Amazon to Halt New Sign-Ups for Mechanical Turk on July 30 2026

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced that it will stop accepting new customers for its crowdsourcing service, Mechanical Turk, on July 30, 2026. The decision was announced on the Mechanical Turk website in a statement that said AWS had made the decision after 'careful consideration.' Existing customers can continue to use the service as normal.

The statement added that AWS continues to invest in security and availability improvements for Mechanical Turk, but the company does not plan to introduce new features.

Mechanical Turk was launched in 2005 by Amazon as a crowdsourcing platform that allows individuals and businesses to post small tasks, known as HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks), that require human intelligence to complete. The platform has been used for a variety of tasks, including data entry, content moderation, and transcription.

The platform has faced criticism in the past for its lack of transparency and poor working conditions for its workers, who are classified as independent contractors. Some workers have reported earning as little as $1.40 per hour for tasks that take several hours to complete.

In 2020, Amazon announced that it would increase the minimum pay for Mechanical Turk workers to $15 per hour, but some workers have reported that this increase has not been consistently applied.

The decision to stop accepting new customers for Mechanical Turk is likely to affect a large number of individuals and businesses that rely on the platform. The exact number of users is not known, but it is estimated that tens of thousands of people work on Mechanical Turk each month.

The impact of this decision is likely to be felt beyond the United States, as Mechanical Turk is used globally. In Nigeria, for example, many people rely on platforms like Mechanical Turk to earn a living.

In response to the announcement, some users have expressed concerns about their ability to access their accounts and complete tasks. Others have expressed relief that the platform is being revamped to prioritize security and availability.

It is not clear what the future holds for Mechanical Turk, but it is likely that the decision to stop accepting new customers will have significant implications for the platform and its users.