Refer & earn

Earn $250 every time
someone you refer gets hired.

$250 is the floor. Specialist clinical, legal and quantitative listings pay up to $900, because those are the roles we struggle to fill. No cap on how many people you refer.

Paid in the Tuesday and Friday, 12:00 UTC bonus run once your referral logs 20 approved hours.

Sign in to get your link

Every Cortext account has a permanent referral code, created with the account. Sign in and it is on this page, along with a live view of who has clicked, who has signed up, who has been hired and what you are owed.

No cap

Refer one person or fifty. There is no ceiling on the number of referrals or on total earnings.

90-day window

Your link stays attributable for 90 days after someone clicks it, so they do not have to act immediately.
How it works

Four steps, and the one that actually pays

A referral earns nothing at signup. It earns when the person you sent does real work — which is why the bonus is worth what it is.

  1. 01

    Share your link

    Every account gets a permanent code the moment it is created. The link works from anywhere — a message, a post, a group chat, printed on a slide at a conference.
    Codes are never reissued or recycled, so a link you shared two years ago still credits you.
  2. 02

    They create an account

    The code is held for 90 days from the click, so they do not have to sign up the same day. First link wins: if someone arrives on two different referral links, the first one is the one that counts.
    Attribution needs the account to be created on the same browser the link was opened in, within that window.
  3. 03

    They get hired onto a project

    This is the event that confirms your bonus. The amount is set by the listing they were hired onto — $250 for standard roles, more for specialist ones — and it is locked in at that moment. A later change to the listing cannot reduce it.
  4. 04

    You get paid

    The bonus is released once your referral logs 20 approved hours, in the next Tuesday and Friday, 12:00 UTC run after that. Bonuses do not wait for the Friday wage run — they are on their own schedule.
    Standard transfers land in two to five business days depending on your bank and country.
Payouts

What each kind of referral is worth

The bonus tracks how hard the role is to fill, not how much the referral is worth to us in revenue.

Standard
$250

Generalist evaluation, annotation, language, creative and one-time survey work.

Specialist
$250 – $575

Software engineering, STEM research, finance, consulting and senior technical listings.

Hard to fill
up to $900

Licensed clinical, legal and quantitative roles where the credential itself is the constraint.

The exact figure is on every listing
Each role on the board shows its own referral bonus. If you are pointing someone at a specific listing, that is the number you will be paid — not an average.
Programme terms

The rules, stated plainly

Written out because the fastest way to lose a bonus is to not know one of these.

Who can refer
Any contributor with a verified email address. You do not need to have worked a project yourself, and there is no limit on how many people you refer.
Who counts as referred
Someone who did not already have a Cortext account, who arrived on your link, and who created their account within 90 days of the click.
One referrer per person
Attribution is exclusive and permanent. It cannot be transferred, split between two referrers, or reassigned after the fact.
When the bonus confirms
When your referral is accepted onto a project. Signing up, applying and passing an assessment do not confirm anything on their own.
When it is released
After 20 approved hours, in the next Tuesday and Friday, 12:00 UTC bonus run. Hours removed in review do not count toward the threshold.
Self-referral
Not permitted, and detected. Using your own link on a second account of your own reverses the referral and puts both accounts under review.
What ends eligibility
Referring accounts you control, mass-posting your link to unrelated audiences, paid search on Cortext brand terms, or misrepresenting what the work pays. We reverse the referral and, for repeated cases, close the programme for that account.
Disputes
If you believe a referral was attributed to the wrong person, write to referrals@cortext-ai.uk within 7 days of their signup with the link you shared and roughly when. Evidence submitted after that cannot be checked against the click record.
Tax
Referral bonuses are income and are reported with the rest of what Cortext pays you — in the US, on the same 1099-NEC. Nothing is withheld.
Changes
Bonus amounts can change for future referrals. A referral already confirmed keeps the amount it was confirmed at.
Refer well
  • Send people to a specific listing they are actually qualified for
  • Tell them the rate and the screening involved — surprises cost you the bonus
  • Colleagues, alumni groups and professional networks convert far better than open posting
  • Point clinicians, lawyers and quants at the specialist roles: better fit, bigger bonus
Questions about a referral

Write to referrals@cortext-ai.uk. Include your referral code and the approximate date you shared the link.

Cortext has no phone line. Referral queries are answered by email, usually within one business day.

Questions

Referral FAQ

No. Signup starts the clock but earns nothing. The bonus is confirmed when your referral is hired onto a project and released once they have logged their first approved hours. This is deliberate — paying on signup turns a referral programme into a signup farm within about a week.
It depends entirely on how quickly your referral moves through screening and gets matched. The median contributor is working within a few weeks of applying; from there the 20 qualifying hours usually take one to two weeks. Nothing expires while you wait.
No. The programme pays for new contributors. If they already had an account before clicking your link — even a dormant one they never used — no referral is created.
Attribution is carried in a cookie on the browser that opened the link, so a click on a phone and a signup on a laptop will not connect. Ask them to sign up on the same device, or write to referrals@cortext-ai.uk within 7 days and we can check the click record.
Not on the number of people you refer or the total you earn. There is a fair-use expectation behind it: a sudden burst of signups from one code goes to manual review before any bonus is released, which typically adds a few days.
No. A bonus is not logged time and does not count toward the 80-hour weekly ceiling or affect your quality score. It is paid on a separate schedule from wages for exactly that reason.
A bonus already released is yours and is not clawed back. A bonus that is confirmed but not yet released is only paid if they reach the qualifying hours; if they leave or are removed before that, it does not pay out.
Not on Cortext brand terms — bidding on our own name costs us the traffic we already have and ends programme eligibility. Ads on your own audience or your own content are fine.

Your network is worth something.

$250 per hire, no cap, and a code that never expires. Sign in to get yours.

Get your referral link →How Cortext works