Kinds of data

Expert and human work

Data that has to be made by people: expert tasks and judgments, narrated recordings of real work, documents their authors own.

Public price: $55 to $101
per hour of work
Demand: Rising
Who buys: Labs and the vendors that staff expert projects

The market rate for expert work, by side

How the rates are computed

The median where three or more figures exist, otherwise the figures we hold. Each side is a different point in the market: what the people who make it are paid, what holders are offered, what catalogues ask, what was paid.

Paid to the people who make it

$77

per hour of work, median of 105 figures; middle half $55 to $101

Paid to the people who make it

$212

per task, median of 4 figures; middle half $167 to $718

Offered to holders

$6.00

per document or page, from 1 figure

Made to order

$0.08

per task, median of 17 figures; middle half $0.032 to $0.22

Made to order

$19

per hour of work, median of 9 figures; middle half $13 to $94

Made to order

$2.58

per record, median of 6 figures; middle half $1.25 to $5.29

Made to order

$12

per demonstration, from 1 figure

What expert work has sold or been offered for

The whole price board

Public prices for expert work
What was sold or offered	Price	When	What to know	Source
Median advertised hourly pay for Agentic Tasks & RL Environments roles in AI training	$50 an hour (live median) per hour, the median of 45 advertised rates	Oct 2026	The median of 45 distinct advertised hourly rates across 9 platforms, from 64 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs pay explorer A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for AI Evaluation & Rating (RLHF) roles in AI training	$60 an hour (live median) per hour, the median of 94 advertised rates	Oct 2026	The median of 94 distinct advertised hourly rates across 16 platforms, from 151 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs pay explorer A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Coding & Software Evaluation roles in AI training	$65 an hour (live median) per hour, the median of 187 advertised rates	Oct 2026	The median of 187 distinct advertised hourly rates across 13 platforms, from 286 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs pay explorer A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Data Annotation & Labeling roles in AI training	$30 an hour (live median) per hour, the median of 84 advertised rates	Oct 2026	The median of 84 distinct advertised hourly rates across 13 platforms, from 138 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs pay explorer A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Law, Medicine & Finance roles in AI training	$70 an hour (live median) per hour, the median of 684 advertised rates	Oct 2026	The median of 684 distinct advertised hourly rates across 20 platforms, from 1,098 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs pay explorer A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Math & STEM roles in AI training	$65 an hour (live median) per hour, the median of 192 advertised rates	Oct 2026	The median of 192 distinct advertised hourly rates across 12 platforms, from 227 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs pay explorer A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Multilingual & Localization roles in AI training	$65 an hour (live median) per hour, the median of 705 advertised rates	Oct 2026	The median of 705 distinct advertised hourly rates across 13 platforms, from 1,010 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs pay explorer A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Red-Teaming & AI Safety roles in AI training	$55 an hour (live median) per hour, the median of 30 advertised rates	Oct 2026	The median of 30 distinct advertised hourly rates across 8 platforms, from 52 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs pay explorer A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Research Studies & Surveys roles in AI training	$100 an hour (live median) per hour, the median of 17 advertised rates	Oct 2026	The median of 17 distinct advertised hourly rates across 3 platforms, from 34 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs pay explorer A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Robotics & Physical-AI Data roles in AI training	$10 an hour (live median) per hour, the median of 59 advertised rates	Oct 2026	The median of 59 distinct advertised hourly rates across 6 platforms, from 64 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs pay explorer A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Transcription, Audio & Speech roles in AI training	$30 an hour (live median) per hour, the median of 334 advertised rates	Oct 2026	The median of 334 distinct advertised hourly rates across 13 platforms, from 521 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs pay explorer A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Writing & Content roles in AI training	$55 an hour (live median) per hour, the median of 20 advertised rates	Oct 2026	The median of 20 distinct advertised hourly rates across 4 platforms, from 37 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs pay explorer A catalogue or marketplace listing
