Mode vs Mercor: which should buy your company's data?

You can size yourself against Mode before any call. A law firm needs 6 people, a medical, accounting or finance firm 10, and any other business or nonprofit 30, and its calculator gives a figure it labels illustrative, not a guaranteed offer. Mode also says it reviews your systems, history and ownership before making a fixed offer, so the calculator is not the deal.^2,1

Mercor gives you less to go on, and that cuts both ways. Its page sets no size rule, which may leave room for a smaller company that Mode would turn down, but it also gives you no way to judge a deal in advance. It says pay depends on data volume, the tools you connect and the depth of your data, and that connecting more tools raises the payout.^4,8,22

Mercor's 2-4 weeks starts at the signed agreement, ends when the anonymized dataset reaches the buyer, and depends on extraction and processing. Mode's three months starts at your first conversation and runs through payment, and it depends on scope, rights review, contracting and export. Mode's launch release adds a 14-day nonbinding letter of intent, 15 to 30 days to collect and scrub the data, and payment expected within about 60 days.^5,6,23

Mercor does not say how long the run-up to signing takes, and Mode does not say how much of its three months falls after signing, so ask each for the same date: the day your money lands if you start this week.^5,23

Mode is a consumer app company led by co-founder and CEO Dan Novaes, reported as founded in 2019, though its SEC filing dates Mode Mobile, Inc. to 2015. It launched its company data program in October 2026, so the program has a short record. Business Insider reports Novaes has raised over $80 million through crowdfunding, and Mode's own sites give $100M and $120M+ for capital raised, so ask which is right.^18,15,16

Mode says it buys the copy directly, so in our view its ability to pay comes first. Its SEC report for the six months to June 30, 2026 says recurring losses and a $5,118,471 note installment due December 1, 2026 raised substantial doubt about continuing as a going concern, and that management concluded its plans alleviated that doubt. The report does not mention buying company records and came out days before the program launched, so ask what funds these purchases.^7,17,24

Mercor is far larger, valued at $10B after a $350M Series C, and it has bid in public for a company archive, offering $7.5M for Spirit Airlines' records. It also confirmed a 2026 cyberattack tied to the LiteLLM compromise. Mercor says only a very limited subset of experts had sensitive information affected and that customer impact was very limited, and proposed class actions from contractors are allegations with no ruling we have seen. We found no statement on whether companies licensing data were affected, so ask.^{19,25,20,26,21}

Mode is one of the buyers we work with and Mercor is not. The quiz checks your company against Mode's minimums and the other buyers we work with, and an offer from any of them gives you something to compare with Mercor's.