How long does it usually take for a mentor to respond to a session request?

Most mentors respond within a few hours. Some take a day, especially across time zones.

What happens behind the scenes

• The mentor gets an email the moment your request comes in.
• If the mentor has a booking notice set, a reminder goes out 24 hours before your requested start time.
• Unanswered requests auto-decline before the requested start. How long the mentor gets depends on their booking notice: 12 hours for most, 6 hours for mentors on a short notice.
• When it auto-declines, you are refunded and both of you get an email.

Mentors on instant booking get the first email only, so a request to one of them lives or dies on that.

Insider tip: if you book on a Friday for Monday, a mentor who doesn't check email on weekends may auto-decline. Either give them more lead time or message them directly first.

What to do if you don't hear back

After a session has been in Requested status for 24 hours, a Cancel button appears on the session page. Use it and book someone else. Every hour you sit in the queue is an hour you're not talking to anyone.

If you really want that specific mentor, use the Message me button on their profile to ask if they have availability before sending a formal request. It's a softer ask and often surfaces responsive mentors faster.

Finding responsive mentors

See our guide on finding responsive mentors — there are filters and signals (recent session activity, typical response time) that help you stack the deck.

Mentor responsiveness monitoring

This is enforced automatically, not by hand. A mentor who lets a second request expire within 30 days is hidden from the directory on the spot: they stop appearing in search and no new requests reach them until they turn their profile back on.

So the mentors you can find are, by design, the ones still answering.