Biologist, PhD at Alignerr (PhD biologists writing and reviewing advanced AI evaluation questions, posted for Labelbox)	$90-120/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	The PhD tier. As on the Chemist, PhD post, the body still carries an older line reading $25 to $100 per hour that disagrees with the $90-120/hr in the header and in the board's own data (lower bound 90, upper bound 120); the header figure is the one the board shows.	Alignerr job board, Biologist, PhD The payer's own page
Biology Masters at Alignerr (Master's-level biologists evaluating AI answers)	$35-55/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	The Master's tier. About 40 listings carry this title and band, and the 'Biology Subject Matter Expert - AI Content Specialist' posts match it. The Masters/PhDs tier on the same board reads $75-90/hr (alignerr-biology-expert-hourly).	Alignerr job board, Biology Masters The payer's own page
Chemist, PhD at Alignerr (PhD chemists writing and reviewing advanced AI evaluation questions, posted for Labelbox)	$90-120/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	The PhD tier, the highest chemistry band on the board. The posting's body still carries an older line reading $25 to $100 per hour, which disagrees with the $90-120/hr in its header and in the board's own data (lower bound 90, upper bound 120); the header figure is the one the board shows.	Alignerr job board, Chemist, PhD The payer's own page
Chemistry Masters at Alignerr (Master's-level chemists evaluating AI answers)	$35-55/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	The Master's tier. About 40 listings on Alignerr's board carry this title and the same band, and the 'Chemistry Subject Matter Expert - AI Content Specialist' posts match it. The Masters/PhDs tier on the same board reads $75-90/hr (alignerr-chemistry-expert-hourly).	Alignerr job board, Chemistry Masters The payer's own page
CVAT annotation services, one-time project: per annotated object, from its worked example (minimum project $5,000)	$0.10/object per annotated object	Oct 2026	CVAT's own worked example: 10,000 images at about 10 objects each is 100,000 objects, $10,000 at this rate. It bills per annotated object after a proof of concept and requires a minimum project value of $5,000.	CVAT.ai, annotation services pricing explainer A vendor's published price guide
CVAT annotation services, 6-month prepaid subscription (from $5,000): reduced per-object rate	$0.05–0.075 per object per annotated object (prepaid 6-month subscription)	Oct 2026	The prepaid subscription starts at $5,000 for 6 months, for a buyer who sends data gradually and gives a volume estimate; the same worked example comes to $5,000 to $7,500 for 100,000 objects. The high end of the range is $0.075.	CVAT.ai, annotation services pricing explainer A vendor's published price guide
Label Your Data: bounding box annotation, starting price	$0.02 per object per object (starting price)	Oct 2026	A 'starts at' price that depends on project complexity and volume; the page also offers a cost calculator and a free pilot. The same page's $6 per annotator hour is held as labelyourdata-annotator-hour-bill-rate.	Label Your Data, data annotation pricing A vendor's published price guide
Label Your Data: keypoint annotation, starting price	$0.015 per object per object (starting price)	Oct 2026	A 'starts as low as' price for keypoints on images; the actual price depends on annotation type, data volume and complexity.	Label Your Data, data annotation pricing A vendor's published price guide
Label Your Data: NLP annotation, starting price per entity	$0.02 per entity per entity (starting price)	Oct 2026	A 'starts as low as' price for NLP tasks, counted per entity to label; the page's calculator also prices by characters or by annotation hours.	Label Your Data, data annotation pricing A vendor's published price guide
Mercor's average contracted expert rate (homepage)	$112/hr Average contracted rate per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Platform-stated average of contracted rates, up $1 from $111/hr on 15 October 2026 ($110 on 14 October, $109 on 11 October). The homepage's own data field reads 112.	Mercor homepage The payer's own page
Precise BPO: bounding box annotation, per-task rate range (dedicated offshore team)	$0.01 – $0.06 per bounding box (rate range)	Oct 2026	The cheapest published image-box range found: a low-wage dedicated team (its hourly model is $4 to $8 an hour). The same table lists polygon or instance at $0.08 – $0.35 and segmentation at $0.10 – $0.45.	Precise BPO, data labeling services pricing A vendor's published price guide
