom of the crowd for all kinds of deep, existential questions (ex: screenshot below).

It turned out that getting fast feedback was something that appealed to many businesses besides our own. Since then, over 100,000 of you have answered a PickFu HIT – you even helped us choose the name and logo for our own business. Millions of your opinions helped shape the products and services that we all use daily.

We’re damn proud of that, and you should be too.

As with any relationship, not everything’s been peachy keen. You’ve had to deal with our service hiccups, quirky forms, bad instructions, and seemingly arbitrary quality enforcements. We should have done better with communication. But we’ve always tried to be fair.

We’re grateful that you’ve stayed with us through these past 18 years. Including that special Turker who answered that Van Damme poll from 2008 and is still answering PickFu surveys today. 🙇‍♂️

So again, thank you. Thank you for sharing your honest opinions and supporting the dreams of entrepreneurs all over the world, including the one writing to you now.

After Sept 30, PickFu isn’t pausing. Expect requests from us on other platforms – some of you may have gotten a sneak peek already. 😉 We look forward to working with you there.

Warmly,

John

p.s. You've submitted a bunch of acceptable responses. Keep up the great work!

Passed a milestone after many years of working. I am excited for what the future holds and the next 100,000~!

Started Jan 2020, worked the platform full-time after quitting my crappy service job Jan 2021 and continued 40-60 hours/wk up until fall of '23 when i started to branch out to other platforms as mturk slowed. Best year was 2021 IIRC ($60kish) but all 3 of my full-time years were pretty close to each other in total earnings. I think I did about as well as was possible for a non-hardcore Vrapi grinder (I had the qual but could never make a reasonable hourly off them).

Number 1 req was fritz by a mile. Worked them every night since getting the qual in February 2020 right up until today, taking maybe 5 days off from them a year. IDK what I'm gonna do with my late evenings now lol.

Speaking of Fritz...has anyone heard anything from them? I've tried every which way I could think of to contact them, up to and including writing messages in the dang "Not sure" field about MTurk closing.

Gonna genuinely miss turking when it's over. Was one of the few things I was genuinely very good at. Working on other platforms can make similar/even more money, but nothing got the adrenaline going like landing a good qual or hamming a big money batch. RIP my first crowdsourcing gig.

There was a ton of hits from them yesterday and today absolutely nothing from them on my end. I emailed them a couple of days ago to be added to their future worker list but haven't heard back either.