Maki vs micro1, screening for a role or certifying an expert
Maki vs micro1 compares two uses of AI interviews. Maki screens and assesses your applicants for a specific role, inside your ATS, against your own grid. micro1 uses its AI interviewer Zara to certify experts once for its network, then sells expert human data, evaluations and AI agents to labs, companies and government. Choose by what you buy.
Maki vs micro1, side by side
Drawn from each company's own pages on 5 October 2026.
| Area | Maki | micro1 |
|---|---|---|
| How it describes itself | The intelligence running your hiring, end to end | A data lab for training frontier models and evaluating AI agents, per its homepage title |
| Products | Shiro, Mochi, Ken, Kumi and Tomo: screening, voice interviews, assessments, scheduling, interview notes | Realm for evaluations and RL environments, Cortex for agent evaluation, and robotics data |
| AI interviewer | Mochi, a voice screen your applicants take by web or phone | Zara, a conversational interview experts take on demand to join micro1 |
| Result of the interview | A score against your role's grid, sent to your ATS | A real time pass or fail against micro1's global certification criteria |
| Who the candidate works for | You, once hired | micro1's AI projects, as a remote expert |
| Talent pool | Your applicants only | 130,000+ people in 100+ domains and 60+ languages, its government page says |
| Price | Credit based per agent, by quote | No price published; companies use a project form |
Certify once, or screen for every role
micro1's interview guide says every candidate takes a conversational interview with Zara, available any time. A candidate picks one core skill, answers open technical and scenario questions, and does a coding challenge for technical roles or a human data exercise for annotator roles. Zara returns a real time result on whether the candidate meets micro1's global bar.
Maki starts from the role instead. At intake, the job description becomes a set of competencies, and every later stage scores against them. Mochi screens on eligibility, motivation, availability and language; Shiro tests skills; Ken goes deeper for high stakes roles. The same person could score well for one job and poorly for another, which is the point.
What that means in practice
- micro1's certification travels with the expert across many projects; Maki's scores belong to one job.
- Zara's result is pass or fail against one bar; Maki returns a scorecard, risk flags and a recommendation.
- micro1 offers candidates an Interview Prep tool; Mochi speaks in your company's branded voice and persona.
- Neither publishes prices.
Choose Maki if, choose micro1 if
Do
- You need your own job applicants screened and assessed before a recruiter calls.
- Your ATS must receive scores, proctoring data and status updates automatically.
- Regulators or works councils will ask for bias audits and explainable scores.
Do not
- You build or tune AI models and need expert human data or RL environments.
- You run AI agents in production and want them evaluated in context, which is Cortex's job.
- A government agency needs agents built and trained by domain experts.
Working with Maki or micro1 day to day
A Maki customer's team lives in its ATS. Agents fire at configured stages, results come back as scores and decision cards, and recruiters spend their time on candidates who cleared the screen. A customer success manager, workshops and a roadmap council sit around the platform.
A micro1 customer is usually an AI lab, a company or a government agency with a data or agent project. micro1 defines scope with the client, recruits and trains experts from its pool, runs the work with layered quality review, and reports velocity, error rates and cost per task. The client never interviews the experts itself.
Questions to ask either vendor before you sign
Each answer below is missing from the public pages, so ask for it in writing.
- Maki: which agents does the first phase include, and how are credits consumed per candidate?
- Maki: who sets the auto-progression threshold, and can recruiters override it?
- Maki: do the published bias audits cover Shiro and Ken as well as Mochi?
- micro1: how are experts chosen for our project beyond passing Zara's certification?
- micro1: who owns the data and evaluations produced on our project?
- micro1: what quality thresholds trigger rework, and who pays for it?
Maki vs micro1 pricing
Neither company publishes a figure. The models as described:
| Term | Maki | micro1 |
|---|---|---|
| Basis | Usage based credits per AI agent for candidate interactions | Per project, scoped with the client |
| Licences | Not licence based | Not described |
| How to get a price | A personalised quote after a sales call | A company form asking about the project |
| Tracked cost metric | Not described | Cost per task reported in real time on its data platform |
If you are hiring for your own team
Interview questions that adapt live while the role's rubric stays fixed.
For a team that wants to find and interview its own candidates, The Cognitive searches ~900M public profiles with verified emails and phones and runs a live AI video interview of 10 or 20 minutes. Each report gives 1 to 5 scores per criterion, overall written feedback, a transcript and a recording.
See also
Maki review · micro1 review · micro1 alternatives · Maki alternatives · Mercor vs micro1
Frequently asked questions
Is micro1 an AI recruiter for companies?
Its current pages do not sell one. micro1 calls itself a data lab and uses its AI interviewer, Zara, to certify experts who join its own network. Companies reach micro1 through a form that asks about AI projects, not about hiring for their own teams.
Is Maki better than micro1?
For screening your own applicants for a specific role, Maki is the one selling that. For expert human data, AI evaluations or agent buildouts, micro1 is. They are good at different things, so the better pick depends on the job.
How does micro1's Zara compare with Maki's Mochi?
Zara is a conversational interview an expert takes on demand, with technical, scenario and coding or data tasks, returning a pass or fail against micro1's global criteria. Mochi is a voice screen an employer sends its applicants, scored against that employer's grid for one role.
Maki vs micro1 pricing: how does each charge?
Maki charges usage based credits per AI agent for candidate interactions and quotes each customer. micro1 publishes no price; its pages describe project based work scoped with the client and report cost per task during delivery.
Can I use micro1's experts as employees?
micro1 describes its experts as remote contributors to AI training projects that it manages, and its pages describe no service placing them on a client's payroll. If that is what you need, ask micro1 directly through its company form.
Does Maki have a pool of candidates like micro1?
No. Maki works on the applicants who reach a stage in your ATS and describes no sourcing. micro1's government page cites 130,000+ candidates across 100+ domains and 60+ languages ready to onboard to its projects.
Which has a bias audit, Maki or micro1?
Maki links Holistic AI audits of Mochi under NYC Local Law 144 and describes permanent bias monitoring. micro1's experts page says certification relies on structured, skill based assessment plus human recruiter review, and the pages read link no third party audit.
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