Eligibility · Mercor

Mercor Eligible Countries (2026): Which Listings Are Actually Open to You

Mercor eligibility works in two steps. First, your location has to be one Mercor can contract in: its payment-countries page lists 103 Stripe countries, 4 Wise countries, and 89 locations where it says it currently cannot onboard experts or issue contracts. Second, the individual listing sets its own eligible countries. Of the 480 live listings I track, 206 carry a country list taken from the listing's own eligibility field or its text, and 181 name no country at all, which Mercor's referral policy says means the US, Canada, the UK or the EU by default. Signing up is free, so the practical move is to create the account and read the country line on each listing.

By Daichi Kishida (Remote AI Talent Connector) · Published Sep 13, 2026 · Last verified Sep 13, 2026

Mercor links on this site are my referral links. If you sign up through one, Mercor may ask whether Daichi Kishida referred you. If you found the listing here, that's me and yes is accurate. It doesn't change your pay or your application. Already have a Mercor account? Then this doesn't apply to you. Details in the disclosure.

Key takeaways

• Two lists decide whether you can work on a given Mercor project: Mercor’s payment-countries page, and the eligible countries on the listing itself. They are maintained separately and they do not always agree.
• Mercor’s payment-countries page (read September 13, 2026) says it is “currently unable to onboard experts or issue contracts” in 89 locations, Kenya, Pakistan, China, Hong Kong, Russia and Ukraine among them.
• Of the 480 live listings I track, 206 carry a country list from the listing’s own eligibility field or text, and 155 of those name exactly one country. 104 name only the United States.
• 181 live listings name no country. Mercor’s referral policy says an unspecified listing is presumed open to the US, Canada, the UK or the EU by default, but 15 of those 181 require an Indian language, so the country line is not the whole story and Mercor makes the final call.
• Creating an account, applying, and the AI interview are all free, and one interview is reused across listings, so the cheapest way to find out is to apply.

Data as of September 13, 2026. Listing counts move every week; the official country lists move too.

I refer people to Mercor, so the question I get more than any other is some version of “can I even apply from here?” The published answers are bad: Mercor’s own page covers payments, not listings, and every other site just repeats “Mercor is global.” So here is both halves, with numbers from the listings themselves.

Which countries can work with Mercor at all?

Mercor’s supported countries page is really a payments page, and it has three lists. Read on September 13, 2026, it named:

• 103 countries paid through Stripe, Mercor’s primary processor. This is the main list, and it includes India, the Philippines, Nigeria, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt, South Africa, Japan, Singapore and most of Europe and Latin America.
• 4 countries paid through Wise: Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, Nepal and Turkey.
• 89 locations that are unsupported. Mercor’s wording: “Because of operational and payment-processing limitations, Mercor is currently unable to onboard experts or issue contracts in the locations listed below. If your location appears here, please do not begin work.” That list includes Kenya, Pakistan, China, Hong Kong, Macao, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Andorra, Russia, Ukraine, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela, along with most of Central Africa and the Pacific islands.

If your country is on the 107 supported between Stripe and Wise, the payment gate is not your problem and the listing’s own country line is what matters. If it is on the 89, Mercor is telling you not to start work, and that is worth knowing before you spend time on an interview.

What do the listings themselves say?

This is the part nobody publishes, because it means opening listings one at a time. Of the 480 Mercor listings that were live at their last check in my database, all re-opened between September 2 and 13, 2026:

Inside the 206 that do name countries, the lists are narrow. 155 name exactly one country, and 104 of those name only the United States. Another 34 name two to five countries, 12 name six to nineteen, and only 5 are genuinely wide: one engineering listing names 50 countries and showed 743 people hired at its last check on September 2, and four more (a medical writing role, a security analyst talent network, and two AI safety roles) name 40 or 41.

Here are the countries that appear most often, with the median posted hourly rate of the listings naming them. The median is over the midpoint of each listing’s posted range, only listings with a readable hourly rate are counted, and I leave the median out where fewer than three listings have one.

73 countries appear somewhere in the 206 lists. 48 of the 206 listings name at least one country outside the US, Canada, the UK and the EU.

Read the country line, not the job title

Listing titles are written for the client, not for you. Three examples from the current board, each from the listing’s own eligible-countries field at its last check (September 2 or 3, 2026):

• An In-House Counsel (Japan) role at $140 to $150 per hour lists Hong Kong as its only eligible country. The work is Japanese law; the residency requirement is not Japan.
• A PDF annotation role for Japanese at about $34 per hour lists Japan, the US, Canada and the UK. Language requirement and country requirement are separate lines.
• A Frontend Engineer listing at $90 per hour names 50 countries, from Estonia to Bolivia, and India is one of them.

So: open the listing, find the eligible-countries line, and read that. A listing named after a country is often about the subject matter.

Where the two lists disagree

Ten countries appear as eligible on live listings while also sitting on Mercor’s unsupported-payments list: Hong Kong (6 listings), Liechtenstein (6), Kosovo (4), Moldova (4), China (3), Honduras (2), and one each for Cuba, Nicaragua, Ukraine and Venezuela.