Roboflow Outsource Labeling: bounding box annotation, starting rate	$0.10 per bounding box per bounding box (starting rate)	Oct 2026	Roboflow Outsource Labeling: pay per annotation, with discounted prepaid options; it requires an active Roboflow subscription. Pricing and turnaround vary by project.	Roboflow Labeling (outsourced labelling) A vendor's published price guide
Roboflow Outsource Labeling: classification or keypoint annotation, starting rate	$0.05 per classification or keypoint annotation per classification or keypoint annotation (starting rate)	Oct 2026	Roboflow Outsource Labeling: pay per annotation, with discounted prepaid options; it requires an active Roboflow subscription. Pricing and turnaround vary by project.	Roboflow Labeling (outsourced labelling) A vendor's published price guide
Roboflow Outsource Labeling: polygon annotation, starting rate	$0.20 per polygon per polygon (starting rate)	Oct 2026	Roboflow Outsource Labeling: pay per annotation, with discounted prepaid options; it requires an active Roboflow subscription. Pricing and turnaround vary by project.	Roboflow Labeling (outsourced labelling) A vendor's published price guide
US-DATA: image bounding box annotation, indicative price per object	1 object from $0.08 per object (indicative 'from' price)	Oct 2026	The page calls its prices indicative and 'not a public offer'; the final cost is set after task analysis and a pilot.	US-DATA, AI data annotation pricing A vendor's published price guide
US-DATA: named entity recognition (NER) text annotation, indicative price per text	1 text from $0.25 per text (indicative 'from' price)	Oct 2026	An indicative 'from' price from the same table that lists text classification at $0.06 a text and dialogue annotation at $1.25 a dialogue; not a public offer.	US-DATA, AI data annotation pricing A vendor's published price guide
Lawyers (Mercor listing)	$100-$120 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Generic lawyer pool listing, US only; the band rose from $70-$110 (read 11 Oct 2026). Paid by Mercor; the lab bill rate is higher. Closed: Mercor shows the posting no longer accepting applications (read 2026-10-17).	Mercor job board The payer's own page
Chemistry Specialist, Freelance AI Trainer Project (Meridial, global remote contractor)	$8-to- $65 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	One band for the whole Freelance AI Trainer Project programme: the same $8 to $65 an hour appears on Meridial's Biology Specialist, Analytical, Organic/Inorganic, Synthetic and Radiochemistry posts and on its Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo language posts, with the exact rate set by experience and geographic location. Its Microbiology, Neuroscience and plain Medicine Specialist posts start at $6. The floor is a geography effect, not a skill price.	Meridial job board (Greenhouse), Chemistry Specialist - Freelance AI Trainer Project The payer's own page
All AI-training work: live median advertised hourly pay across 26 platforms (AITraining.jobs pay report)	median $65/hr; typical $35-$120/hr per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Median of 2,493 distinct advertised rates across 26 platforms from 3,725 open roles (1,960 rates, 21 platforms and $60 on 14 Oct). Same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 A catalogue or marketplace listing
Handshake AI: median advertised hourly pay across its open AI-training roles (AITraining.jobs)	$90/hr median; typical $55-$150/hr per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Median of the rates Handshake AI states in its live job feed, first listed in the report's platform table on 15 Oct 2026; one platform's rate card, not a market rate. Same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform) A catalogue or marketplace listing
Terac: median advertised hourly pay across its open AI-training roles (AITraining.jobs)	$85/hr median; typical $55-$105/hr per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Median of the rates Terac states in its live job feed; one platform's rate card, not a market rate. Up from $75 (typical $50-$100) on 14 Oct. Same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform) A catalogue or marketplace listing
Dutch Audio Transcriptionist (AI Training) at Alignerr	$10-35/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Reposted under a new address with the floor cut from $15 to $10 an hour (the old posting now answers 404); native Dutch speakers in the US.	Alignerr job board, Dutch Audio Transcriptionist The payer's own page
Medical expert work on Mercor, nurses and other clinical professions (standing talent network band)	$60 to $180 an hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	The posting closed; its page now shows the standing Mercor talent network for the field, which states the band its listings have paid and names a project's own rate only when it invites someone (was $55 to $65 an hour for registered nurses on the posting). The band spans professions, so it is wider than any one role's rate.	Mercor, RN Annotators (closed) and its Medical Expert talent network The payer's own page
