Since I am an external recruiter, I ask for payment on behalf of my candidates but I can imagine if you formulate it nicely that it might work out, too without having a recruiter representing you.
You can argue that you are interviewing with five companies and all have 4-8 hours coding task, you can't possibly do all of them and you will just do three maximum.
You can argue that you are interviewing with five companies and all have 4-8 hours coding task, you can't possibly do all of them and you will just do three maximum.