If you went looking for Toloka recently and ended up somewhere called Mindrift, nothing has gone wrong. As of July 2026, Toloka's contributor site redirects to Mindrift — we checked, and toloka.ai/tolokers now issues a permanent redirect to mindrift.ai/welcome carrying a migration tag.
Toloka has folded Toloka, Toloka Annotators and Mindrift into a single contributor platform. This is genuinely good news for anyone who used to work there, because the old economics were poor and the new ones are much better. Here is what actually changed.
What happened to your account and balance
The migration was handled about as well as these things go:
- Accounts moved automatically. Existing account history and earnings came across.
- Balances carried over. You did not need to withdraw before the cutover.
- Sign in the same way you did before. Use the same login method — email, Google, whatever you originally used.
- Do not create a second account. This is the one real trap. A duplicate account does not inherit your history or reputation, and multiple accounts are a policy problem on most platforms.
New sign-ups now land on Mindrift directly. There is no longer a separate Toloka contributor experience to join.
The pay change is the real story
Old Toloka was a classic microtask platform — the same shape as Clickworker or Microworkers. Tasks paid roughly $0.02–$0.04 each, and even experienced contributors working efficiently struggled past $3/hr. Regional pricing made it worse: the same task paid different amounts depending on where you lived, and most of the world sat at the bottom of that range.
Mindrift is a different business model entirely:
- General evaluation work — advertised at $15–$30/hr.
- Domain-expert tasks — $30–$100+/hr depending on your field and the project.
That is not a raise, it is a different job. Mindrift pays for judgement — evaluating model output, writing reference answers, applying expertise — rather than for volume of clicks. The trade is that qualification matters now in a way it never did on Toloka, where anyone could sign up and start immediately.
For context on where those rates sit market-wide, see our pay breakdown and the highest-paying roles guide.
What did not survive the merge
Field and outdoor tasks are gone. If your Toloka income came from walking to locations to photograph storefronts, verify addresses or collect on-the-ground data, that work did not move across. Mindrift is a remote, screen-based platform.
This is the group with a real grievance in the migration. Field tasks were one of the few ways to earn on Toloka in regions where the online task rates were lowest, and there is no direct replacement. If that was you, our guide to AI training work outside the US covers the platforms with the broadest international eligibility.
Is Toloka/Mindrift legit?
Yes. Toloka has operated since 2014, is based in the Netherlands, and has run services across 100+ countries and 40+ languages. The complaints you will find are about task availability, unclear instructions, rejected submissions and slow support — the normal friction of crowd platforms — not about theft.
Worth being honest about the old platform's reputation, though: Toloka's rates were low enough that plenty of people concluded it was exploitative rather than fraudulent. Mindrift is a direct response to that. If you tried Toloka years ago and dismissed it, the platform you would be joining today is not the one you left. Our legitimacy guide covers what separates the two categories.
Payouts
On old Toloka, Payoneer was the primary withdrawal route, with a $20 minimum and a $1 Payoneer fee per payment received. Check your current payout settings inside Mindrift after migrating rather than assuming the old configuration carried across — this is the one detail worth verifying manually.
More on payment mechanics in how AI training jobs pay you, and on the contractor tax side in our tax guide.
Should you bother now?
If you were an active Toloker: yes, log in and look. The economics improved by roughly an order of magnitude, and your history came with you.
If you are new: Mindrift is a reasonable entry point — lighter onboarding than Mercor, broader eligibility than DataAnnotation.tech's six countries, and it is the single largest source by listing volume on our board.
If you specifically wanted microtask work — cents per task, no qualification, start instantly — that option no longer exists here. That is a feature of the change, not a bug, but it is a real loss if microtasks were what fit your circumstances.
Bottom line
Toloka did not shut down and it did not take anyone's money — it became Mindrift, and the pay went from around $3/hr to an advertised $15–$30/hr for general work. Sign in with your original method, do not open a second account, and check your payout settings. The one group genuinely worse off is field-task workers, whose work did not make the move.
Read our full Mindrift review, see the platform profile, or apply at Mindrift.