Physician (MD/DO) work on Mercor, clinical documentation and AI evaluation (standing talent network band)	$115-$150 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	The posting closed; its page now shows the standing Mercor talent network for the field, which states the band its listings have paid and names a project's own rate only when it invites someone (was $170 an hour on the posting).	Mercor, Primary Care Physician (MD) (closed) and its Medical Expert (M.D./D.O.) talent network The payer's own page
Babel Audio: median advertised hourly pay across its live roles	$105/hr median; typical $105-$150/hr per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Median of the hourly rates Babel Audio states in its live job feed, measured by AITraining.jobs. First listed among the platforms with enough rates to measure on 14 October 2026. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform) A catalogue or marketplace listing
Mindrift (Toloka): median advertised hourly pay across its open AI-training roles (AITraining.jobs)	$100/hr median; typical $100-$105/hr per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Median of the rates Mindrift (Toloka) states in its live job feed, with the 25th to 75th percentile band $54-$130/hr; one platform's rate card, not a market rate. Same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform) A catalogue or marketplace listing
RemoExperts: median advertised hourly pay across its open AI-training roles (AITraining.jobs)	$95/hr median; typical $70-$150/hr per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Median of the rates RemoExperts states in its live job feed, with the 25th to 75th percentile band $71-$108/hr; one platform's rate card, not a market rate. Same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform) A catalogue or marketplace listing
Sovrano AI: median advertised hourly pay across its open AI-training roles (AITraining.jobs)	$80/hr median; typical $80-$125/hr per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Median of the rates Sovrano AI states in its live job feed, with the 25th to 75th percentile band $60-$82/hr; one platform's rate card, not a market rate. Same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform) A catalogue or marketplace listing
Data annotation billed by time (Label Your Data)	$6 per annotator hour per annotator hour, billed to the buyer	Oct 2026	A vendor's own typical hourly bill rate for generalist annotation; undated page read on 2026-10-14.	Label Your Data, Pricing (FAQ) A vendor's published price guide
Mercor: Consulting Expert (role on the homepage)	$95/hr per hour (paid to the expert)	Oct 2026	Hourly rate Mercor shows for a role among its latest roles on its homepage, which rotates; 70 people recently hired. Closed: The role left Mercor's homepage and is not among its 299 open listings (read 2026-10-17).	Mercor The payer's own page
Mercor: Legal Expert (role on the homepage)	$90/hr per hour (paid to the expert)	Oct 2026	Hourly rate Mercor shows for a role among its latest roles on its homepage, which rotates; 65 people recently hired.	Mercor The payer's own page
Simple annotation on Appen's self-service platform	rates starting around $0.01–$0.10 per simple annotation per simple annotation task	Oct 2026	Self-service only; Vendr says managed services are quoted as project totals or retainers and enterprise deals as minimum annual spend against per-task or hourly rates.	Vendr marketplace, Appen pricing FAQ Press report
Annotation task bought from Appen, typical per-task price across complexity	Typical per-task range $0.01–$0.50+ depending on complexity per task	Oct 2026	A procurement marketplace's benchmark, which it says draws on its transaction data; open-ended top. Appen itself publishes custom quotes only. Undated page read on 2026-10-14.	Vendr marketplace, Appen pricing (Appen vs. Scale AI comparison) Press report
Annotation task bought from Scale AI, typical per-task price across complexity	$0.05–$1.00+ depending on complexity per task	Oct 2026	Second column of Vendr's Appen vs. Scale AI table: Scale's typical per-task price runs about two to five times Appen's. Benchmark for commodity annotation tasks, not expert or coding tasks.	Vendr marketplace, Appen pricing (Appen vs. Scale AI comparison) Press report
AI Tutor roles in 13 languages at xAI (Croatian, Finnish, French, Hausa, Italian, Khmer, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Yoruba)	$35/hour - $45/hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Same band on every open language tutor posting read on 15 Oct 2026 (French, Spanish, Yoruba quoted); the German, Chinese, Polish, Romanian and Russian postings have closed. US pay; candidates elsewhere get a recruiter estimate. xAI hires tutors directly, so this is a lab paying the worker with no vendor in between.	xAI careers (Greenhouse job board), AI Tutor - French The payer's own page
