Scholars

Yes — Scholars is a real, operating platform. We verified its signup, payout, and policy pages directly on 2026-10-05 using 14 sources.

Not published — hourly per contract (rate shown on each offer) or per task/invoice on the unit-paid track; the homepage claims $10M+ paid to Scholars; third-party roundups cite ~$10/hr for iMerit annotation listings with expert roles higher. Work is billed at an hourly or project rate, so earnings scale with volume and acceptance rates.

Via Bank transfer, Deel. Payout cadence: Weekly / After project completion / Threshold-based. Minimum payout: No fixed figure — invoices wait at "Waiting for minimum amount" until the payout-route minimum (Trolley/Deel) is covered; weekly timesheet payments take up to 21 days after manager approval.

Minimum age 18 (or the legal age of majority in the jurisdiction, whichever is higher; age confirmed at registration). Global in principle — iMerit claims 10,000+ workers across 60+ countries — but jobs are location-dependent and onboarding only accepts countries available in the country-of-work selector. Current openings span the US, EU/EEA (France, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Lithuania, Italy, Greece), Turkey, Japan, Mexico, Vietnam, India and Serbia. Payouts via Trolley/Deel with local currency or USD in some countries. Government-issued ID photo/short video plus selfie (Veriff in the app.scholars.net flow; iDenfy in the Worksuite flow); up to 3 retries, up to 2 days pending; virtually all projects require it. Background checks via Certn for some jobs. Automated screening rejects VoIP/virtual phone numbers (Twilio) and flags breached emails (HIBP). Fraudulent profile information means immediate permanent termination.

Sign up free (email or Google; register page and the Fillout application are both live) → automated phone/email screening (Twilio VoIP check, HIBP) → identity verification (Veriff/iDenfy, 48h link window) → onboarding profile (resume auto-parse, education, work history, languages) → proctored desktop-only assessments (webcam + screen recording; some single-attempt) → apply to jobs → offer → compliance (signed MSA, work authorization, possible Certn background check, W9/W-8BEN, Trolley or Deel setup) → contract with weekly time tracking. Signup approval is discretionary and no work is guaranteed.

Expert/graduate-level positioning: 'experts, researchers, professionals, PhDs'; listings cite MA/MSc/PhD for analysis roles. Domains: healthcare/medicine, STEM, law, finance, linguistics, humanities, education, computer science and creative fields. Students and researchers may apply; skills are gated by proctored assessments after signup.