A strange new gig has been filling our inbox all summer: companies want to pay you to strap a phone to your head and film yourself washing dishes, folding laundry, cooking dinner, and making the bed. In July 2026 we received recruiting briefs for two "egocentric" recording projects from Perle and a third from DataVale AI, then went looking and verified seven more live listings across OneForma, Mindrift, Chemin, Claru, OpenTrain, Perle's own careers page, and Micro1. This is a hiring wave, not a one-off.
It is the labor side of the humanoid robot race. Robots that will one day do your chores first need millions of hours of first-person video of humans doing those chores, and the companies building them are paying ordinary people to supply it. This guide breaks down how the work functions, what it really pays (we quote the briefs and listings directly), which 17 platforms are hiring and in which countries, and the privacy questions you should answer before you press record inside your own home.
How we researched this guide
This guide is built from recruiting emails and project briefs we received directly in July 2026 (Perle's egocentric projects and DataVale's Project Alpaca), ten live job listings we verified individually (linked in Sources), listings on RemoWork's own jobs board, official app-store pages, funding announcements, and public contributor reviews. We maintain company profiles for every platform named below. To be transparent: we have not yet completed paid recording tasks on Atlas Capture or Claru ourselves. Pay figures are quoted from the platforms' own briefs and listings, exactly as written. We have worked first-hand on CrowdGen and OneForma projects.
At a glance
Typical pay
$3–$9/hr
Common rate
$6/hr accepted footage
Equipment
iPhone 12+ typical
Skill required
None
The honest framing up front: at $3–$9 per hour this pays far below AI training work ($15–$100+ per hour on the platforms in our Top 25 guide). The pitch is different: you are being paid for chores you were going to do anyway, with zero tests, zero credentials, and no screen time. Judge it as paid housework, not as a career.
Why robots need videos of you doing dishes
Humanoid robots are leaving the lab. 1X is taking orders for NEO, a roughly $20,000 home humanoid with deliveries slated for late 2026, and Figure, Tesla, and a wave of Chinese manufacturers are racing behind it. All of them share the same bottleneck: a robot can only learn to fold a towel by studying enormous quantities of first-person footage of hands folding towels, from the exact viewpoint its own cameras will have.
The internet, for all its video, barely contains this. YouTube shows you a cooking channel's third-person camera angle, not ten thousand close-up repetitions of a hand gripping a sponge. So the industry is buying the footage new. Investors estimate leading robotics firms will purchase hundreds of millions of hours of egocentric video over the next few years. The scale is already visible: Micro1 reports roughly 4,000 contributors across 71 countries producing more than 160,000 hours of video per month, JD.com is working with the city of Suqian in China to generate 10 million hours of robotics training data in two years, and DoorDash quietly launched a stand-alone Tasks app for this exact work in early 2026.
"Egocentric" simply means first-person: the camera sees what your eyes see. That is why every project below wants your phone mounted on a head strap rather than propped on a shelf, and why the phone requirements are strict. Most projects demand an ultrawide lens (iPhone 12 or newer is the usual floor) because the wide field of view captures both hands and the workspace at once. One detail we noticed across listings: Perle's Project Pretzel, OneForma's Project Triangle, and Claru all specify the identical device trio (iPhone 12+, Pixel 6+, Galaxy S21+). Competing recruiters quoting the same spec sheet tells you they are feeding the same buyers.
How these projects actually work
Sign up and verify your device
You download the project's app (Atlas Capture, for example, is a normal App Store download) or apply through a listing. The platform checks your phone model; unsupported models are rejected at the door. Perle's email brief explicitly excludes the iPhone 11, 16e, 17e, and Air from Pretzel because they lack the required ultrawide camera, while its separate careers-page listing accepts iPhone 11 or newer. Requirements are per project, so read each one.
Get the head strap (reimbursed, never prepaid to them)
You buy a phone head-strap mount and the platform reimburses it, typically on your first approved submission. Perle's listing goes further and provides a budget for the strap up front. A legitimate project covers equipment; it never charges you a joining fee. Treat any "pay to activate your account" message as a scam.
Record task batches to spec
Tasks arrive as prompts: fold laundry, tidy the kitchen, organize a room, vacuum. The specs are stricter than they sound. Claru's listing requires landscape 1080p at 30fps, camera at 0.5x (widest) zoom, clips of 2 to 30 minutes, no narration, no staged movements, and hands visible in at least 90% of the footage. OneForma asks for sessions of 30 minutes to 2 hours in a well-lit home. Atlas Capture caps tasks at 90 minutes each.