BioInformatics Experts at Mercor (writing multi-step bioinformatics data-analysis tasks with validated answers)	$90-$110 / hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Hourly contract, remote. The work is genomics-style data analysis (public archives such as GEO, SRA and PDB, or the expert's own data) with a reproducing Jupyter notebook per task.	Mercor job board, BioInformatics Experts The payer's own page
AfterQuery: median advertised hourly pay across its open AI-training roles (AITraining.jobs)	$75/hr median; typical $45-$125/hr per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Median of the rates AfterQuery states in its live job feed, with the 25th to 75th percentile band $45-$101/hr; one platform's rate card, not a market rate. Same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform) A catalogue or marketplace listing
Babel Audio: median advertised hourly pay across its open AI-training roles (AITraining.jobs)	$105/hr median; typical $105/hr per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Median of the rates Babel Audio states in its live job feed, with the 25th to 75th percentile band $105/hr; one platform's rate card, not a market rate. Same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform) A catalogue or marketplace listing
Mercor: median advertised hourly pay across its open AI-training roles (AITraining.jobs)	$80/hr median; typical $55-$150/hr per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Median of the rates Mercor states in its live job feed, with the 25th to 75th percentile band $56-$95/hr; one platform's rate card, not a market rate. Same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform) A catalogue or marketplace listing
micro1: median advertised hourly pay across its open AI-training roles (AITraining.jobs)	$70/hr median; typical $45-$280/hr per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Median of the rates micro1 states in its live job feed, with the 25th to 75th percentile band $45-$115/hr; one platform's rate card, not a market rate. Same owner as AIData.Broker.	AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform) A catalogue or marketplace listing
Accounting & Finance Expert at Alignerr	$60-100/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Finance teaching and economist listings on the same board pay $35-70/hr.	Alignerr job board The payer's own page
AI Red Team Tester at Alignerr	$40-120/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	15 listings at this band on the day read.	Alignerr job board The payer's own page
Average pay across Alignerr (Labelbox) experts	$80/hr Average pay per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Platform-stated average; the same page says $1M is paid weekly and 1K+ are hired weekly. Its job board listed 5,704 roles the same day.	Alignerr homepage The payer's own page
Biology Expert (Masters/PhDs) at Alignerr	$75-90/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Biology Masters listings on the same board pay $35-55/hr.	Alignerr job board The payer's own page
Chemistry Expert (Masters/PhDs) at Alignerr	$75-90/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Chemistry Masters listings on the same board pay $35-55/hr.	Alignerr job board The payer's own page
Creative Writing Evaluator at Alignerr	$40-120/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Prompt Writer listings carry the same band.	Alignerr job board The payer's own page
Lean 4 Proof Engineer - Mathematical Formalization (Alignerr)	$170-200/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	About 130 Lean 4 and formal-verification listings on the board carry this band, the top of Alignerr's STEM pay.	Alignerr job board The payer's own page
Legal & Government Policy Analyst (AI Training) at Alignerr	$20-40/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Alignerr listed only 16 legal roles, nearly all at this band; no attorney-level legal role was open.	Alignerr job board The payer's own page
Mathematics Expert (Masters/PhDs) at Alignerr	$75-90/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	The chemistry and biology Masters/PhD expert listings carry the same $75-90/hr band.	Alignerr job board The payer's own page
Machine Learning Evaluation Specialist at Alignerr (designing ML challenges that stump frontier models)	$200-400/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	The highest band on Alignerr's board (7 listings).	Alignerr job board The payer's own page
Oncology Clinical Researcher at Alignerr	$40-80/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	The commonest band among Alignerr's ~800 health and clinical listings; no physician-specific role was listed.	Alignerr job board The payer's own page
Physicist, PhD at Alignerr	$90-120/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Most of Alignerr's 183 physics listings pay less ($35-55/hr for Masters, $40-80/hr for applied physics).	Alignerr job board The payer's own page
