Using Amazon MechanicalTurk if location is not US?

Question

Amazon Mechanical Turk is a mass-micro outsourcing API, where you can get lots's of small simple tasks (e.g."Is there a shop in this image") done relatively cheaply (e.g. 0.10 U$ per image).

Amazon seems to assume that this service is mostly of interest to US companies. This results in difficulties if you want to use the service (as an "Requester"): for example there is no easy way of funding your Account without an US Bank account.

Can somebody share experiences of using the Service from outside the US?

Is this still the case? – Alec Jacobson Dec 19 '13 at 13:49 — Alec Jacobson, Dec 19 '13 at 13:49

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 26 '09 at 01:51

8

Since Amazon doesn't let outside US access yet, you'll need to either:

Wait for Amazon to open it up to outside US, might be a long wait.
Get a good friend in the US to open a PO Box for you then use an online US bank to create an account. If you don't start a corporation or other legal business, they will need to provide their US drivers license to Amazon too.
Use a 3rd party provider like HIT-Builder who will let you post on Mechanical Turk using their US Amazon account.

answered Jan 26 '09 at 01:51

DavGarcia

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Thanks for the suggestion. My Google-Foo seems to leave me there - how do I find additional 3rd party providers like HIT-Builder? – max Jan 26 '09 at 07:01
Actually they were the only ones I know of that currently have that service available to those outside the country. – DavGarcia Jan 26 '09 at 07:17
I now used HIP-Builder and I'm quite happy with them so far. – max Jan 30 '09 at 07:01
That is good to hear. How were the costs compared to what you would expect using Mechanical Turk directly? – DavGarcia Jan 30 '09 at 17:47
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http://www.hit-builder.com/ is closed now... Anyone knows of any other alternatives? – Pascal Van Hecke Jan 18 '11 at 23:06
You can try [TurkPrime Labs](https://www.turkprime.com/labs). They will run HITs for non-US based researchers – Jonathan May 08 '15 at 01:51

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered May 08 '15 at 01:55

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You may want to take a look at TurkPrime labs which offers this as a service to non-US based researchers.

answered May 08 '15 at 01:55

Jonathan

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 12 '11 at 06:44

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I think they recently changed their rules - I am based in Australia, and as recently as 6 months ago I was unable to use Mechanical Turk. That recently changed and now I am able to post jobs on the service.

answered Dec 12 '11 at 06:44

bagnap

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How? When I try to register it says "At this time Mechanical Turk does not support Requesters from countries outside the United States." – vaughan Sep 01 '12 at 05:53
Same they said to me. not available outside US. – Varundroid Sep 06 '12 at 06:22

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 25 '09 at 22:49

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The problem you have is that to actually be able to add funds to your account, you need to have a US billing address. If you can get round that issue, then it all works fine.

answered Jan 25 '09 at 22:49

Sam Cogan

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Using Amazon MechanicalTurk if location is not US?

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