Review, approval, payout
Submissions go through quality review before they count. Pay is per approved hour or per accepted asset, not per recorded hour, and this gap is where most contributor complaints live. Rejected footage (bad framing, low light, repeated content) earns nothing, so read the recording guide before your first session, not after your first rejection.
What it really pays: the briefs and listings
Rather than quote vague ranges, here are the exact numbers from the briefs we received and the listings we verified in July 2026.
| Project | Stated pay | Regions | Device floor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project Pretzel (via Perle, for a humanoid robotics company) | Up to $1,440/mo (~$9/hr at the 160-hr cap) | US, Canada, LATAM only | iPhone 12+, Pixel 6+, Galaxy S21+ |
| Claru: Egocentric Household Tasks Capture | $6/hr accepted footage; typical $40/day, $300/week | Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru | Recent iPhone, Pixel 6+, Galaxy S21+ |
| OpenTrain: Egocentric Video Data Collection Specialist | $6/hr | US, Canada, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia | Smartphone or smart glasses |
| Atlas Capture (open worldwide) | Up to $640/mo (~$4/hr); 50-hr cap per household | Global | iPhone 12 or newer only |
| Project Alpaca (DataVale AI) | INR 270–370 per approved hour (~$3.10–$4.25) | India-focused | iPhone 11 or newer |
| Project Triangle (OneForma) | Fixed rate per approved asset (undisclosed) | South Africa (EN), Brazil (PT), Malaysia | iPhone 12+, Pixel 6+, Galaxy S21+ |
Read the fine print in those ceilings. Pretzel's $1,440 assumes the full 160 submitted hours in a month, a part-time job's worth of recording; the contractual commitment is 88 recorded hours over one month, around 4 hours per day. Atlas Capture caps each household at 50 hours total, so its realistic payout is closer to $200 per household than $640 per month. Claru's own "typical" numbers ($40/day, $300/week) are the most honest published figures in the niche, and they imply 6 to 7 hours of accepted footage a day. Perle's brief also offered a $20 fast-start bonus for recording 25 hours within the first 7 days. Bonuses like that tell you demand is real right now; they also tell you the window on any single project is short.
Region bans are enforced
Perle's brief states plainly that signing up for Project Pretzel from outside the US, Canada, and LATAM gets your account banned. Do not VPN into region-locked projects. Payment systems verify your bank country anyway, and a ban usually covers the recruiter's whole network, not just one project.
Which projects cover your country
Region eligibility is the single biggest filter in this niche, so start here. Every listing below was live in July 2026.
| If you live in… | Your options (best first) |
|---|---|
| US / Canada | Project Pretzel (~$9/hr), Perle's careers listing, OpenTrain ($6/hr), Atlas Capture |
| Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru | Claru ($6/hr), Project Pretzel, OpenTrain, Perle's careers listing, Atlas Capture |
| Brazil | Claru ($6/hr), OneForma Project Triangle (Portuguese), OpenTrain, Perle's careers listing, Atlas Capture |
| South Africa | OneForma Project Triangle (English), Atlas Capture, Mindrift |
| India | DataVale Project Alpaca (INR 270–370/hr), Atlas Capture, Mindrift |
| Malaysia | Chemin/KayaKaya, OneForma Project Triangle, OpenTrain, Atlas Capture |
| Indonesia | OpenTrain ($6/hr), Atlas Capture, Mindrift |
| Everywhere else | Atlas Capture (global, iPhone 12+ only), Mindrift's First-Person AI Video Trainer track, plus standing profiles at the veterans below |
The platforms hiring recorders in 2026
We track all 17 in the RemoWork company directory. The first five run dedicated recording programs today; the next six had live egocentric listings when we checked; the last six are established data-collection companies worth a standing profile.
Atlas Capture
Atlas Capture is the purest example of this niche: an iPhone app whose entire purpose is paying you to record first-person clips of household activities for robotics and computer-vision training. You download it from the App Store, verify an iPhone 12 or newer, mount the phone on a reimbursed head strap, and record 90-minute task sessions on your own schedule. It is also the only fully global option on this list.
Pay ceiling
Up to $640/mo (~$4/hr)
Household cap
50 hours total
Regions
Global
Device
iPhone 12+ only
Key detail: early App Store sentiment is mixed (around 3.0 stars from a small number of ratings), with reviewers confirming payouts are real while calling the head strap uncomfortable. The catch: some public contributor reports describe account suspensions and rejected balances near the payout threshold. Withdraw as you earn rather than banking a large balance, and screenshot your task history.