Software Developer paid to build their own project with an AI coding assistant (Alignerr)	$60-120/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Listed in 25 cities at the same band; the developer keeps the code, and the sessions are the data.	Alignerr job board The payer's own page
Voice Actor - German Speakers at Alignerr	$250-280/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	German voice actors were the best-paid voice roles; Italian and French voice actors listed at $170-200/hr, UK and Australian English at $120-200/hr, Indian English and Mexican Spanish at $40-80/hr.	Alignerr job board The payer's own page
Alignerr (Labelbox) weekly payouts to experts	$1M Paid weekly per week, all experts	Oct 2026	About $52M a year if sustained (x52); far below Handshake's ~$60M a month.	Alignerr homepage The payer's own page
Software engineering, data science and ML roles on DataAnnotation	$40 – $150+ / hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Posted pay band for software engineering, data science and ML roles on the platform's own site; the top is open-ended.	DataAnnotation The payer's own page
Finance, legal, medical, cybersecurity, engineering and STEM roles on DataAnnotation	$40 – $125+ / hr; generalists $25 – $50 / hr; language specialists $25 – $40 / hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Same page sets generalist work at $25 to $50 and language work at $25 to $40, so credentialed fields earn roughly 1.6 to 3 times generalist pay.	DataAnnotation The payer's own page
Clinical Annotator III: GSA schedule ceiling rate billed to US government buyers (FedPoint Systems)	$124.84 per hour per hour, ceiling rate billed to the buyer	Oct 2026	A published contract ceiling (MAS contract 47QTCA23D00AR, Bachelors, 4+ years, customer facility), not a paid invoice; a rare public bill rate for annotation labour.	GSA CALC+ ceiling-rate API (Multiple Award Schedule) A catalogue or marketplace listing
Data Labeler III (TS/SCI): GSA schedule ceiling rate billed to US government buyers (Chenega Technology & Modernized Solutions)	$72.98 per hour per hour, ceiling rate billed to the buyer	Oct 2026	A published contract ceiling (MAS contract 47QTCA26D009E, Bachelors, 5+ years, customer facility), not a paid invoice; a rare public bill rate for annotation labour.	GSA CALC+ ceiling-rate API (Multiple Award Schedule) A catalogue or marketplace listing
Data Labeler, Intermediate: GSA schedule ceiling rate billed to US government buyers (Chenega Systems)	$94.33 per hour per hour, ceiling rate billed to the buyer	Oct 2026	A published contract ceiling (MAS contract 47QTCA24D0075, Bachelors, 5+ years, customer facility), not a paid invoice; a rare public bill rate for annotation labour.	GSA CALC+ ceiling-rate API (Multiple Award Schedule) A catalogue or marketplace listing
Medical Annotator III: GSA schedule ceiling rate billed to US government buyers (FedPoint Systems)	$152.72 per hour per hour, ceiling rate billed to the buyer	Oct 2026	A published contract ceiling (MAS contract 47QTCA23D00AR, Bachelors, 4+ years, customer facility), not a paid invoice; a rare public bill rate for annotation labour.	GSA CALC+ ceiling-rate API (Multiple Award Schedule) A catalogue or marketplace listing
Cumulative payouts to Handshake AI fellows	$500M+ payouts made cumulative total, all fellows	Oct 2026	Total paid to 188k+ fellows since Handshake AI launched in January 2025; a payout total, not a rate.	Handshake AI, fellowship homepage The payer's own page
Handshake AI data business gross margin	gross margins around ~30% share of gross revenue kept after paying experts	Oct 2026	Research-firm figure; the same page puts AI gross revenue near $1B (April 2026) and net after payouts near $300M, consistent with about 30% kept.	Sacra, Handshake company page Press report
Handshake AI experts in mathematics, physics and computer science	$100–125 per hour per hour (paid to the expert)	Oct 2026	Research-firm estimate, not a Handshake rate card; Handshake job posts seen the same day ranged from $75 to $100 (chemistry) to $110 to $140 (medicine).	Sacra Press report
AI Evaluation Specialist (Handshake AI fellowship, trending opportunity)	Up to $17/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	A ceiling, not a typical rate. The same page lists Game Developer/Designer and PCB Tool Specialist at up to $125/hr and an AI Evaluation Specialist at up to $17/hr.	Handshake AI, fellowship homepage The payer's own page
FP&A Analyst (Handshake AI fellowship, trending opportunity)	Up to $80/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	A ceiling, not a typical rate. The same page lists Game Developer/Designer and PCB Tool Specialist at up to $125/hr and an AI Evaluation Specialist at up to $17/hr.	Handshake AI, fellowship homepage The payer's own page
Philosophy Expert (Handshake AI fellowship, trending opportunity)	Up to $120/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	A ceiling, not a typical rate. The same page lists Game Developer/Designer and PCB Tool Specialist at up to $125/hr and an AI Evaluation Specialist at up to $17/hr.	Handshake AI, fellowship homepage The payer's own page
