Home / Compare / Refery vs Mercor
Refery vs Mercor

Two products. Different problems.

If you are weighing Refery and Mercor for a full-time startup hire, the first thing to know is that Mercor pivoted. Here is the honest picture of what each one does today, and which you actually want.

Short version: If you are hiring a full-time engineer or GTM lead for a VC-backed startup, Mercor is no longer the category. Refery, Paraform, and Jack & Jill are the comparable products. If you need contract experts to help train an AI model, Mercor is the right place.

What Mercor is today

The pivot: from startup recruiting to AI expert labor.

Mercor was founded in 2023 by three 21-year-old Thiel Fellows with the goal of using AI to match engineers from emerging markets with US companies. That was the original story. It is no longer the current story.

Over 2024–2025, Mercor pivoted to serve AI labs. The company now operates a marketplace where 30,000+ expert contractors — PhDs, lawyers, doctors, consultants, bankers, and senior engineers — provide human feedback to train and evaluate AI models for customers like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and Meta. Most of Mercor's reported $75M to $500M annualized revenue comes from AI labs, not from startup hiring.

This is a good business. Mercor is now valued at around $10B, with its founders among the youngest self-made billionaires. The product is structured around hourly billing for expert time spent on tasks like data labeling, reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), rubric creation, and evaluation framework design.

The implication for a founder thinking about hiring: Mercor's current product does not address the problem of finding and closing a full-time senior engineer or head of sales who will join your company. That is no longer what Mercor is for.

What Refery is

Referral hiring for full-time startup roles.

Refery is the infrastructure layer for referral hiring at seed to Series B. The network is 300+ curated scouts — founders, CTOs, fund partners, and senior operators — who refer engineering and GTM candidates from their own personal networks. Every referral is vetted by Refery before it reaches the hiring company.

The fee structure is built for permanent hiring: 20% of the hired candidate's first-year salary, paid only on successful placement. No retainer. No exclusivity. A 90-day replacement guarantee attaches automatically. There is no billable hour; there is no fee until a hire actually starts.

Refery serves the narrow job Mercor was originally built to solve and then left: help a VC-backed startup find and hire a great full-time operator, fast.

At a glance

Side-by-side, as of 2026.

ReferyMercor
Primary customer todayVC-backed startups hiring full-timeAI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta)
Primary productReferral network for permanent hiresMarketplace for contract expert labor
What you getA short, vetted shortlist of operator-referred candidates for a full-time roleAccess to 30,000+ expert contractors for hourly AI-training tasks
Engagement typePermanent full-time hireHourly contract work, project-based
Billing20% of first-year salary on successful placementHourly rate with ~35% take rate
Upfront cost$0Varies by engagement
Replacement guarantee90 days, platform-levelN/A for contract model
Network compositionFounders, CTOs, fund partners, senior operatorsExperts across consulting, law, medicine, engineering, science
Geographic focusSF and NY (USA)Global, with India the largest talent source
How to choose

Match the tool to the job.

Choose Refery if

  • You are hiring a full-time employee who will sit on your team long-term
  • You are a VC-backed startup from seed to Series B in SF or NY
  • You need engineering or GTM roles filled
  • You want operator-level signal — referrals from founders, CTOs, and investors who know your world
  • You prefer a clean success-fee model with no hourly billing and no retainers

Choose Mercor if

  • You run an AI lab or AI-native company doing model training, evaluation, or RLHF
  • You need expert contractors for project-based work, billed hourly
  • You are building evaluation frameworks, training data, or domain-specific fine-tuning
  • Your talent need is on the contract side, not the full-time side
  • You need specialized expertise (medicine, law, finance, science) on demand, remotely
If you actually want to compare Refery

The real Refery comparison set.

If you came here looking for comparisons for a full-time startup hire, the more useful comparisons are:

Refery vs Paraform — operator referrals vs a marketplace of independent professional recruiters. Both pay-on-success. Paraform has breadth across recruiters; Refery has depth of operator signal. Read the comparison →

Refery vs Jack & Jill — human referrals from top operators vs AI-agent-driven matching. Jack & Jill is 10% fee; Refery is 20%; the source material is fundamentally different. Read the comparison →

Refery vs Jomigo — curated US operator network vs European crowd recruiting. Mostly relevant if you are choosing between a US-focused and a Europe-focused solution. Read the comparison →

Questions

Common questions.

Mercor was originally founded in 2023 as an AI recruiting platform focused on matching engineers with startups. The company has since pivoted — its primary business is now an expert-contractor marketplace serving AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic for model training, evaluation, and RLHF tasks. As of 2026, Mercor reports 30,000+ expert contractors and $75M to $500M in annualized revenue, predominantly from AI labs. Full-time startup hiring is no longer its focus.
Not really, as of 2026. Mercor operates a marketplace for short-term expert contract work — lawyers, PhDs, engineers, consultants training AI models. Refery operates a referral network for full-time engineering and GTM hires at VC-backed startups. The products answer different questions: "where do I find an expert to help train my AI model for 40 hours?" is a Mercor question. "Where do I find a senior engineer or head of sales who will join my startup?" is a Refery question.
For full-time engineering hires at VC-backed startups, Refery is a direct fit: 300+ operator-scouts refer candidates for seed to Series B companies in SF and NY, with a 20% success fee and 90-day replacement guarantee. Other options in this category include Paraform (marketplace of independent recruiters), Jack & Jill (AI-agent matching), traditional contingency agencies, and in-house sourcing. Mercor is not currently a fit for this use case.
Mercor's current product is oriented around contract experts providing hours-based feedback to AI labs. Clients are billed on an hourly basis for expert time. If your need is full-time permanent employment, Mercor is not structured for that use case. A referral network like Refery or a recruiter marketplace like Paraform is structurally better aligned with permanent hiring.
Mercor charges hourly finders' fees based on the expert's time, taking a take rate estimated around 35% of gross payment volume. Reports indicate the employer-paid portion is in the range of traditional contingency fees for placements, but the core product is structured around contract hours rather than permanent hires. Refery, by contrast, charges a flat 20% of first-year salary only on successful full-time placement, with no hourly billing and no fee until the hire starts.

Your next hire is one intro away.

Send us the role — a JD, a Notion doc, or just a paragraph. We will come back within 48 hours with a plan and first introductions.

Start hiring →