Side-by-side · Rubric v1.0
Cognisess vs Mercor
Cognisess
UK talent-analytics platform that scores candidates and employees with 50+ game-based and questionnaire assessments and weighted job-fit 'profilers', can auto-pass or auto-reject applicants against score thresholds, and runs recorded video interviews with optional DeepLearn video analytics.
Substantial gaps
Assessment
Mercor
Mercor is an AI talent platform that runs automated 20-minute AI video interviews and semantic resume/profile matching to vet, score, and place candidates and expert contractors, and offers an enterprise applicant-screening product that scores employers' applicant pools against role rubrics with pass/fail recommendations.
Substantial gaps
Screening
The result
Cognisess leads Mercor on 4 of the 7 criteria.
Under rubric v1.0, Cognisess, filed under Assessment, finishes on 30 and Mercor, filed under Screening, on 23, 7 points apart. Mercor is ahead on none of the 7 criteria: Cognisess takes 4, the remaining 3 are level, and the nearest of those 4 is Article 11 Technical Documentation, Cognisess 25 to Mercor 22. Data Governance Disclosure is both the widest raw gap and the heaviest weighted swing — Cognisess 42, Mercor 22 — and at a 15% weight it carries 44% of the weighted advantage Cognisess holds across the 4 criteria on that side of the table.
Criteria won
7 criteria
- Cognisess4
- Mercor0
- Level3
- Widest raw gap
- Data Governance Disclosure42 vs 22
- Heaviest weighted swing
- Data Governance Disclosure15% weight
Keep this comparison
Both scores and all 7 criteria, side by side, in your inbox.
The record
Categories, scope and company facts.
Cognisess is filed under Assessment AI, Mercor under Screening AI. They also share 1 secondary category: Video interview.
Both are in scope of
| Record | Cognisess | Mercor |
|---|---|---|
| Price tier | Mid | Enterprise |
| Headquarters | GB | US |
| Founded | 2011 | 2023 |
What decides it
The criteria that move the gap, heaviest swing first.
- 1
Data Governance Disclosure
15% weight44% of the movement so far
Cognisess42Mercor223.0 weighted points to Cognisess
- 2
Bias Audit Transparency
18% weight70% of the movement so far
Cognisess20Mercor101.8 weighted points to Cognisess
- 3
Post-Market Monitoring
12% weight91% of the movement so far
Cognisess32Mercor201.4 weighted points to Cognisess
- 4
Article 11 Technical Documentation
20% weight100% of the movement so far
Cognisess25Mercor220.6 weighted points to Cognisess
Weighted delta is the raw difference times the criterion weight, so the 4 figures above sum to +6.8 — the difference between the two totals before either is rounded. Shares are of 6.8 points of movement counted without direction. The table below rounds each side to a whole number first, so its Δ raw total reads +7 beside that +6.8.
Category-by-category
Raw score per criterion, with weighted delta.
Δ is Cognisess minus Mercor, coloured for whichever of the two it favours.
| Category | Weight | Cognisess | Mercor | Δ raw | Δ weighted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 25 | 22 | +3 | +0.6 |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 20 | 10 | +10 | +1.8 |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 20 | 20 | - | - |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 42 | 22 | +20 | +3.0 |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 42 | 42 | - | - |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 32 | 20 | +12 | +1.4 |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 40 | 40 | - | - |
| Total | 100% | 30F | 23F | +7 | +6.8 |
Evidence
Cited sources and documented absences, criterion by criterion.
An absence is a finding, not a blank: the reviewer looked for a named artefact and recorded that it is not located. Where a source sits is a fact about hosting only.
| Criterion | Weight | Cognisess | Mercor | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | ||
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 1 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 2 | 1 | — | 1 | 1 | — |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 1 | 2 | — |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 5 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 5 | 0 | Sources on a separate domain | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 1 | 1 | — |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 3 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| All criteria | 100% | 21 | 5 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain | 10 | 8 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
Cognisess has 26 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 21 with a source URL, 5 documented absences; Mercor has 16 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 10 with a source URL, 8 documented absences; some documentation or audit rows for Cognisess sit on a domain separate from the vendor's own site.
Provenance
The scores above are documented by 42 evidence rows on file for these two vendors: 26 for Cognisess, across 5 distinct source domains, and 16 for Mercor, across 4 distinct source domains.
- Rubric
- v1.0
- Cognisess last reviewed
- September 25, 2026 · HireAIScore editorial team
- Mercor last reviewed
- June 7, 2026 · HireAIScore editorial team
HireAIScore scores are editorial research, not legal advice, and no vendor pays for placement, scoring or removal — see the methodology, conflicts policy and terms.