Software Engineer (Handshake AI fellowship, trending opportunity)	Up to $120/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	A ceiling, not a typical rate. The same page lists Game Developer/Designer and PCB Tool Specialist at up to $125/hr and an AI Evaluation Specialist at up to $17/hr.	Handshake AI, fellowship homepage The payer's own page
Applied Physics Benchmark Specialist role on Mercor's live board	$61-$77/hr per hour (paid to the expert)	Oct 2026	A benchmark-writing role, priced well below the data science role on the same page. Closed: The role left Mercor's homepage and is not among its 299 open listings (read 2026-10-17).	Mercor The payer's own page
Chemists, explosives and nuclear security specialists writing safety tasks on Mercor	$65 - $75 / task per task (paid to the expert)	Oct 2026	About a dozen hazardous-domain roles (toxicological chemist, blasting engineer, nonproliferation analyst, nuclear engineer) all carried the same per-task band; the generalist role on the same page paid $50 - $60 / hour.	Mercor job board The payer's own page
Share of Mercor's gross revenue paid to contractors	60-70% of top-line revenue share of gross revenue	Oct 2026	Implies the lab pays about $1.43 to $1.67 for each $1 an expert receives (1 / 0.70 to 1 / 0.60).	Sacra, Mercor company page Press report
Mercor daily payouts to experts	$4M+ Daily payouts per day, all experts	Oct 2026	Up from more than $1.5M a day in October 2025 and more than $2M a day in mid-2026; $4M a day is about $1.46B a year (x365).	Mercor homepage The payer's own page
Data Science Expert role on Mercor's live board	$100-$150/hr per hour (paid to the expert)	Oct 2026	Live listing on Mercor's homepage the day it was read; the same page shows a $109/hr average contracted rate, and listings change daily. Closed: The role left Mercor's homepage and is not among its 299 open listings (read 2026-10-17).	Mercor The payer's own page
Inorganic Chemistry & Synthesis Expert (PhD-level evaluation of materials synthesis problems) at Mercor	$84 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	A single fixed hourly rate, not a band; hourly contract, remote. Mercor pays the expert; the lab's bill rate is higher.	Mercor job board, Inorganic Chemistry & Synthesis Expert The payer's own page
Mindrift (Toloka) AI trainers, domain experts	$60-100+/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Open-ended top for experts; the same page caps monthly earnings by project at $5,400 (coding) to $8,000 (consulting).	Mindrift homepage The payer's own page
Mindrift (Toloka) AI trainers, entry level	$15-30 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Open-ended top for experts; the same page caps monthly earnings by project at $5,400 (coding) to $8,000 (consulting).	Mindrift homepage The payer's own page
A software expert recording and narrating real work on screen (Mercor listing)	Up to $65 an hour per hour, paid to the person	Oct 2026	What the person is paid, not what the lab pays. Vendors pass roughly 60 to 70% of the lab's price to the person.	Mercor The payer's own page
OpenTrain AI managed AI-training teams	Cost-plus 20% management fee fee on top of trainer cost	Oct 2026	Managed recruiting, vetting, daily management and QA for 20% over cost: well below the 30-40% gross margins reported for Mercor, Handshake and micro1.	OpenTrain AI, Pricing A vendor's published price guide
OpenTrain AI self-service fee on payments to AI trainers and annotators	10% marketplace fee plus $9.95 per contract fee on payments to talent, plus a per-contract charge	Oct 2026	A published buyer-side markup: 10% on top of the trainer's rate (low/high are the $9.95 initiation fee per contract).	OpenTrain AI, Pricing A vendor's published price guide
Cumulative payouts to Outlier (Scale AI) contributors	$500M+ Paid to experts cumulative total, all contributors	Oct 2026	A payout total, not a rate; Outlier publishes no hourly schedule on its homepage.	Outlier homepage The payer's own page
Prolific participant and tasker pay, minimum	$8.00 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Prolific recommends higher pay for AI annotation, coding or advanced STEM tasks.	Prolific, Pricing FAQ The payer's own page
Prolific participant and tasker pay, recommended	$12.00 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Prolific recommends higher pay for AI annotation, coding or advanced STEM tasks.	Prolific, Pricing FAQ The payer's own page
Prolific platform fee on participant and AI-tasker rewards (academic or non-profit customers)	33.3% platform fee fee on top of worker pay	Oct 2026	A published markup: the buyer pays the worker's reward plus 33.3%. Managed services and AI-tasker programmes are quoted privately.	Prolific, Pricing FAQ A vendor's published price guide