I cannot tell you which list wins, because Mercor does not say. What I can tell you is that the payments page is explicit (“please do not begin work”) and dated, while a listing’s country field is set per project. If you are in one of those ten, ask Mercor support before you invest time, and apply in the meantime: applying costs nothing and the answer comes from them, not from me.

If you are in India, the Philippines, Nigeria or Kenya

These are the four countries I get asked about most, so here is what my data actually supports.

India. Payments are supported through Stripe. Eight of the 206 listings with a country list name India, and they are a barbell: a 50-country engineering role at $90 per hour and a 40-country security talent network with no rate printed on its page, then an India-only full-stack role at $25 to $30, then five regional-language PDF annotation roles at about $13. Separately, 15 of the 181 listings that name no country require an Indian language (AI safety work in Punjabi, Assamese, Odia and Bengali, music and lyrics work in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Punjabi, Bengali and Urdu, a Hindi session annotator, and one per-task Hindi writing role; the hourly ones post roughly $11 to $42 per hour). Those are clearly not US-only in practice, whatever the default says. Apply to the wide listings as well as the India-specific ones; the wide ones are where the higher rates are.

The Philippines, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia and South Africa. All are on Mercor’s Stripe list, so payment works. None of them appears in any of the 206 country lists I have read; the one exception is a CAM programming listing that names Bangladesh alongside Australia and Argentina in catalog data I have not yet confirmed on the listing. That does not mean no listing is open to you: 181 live listings name no country, 93 more only have catalog data so far, and the board turns over weekly. It does mean I have not yet seen a listing that names your country, and that the honest move is to create the free account, watch new listings, and apply to anything whose country line is empty or includes you.

Kenya and Pakistan. Both are on the 89-location unsupported list, so Mercor says it cannot currently onboard experts or issue contracts there. That is Mercor’s own statement and it can change; the page is the place to check.

How to check your own eligibility in about a minute

1. Open Mercor’s supported countries page and search for your country. If it is under “unsupported,” that is the answer for now.
2. Create the free account and open any listing that interests you. The listing shows its own eligible countries.
3. If the listing names countries and yours is not among them, move on to the next listing. If it names none, Mercor’s referral policy default is the US, Canada, the UK and the EU, but language-specific listings routinely say otherwise, so apply and let Mercor decide.
4. Apply to more than one. One AI interview is reused across listings, so the second application is cheaper than the first.

Create a free Mercor account through my referral link and check the country line on the listings that fit you. Every listing on my weekly digest was opened by hand on the date shown, and I list the eligible countries for each one.

FAQ

Which countries is Mercor available in?

Mercor’s payment-countries page, read on September 13, 2026, lists 103 countries paid through Stripe and 4 through Wise (Brazil, the UAE, Nepal and Turkey), and names 89 locations where Mercor says it currently cannot onboard experts or issue contracts. Eligibility for any specific project is then set by that listing’s own eligible-countries field.

Can I work for Mercor from India?

Yes on payments: India is on Mercor’s Stripe list. On listings, 8 of the 206 live listings with a country list name India explicitly, and the seven of those with a posted rate range from about $13 to $90 per hour; 15 more listings that name no country require an Indian language. Apply to the wide multi-country listings too, since those carry the higher posted rates.

Can I work for Mercor from the Philippines, Nigeria or Kenya?

The Philippines and Nigeria are on Mercor’s Stripe payment list, but neither appears in any of the 206 listing country lists I have read as of September 13, 2026. Kenya is on Mercor’s 89-location unsupported list, which says Mercor currently cannot onboard experts or issue contracts there.

What happens if a listing does not say which countries are eligible?

Mercor’s referral policy says that when a listing specifies no location, the opportunity is presumed available to applicants in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom or the European Union by default. In practice, listings that require a specific language are often open more widely, so the safest reading is that Mercor decides on the application.

Does Mercor pay through PayPal?

No. Mercor’s documentation names Stripe as its primary processor and Wise for Brazil, the UAE, Nepal and Turkey. If PayPal is a requirement for you, see my Mercor vs Outlier comparison.

How I checked this

The official lists come from Mercor’s supported countries and referral policy pages, both read on September 13, 2026, and counted from the page itself rather than from a summary. The listing numbers come from my own database of Mercor listings: I open each listing on work.mercor.com and record its posted rate and status from the page, and its eligible countries from the eligibility field Mercor publishes for the listing (153 of the 206) or from the listing text (53). The 480 listings here were live at their last check, each re-opened between September 2 and 13, 2026. “Names specific eligible countries” means the country list came from the listing page or its own eligibility field, not from a title or a summary. Country medians use each listing’s posted range and skip listings without a readable hourly rate. More on the method on the About page, and the pay distribution across the whole board is in my Mercor review.

Mercor links on this page are my referral links. If you sign up through one, Mercor may ask whether Daichi Kishida referred you. If you found the listing here, that’s me and yes is accurate. It doesn’t change your pay or your application. Already have a Mercor account? Then this doesn’t apply to you.