Perle
Perle is an expert network supplying human-verified data to AI labs and robotics companies, funded with a $9M seed round led by Framework Ventures in 2025. It runs this niche from two directions. Its July 2026 email campaign offered Project Pretzel (the $1,440/month closed pilot for a humanoid robotics client, US/Canada/LATAM only) and routed everyone else into Atlas Capture. Its own careers page separately lists an Egocentric Video Data Contributor role covering the US, Canada, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and Argentina: iPhone 11+, a provided head-strap budget, a preferred minimum of 10 recorded hours per week, and filming that extends beyond chores into trades like manufacturing, construction, and food service.
Top project pay
Up to $1,440/mo (~$9/hr)
Commitment
10 hrs/week preferred (careers role)
Regions
Americas, per project
Kit
Head-strap budget provided
Key detail: Perle's own words in the brief: "many more projects are lining up behind them." Egocentric collection is a program for them, not a one-off. The catch: project windows close fast, the best-paying pilots are region-locked, and the careers-page role discloses no rate ("competitive, region-dependent, per hour of accepted footage"). Get the number in writing before you buy anything or block out hours.
Claru
Claru publishes the most transparent numbers in the niche. Its live Egocentric Household Tasks Capture listing for Latin America pays $6 per hour of accepted footage and states typical earnings of $40 per day or $300 per week, across Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and Peru. The task list is specific: folding and sorting laundry, kitchen tidy-up (not cooking), organizing a single room, vacuuming, sweeping, mopping, cleaning mirrors.
Pay
$6/hr accepted footage
Typical earnings
$40/day, $300/week
Regions
6 LATAM countries
Spec
1080p/30fps, 0.5x zoom
Key detail: the quality bar is written down: landscape 1080p at 30fps, widest (0.5x) zoom, clips of 2 to 30 minutes, no narration, no staged movements, hands visible in at least 90% of footage. Follow that spec and rejections should be rare. The catch: hitting the "typical" $40/day means 6 to 7 accepted hours of chores daily, which is a lot of housework. Treat the weekly number as a ceiling for heavy recorders, not an average.
DataVale AI
DataVale AI runs app-based recording projects with an India-first contributor community organized through Slack, complete with team leads who coordinate recording pushes. Its current Project Alpaca collects both household and industrial first-person footage, paying INR 270 per approved hour for household work and INR 370 for industrial (roughly $3.10 and $4.25 at July 2026 exchange rates), with immediate starts for accepted contributors on iPhone 11 or newer.
Pay
INR 270–370/approved hr
Task types
Household + industrial
Regions
India-focused
Device
iPhone 11+
Key detail: the industrial track pays about 37% more than household; if you have access to a workshop, garage, or workplace where filming is permitted, say so when you apply. The catch: pay is per approved hour and coordination happens in community channels, so quality standards are communicated informally. Ask for the written recording guidelines before your first session.
Micro1
Micro1 is best known as an AI-trainer marketplace, but it has quietly become one of the largest egocentric-video engines in the industry: public reporting describes roughly 4,000 contributors across 71 countries producing more than 160,000 hours of video per month for robotics customers, and its jobs board carried a live Video Contributor posting when we checked in July 2026. Recording roles appear alongside its usual AI training tracks, so one application (via its Zara AI interview) covers both kinds of work.
Scale
160,000+ hrs/month
Network
~4,000 contributors, 71 countries
Also offers
AI training $20–$150/hr
Entry
AI interview, ID check
Key detail: if you qualify for Micro1's regular AI training tracks, those pay several times more than recording work; treat collection projects as the fallback, not the goal. Read our full Micro1 review before applying.
Live egocentric listings we verified (July 2026)
OneForma · Project Triangle
Centific's crowd platform is running a dedicated ego-centric collection program: natural household activities (no acting), head-mounted phone, sessions of 30 minutes to 2 hours, paid per approved asset. Open to South Africa (English), Brazil (Portuguese), and Malaysia on iPhone 12+, Pixel 6+, or Galaxy S21+. We have completed OneForma projects first-hand and been paid.
Mindrift · First-Person AI Video Trainer
Toloka's specialist arm lists a point-of-view recording track: everyday activities, no fixed hours, project-based pay per submission. A natural add-on if you already do Mindrift's better-paying evaluation work; see our Mindrift review.
OpenTrain · Egocentric Video Data Collection Specialist
The rate-transparent marketplace lists this role at a flat $6/hr across the US, Canada, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Smartphone or smart glasses, cooking, cleaning, organizing, and desk work, with onboarding provided and no experience needed.
