# Amazon's Mechanical Turk

> Amazon Mechanical Turk was an Amazon-operated marketplace where businesses and researchers paid independent workers to classify data, annotate images, transcribe audio and complete surveys. Its web tools and API turned human judgment into a component of software workflows. The service permanently closed on September 30, 2026.

- **Founded:** 2005
- **Headquarters:** Seattle, United States
- **Founders:** Amazon (Corporate creator and operator), Jeff Bezos (Amazon founder; credited with the original MTurk concept)
- **Products:** Human Intelligence Task marketplace, Requester website, Requester API and AWS SDK integration, Mechanical Turk Masters
- **Notable:** Launched publicly on November 2, 2005., Made distributed human work accessible through a web-services API., Introduced performance-based Masters qualifications in 2011.

## Products & services

- **Human Intelligence Task marketplace** — Historical marketplace for surveys, data cleanup, transcription, classification and human annotation; closed September 30, 2026.
- **Requester website** — Project templates, batch publishing, worker requirements, results review and payment management.
- **Requester API and AWS SDK integration** — Programmatic task creation and results retrieval; AWS SDK support arrived in 2017.
- **Mechanical Turk Masters** — Performance-based worker qualifications, initially for photo moderation and categorization.

## Achievements

- Launched publicly on November 2, 2005.
- Made distributed human work accessible through a web-services API.
- Introduced performance-based Masters qualifications in 2011.
- Added AWS SDK support in 2017.

## Latest updates

- **2026-09** — MTurk permanently closed on September 30; the official site now displays a closure notice.
- **2026-10** — Closure FAQs give October 30, 2026 as the deadline for payment-information checks, remaining HIT approvals and bonuses. Transaction history remains available until January 28, 2027.

## Links

- Website: https://www.mturk.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/amazon-s-mechanical-turk/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/amazonmturk
- GitHub: https://github.com/aws-samples/mturk-code-samples
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Amazon-mechanical-turk-770091729823422/

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/amazons-mechanical-turk
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-16