Mentor network — compensation
How mentor compensation works.
UpSkillZone mentors are paid per review, not per hour and not per retainer. Every accepted review posts to your mentor ledger the moment your rubric is signed. Rates are fixed by submission kind and region; multipliers come from calibration. The numbers below are the entire pay model — there is no negotiation layer on top.
Pay table
| Submission kind | USD (US/EU/AU/SG/UAE) | INR (India) | Wall-time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day Twin | $80 | ₹3,000 | ~30 min |
| Live Incident | $120 | ₹4,500 | ~45 min |
| Capstone | $200 | ₹7,500 | ~90 min |
Region is determined by the payout account on file, not by IP.
Bonuses
- Calibration bonus — mentors at Cohen's kappa ≥ 0.85 across the trailing 30 reviews receive +15% on every base-pay line, applied automatically at ledger time.
- Streak bonus — 50 reviews completed in a calendar quarter without a single SLA breach pays a lump sum of $200 / ₹7,500 on top of the per-review rate.
- Re-review pay — when a learner disputes and a second mentor is asked to re-grade, the second mentor is paid the full base rate for that submission kind. It posts as a separate ledger line tagged
re_review.
Calibration tiers
| Kappa range | Tier | Per-review multiplier |
|---|---|---|
| kappa ≥ 0.85 | Calibrated | 1.15× |
| 0.70 ≤ kappa < 0.85 | Standard | 1.00× |
| kappa < 0.70 | Paused | 0 (no assignments) |
Kappa is recomputed nightly against the gold-set rubric.
Payouts
Payouts run monthly on a T+15 schedule: the ledger closes at 23:59 UTC on the last day of the month, and funds settle on the 15th of the following month. US, EU, AU, SG, and UAE mentors are paid in USD via Stripe Connect (Express accounts). India-based mentors are paid in INR via RazorpayX to a verified bank account or UPI VPA. Tax forms (W-9, W-8BEN, or Form 16-equivalent) are collected at onboarding and re-checked annually.
What's NOT paid
- No-shows. Live Incident sessions where the mentor fails to join the call within the 5-minute grace window are unpaid and count against the SLA streak.
- Claimed-but-released items. Reviews you claim and then release back to the queue (whether by manual release or by the 6-hour auto-release) do not pay.
- Anti-fraud failures. Reviews that the integrity engine flags for collusion, copy-paste rubric, or out-of-distribution timing are voided and the corresponding ledger lines are reversed.
- Calibration drills. Gold-set drills used to compute kappa are unpaid; they are required to keep your account in the Standard or Calibrated tier.