Chemin · Egocentric Video Collection Contributor
Malaysian data company (Chemin Sdn Bhd, recruiting under its KayaKaya annotator community brand) with a live egocentric collection listing on Workable. Rates are not published; ask for them in writing during onboarding, and apply new-platform caution: withdraw earnings promptly.
Mercor
The $10B-valuation talent marketplace posts physical-task and data-collection contracts alongside its engineering and AI training roles. Its "apply once" model means your existing profile gets matched when a robotics client opens a collection wave. See our Mercor review.
Meridial AI
Invisible Technologies' expert marketplace (roughly 24,000 experts) runs video-production and data tracks in the $6–$65/hr band, with SOC 2 and GDPR compliance that matters if you care where your footage goes. Onboarding to first invitation can be as fast as 48 hours.
The data-collection veterans worth a standing profile
These companies have run paid photo, video, speech, and smart-device collection projects for years, long before the robotics wave. Their individual projects open and close constantly, so the play is to register once and respond when a project matches your country and device.
- DataForce (TransPerfect): global collection programs across speech, image, and video, run with enterprise-grade project management.
- CrowdGen (Appen): entry-level friendly, with projects scoped as "participate from anywhere within [country]"; we have worked CrowdGen projects ourselves.
- TELUS Digital: its AI Community has run home photo and video capture projects for years and remains one of the steadiest names in the category.
- Terac: research-study platform ($78/hr average across studies) that occasionally fields recorded-task and product-usage studies; fewer hours, far higher rates.
- DATAmundi: European data company with collection and annotation work across many languages.
- HumanSignal (Label Studio): the labeling side of this pipeline; if you would rather annotate egocentric footage than record it, this is the skill path.
Before you film inside your home: the privacy checklist
This deserves more attention than any pay rate. You are selling footage of the inside of your home, and unlike a survey answer, video is dense with information you did not mean to include. The same industry buying this footage is also wrestling with the issue from the other side: 1X's NEO home robot ships with people-blurring and "no-go zones" precisely because filming inside homes is sensitive. You should apply the same discipline to your own recordings.
Do this before recording
- ✓ Read the data policy: who buys the footage, how long it is kept, and whether you can request deletion.
- ✓ Clear the frame: mail, documents, medication, screens, valuables, and anything showing your address.
- ✓ Keep family, and especially children, out of frame. Their faces are biometric data they never consented to sell.
- ✓ Record in one or two rooms you have prepared, not roaming the whole house.
- ✓ Withdraw earnings as soon as thresholds allow.
Walk away if
- ✗ There is no written privacy policy, or it does not name what the footage trains.
- ✗ You are asked to pay anything up front: equipment, activation, or "verification" fees.
- ✗ Recruiting happens only through unverifiable WhatsApp or Telegram accounts with no company site behind them.
- ✗ The project asks for footage of other people without their written consent.
- ✗ Payouts require an unusual app, gift cards, or crypto you did not agree to.
Who should do this (and who should skip it)
Worth it if you are
Someone with a supported phone who does hours of housework anyway; a stay-at-home parent (recording while kids are out of frame); a student in a region where $150–$400 a month is meaningful, especially in the LATAM, South Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia, and India corridors these projects now target; or anyone who wants a zero-skill entry point into the AI data economy before moving up to better-paying work like the platforms in our beginner guide.
Skip it if you are
Anyone qualified for AI training or evaluation work: those rates start where recording rates end. If you can pass an assessment on RemoExperts, Outlier, or DataAnnotation, your hour is worth 3 to 10 times more there. Also skip it if the privacy trade sits wrong with you; no rate here is high enough to override that.
The smart middle path: record during chores you already do, cap your exposure at one or two platforms, and use the income while you qualify for higher-skill work. Our acceptance guide covers that upgrade path step by step, and if audio is more your thing than video, see our guide to platforms that pay for your voice.
Frequently asked questions
Is getting paid to record household chores legit?
Yes, the industry is real. Robotics and AI companies are buying enormous volumes of first-person household footage, and we verified ten live briefs and listings across Perle, Claru, OneForma, OpenTrain, Mindrift, Chemin, DataVale, Micro1, and Atlas Capture in July 2026 alone. Individual platforms still vary in reliability, so read contributor reports, never pay to join, and withdraw earnings promptly.
How much can I actually earn recording videos for AI?
Effective rates run about $3–$9 per approved hour, and $6/hr is the emerging standard (both Claru and OpenTrain publish it). Claru states typical earnings of $40/day or $300/week for heavy recorders; Project Pretzel advertises up to $1,440/month at a 160-hour cap; Atlas Capture up to $640/month with a 50-hour household cap. Realistic casual earnings are $100–$400 per month, and only footage that passes quality review counts.
What equipment do I need?
Usually a recent phone with an ultrawide camera: iPhone 12+, Pixel 6+, or Galaxy S21+ is the trio most listings name (Perle's email brief explicitly rejects the iPhone 11, 16e, 17e, and Air for Pretzel, while other projects accept iPhone 11+). Add a phone head strap, which legitimate platforms reimburse or budget for. OpenTrain also accepts smart glasses.
Is it safe to film inside my home?
It can be, if you control the frame. Prepare one or two rooms, remove documents, screens, medication, and anything identifying, and keep family members, especially children, out of shot. Read the platform's data policy for retention and deletion terms before uploading anything. If there is no written policy, do not record.
Why do AI companies want videos of me doing chores?
Humanoid robots learn manipulation, gripping a sponge, folding a shirt, loading a dishwasher, by studying first-person human demonstrations from the same viewpoint their own cameras will have. Internet video barely contains this angle, so companies pay to have it recorded fresh. Home humanoids like 1X's NEO, with deliveries slated for late 2026, are trained on exactly this kind of data.
Can I join from any country?
Coverage is wider than it looks, but per-project: Atlas Capture is global (iPhone 12+); Claru covers six LATAM countries; OpenTrain spans the US, Canada, four LATAM countries, Indonesia, and Malaysia; OneForma's Project Triangle takes South Africa, Brazil, and Malaysia; DataVale focuses on India. Check the region table above for your best option, and never VPN into a region-locked project; Perle bans accounts for it.
Do I have to pay anything to start?
No. The only out-of-pocket cost is a phone head strap, and legitimate projects reimburse it, Perle's brief reimburses "the moment you submit" and its careers listing provides the budget up front. Any project asking for joining fees, activation fees, or paid "training" is a scam. Legitimate platforms pay you, never the reverse.
How does this compare to AI training platforms?
Recording pays $3–$9/hr with no skill bar; AI training and evaluation pays $15–$100+ per hour but gates entry with assessments. Recording wins on accessibility and the fact that you were doing the chores anyway. If you can clear an assessment, training work wins on every other measure; start with our Top 25 AI training platforms guide.
Sources & how to verify this
- Primary (first-hand): Perle's egocentric-projects recruiting email (July 14, 2026) detailing Project Pretzel and Atlas Capture pay, device rules, caps, and region bans; DataVale AI's Project Alpaca brief with INR rates; matching listings on RemoWork's jobs board. Figures are quoted from these briefs exactly.
- Live listings we verified individually (July 2026; listings close, so some links may retire): OneForma Project Triangle, Claru Egocentric Household Tasks Capture, OpenTrain Egocentric Video Data Collection Specialist, Mindrift First-Person AI Video Trainer, Chemin Egocentric Video Collection Contributor, Perle Egocentric Video Data Contributor, and Micro1's Video Contributor posting on jobs.micro1.ai.
- Official: the Atlas Capture App Store page and Perle's $9M seed announcement (Framework Ventures).
- Industry reporting: Keeping Up With AI on the egocentric gig economy (investor demand estimates, Micro1 and DoorDash figures), Rest of World on China's robotics data race (JD.com/Suqian), and TechRadar on 1X NEO's home-training privacy model.
- Community sentiment: public App Store reviews of Atlas Capture and independent contributor write-ups, which report both real payouts and suspension complaints. These describe other people's experiences, not our payments.
A note on the numbers: pay figures reflect the briefs and listings as published in July 2026. Project windows in this niche open and close within weeks, and rates change per wave. This guide was last verified in July 2026; we update it as new briefs arrive.
The bottom line
Egocentric recording is the most accessible paid entry into the AI data economy that has ever existed: no test, no degree, no experience, just a supported phone and a sink full of dishes. It is also capped, region-gated, modestly paid, and it trades on footage of your home, so go in with the privacy checklist done and your expectations set at "paid chores," not "career." Pick the best project for your region from the table above, park standing profiles at two veterans (CrowdGen, OneForma, or TELUS), and put the income toward the months it takes to qualify for higher-paying AI training work. The robots are coming for the dishes either way; you may as well get paid teaching them.
Find Live Data Collection Jobs
RemoWork tracks recording, collection, and AI training roles across every platform in this guide, with verified pay and country eligibility on each listing.
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