Prolific platform fee on participant and AI-tasker rewards (corporate customers)	42.8% platform fee fee on top of worker pay	Oct 2026	A published markup: the buyer pays the worker's reward plus 42.8%. Managed services and AI-tasker programmes are quoted privately.	Prolific, Pricing FAQ A vendor's published price guide
Surge AI expert contractor (award-winning author or journalist tier)	$200-400 / hour, contractor per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	The only rate on Surge's own workforce page, shown above an award-winning author journalist profile; other profiles (constitutional lawyer, investment banker, professor) carry no rate.	Surge AI, Workforce page The payer's own page
Oncologist (Mercor listing)	$350-$450 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	The highest hourly band on Mercor's open board the day it was read. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.	Mercor job board The payer's own page
A developer's own AI coding session, shared as data (Mercor)	$200 per task per task (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Pays for existing work sessions, not new labour: the closest a vendor listing comes to buying data a person already has. Closed: Mercor shows the posting no longer accepting applications (read 2026-10-17).	Mercor job board The payer's own page
Database Systems Evaluation Expert, per task (Mercor)	$2.2K per task per task (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	The highest per-task price on Mercor's board the day read.	Mercor job board The payer's own page
Research Advisor, Human Frontier Collective (Scale AI): senior finance, legal and medical experts	$300/hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	Part-time contract for partners, senior counsel, board-certified MDs and bulge-bracket finance seniors; the role also represents Scale with clients. The HFC Fellow roles on the same board state no rate.	Scale AI careers (Greenhouse), Research Advisor, Human Frontier Collective (US) The payer's own page
AI Tutor, Video at xAI	$40/hour - $75/hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	US pay; a weekend variant of the role carries the same band. xAI hires tutors directly, so this is a lab paying the worker with no vendor in between.	xAI careers (Greenhouse job board) The payer's own page
AI Red Teamer (LLM generalist, Remote) at Handshake AI	$32 - $95 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	W-2 hourly through TCWGlobal, 40 hours a week; a Seattle variant carries the same band. Paid by Handshake AI, which sells the work to frontier labs.	Handshake careers (Ashby job board) The payer's own page
AI Tutor, Design at xAI	$35/hour - $75/hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	US pay; first published 3 September 2026. xAI hires tutors directly, so this is a lab paying the worker with no vendor in between.	xAI careers (Greenhouse job board) The payer's own page
AI Tutor, Humanities at xAI	$35/hour - $75/hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2026	US pay; first published 3 September 2026. xAI hires tutors directly, so this is a lab paying the worker with no vendor in between.	xAI careers (Greenhouse job board) The payer's own page
Lean Engineer, formal mathematics (Lean 4, Mathlib) (Mercor)	$90-$110 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Sep 2026	Compare Alignerr's Lean 4 listings at $170-200/hr the same day. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.	Mercor job board The payer's own page
AI Tutor, Legal and Compliance at xAI	$50/hour - $100/hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Sep 2026	The highest band among xAI's tutor postings; US pay. xAI hires tutors directly, so this is a lab paying the worker with no vendor in between.	xAI careers (Greenhouse job board) The payer's own page
AI Tutor, Software Engineering at xAI	$40/hour - $100/hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Sep 2026	US pay; xAI also lists an Expert Team Lead, SWE at $104,000 to $170,400 a year. xAI hires tutors directly, so this is a lab paying the worker with no vendor in between. Closed: The posting returns 404 and xAI's board has no software-engineering tutor role (read 2026-10-17).	xAI careers (Greenhouse job board) The payer's own page
AI Tutor, Writing at xAI	$35/hour - $75/hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Sep 2026	US pay; the posting says the rate depends on the subspecialty applied for. xAI hires tutors directly, so this is a lab paying the worker with no vendor in between.	xAI careers (Greenhouse job board) The payer's own page
Condensed Matter Physicist (PhD) (Mercor)	$80-$110 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Sep 2026	Ten physics PhD subfield listings opened on 25 September 2026 all carry $80-$110. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.	Mercor job board The payer's own page
Biotechnology Expert talent network at Mercor (bioprocess and therapeutic judgment for AI model evaluation)	$110 to $125 an hour per hour (paid to the expert, past contract rates)	Sep 2026	A talent-network post: the band is what past contracts in the field have paid, set per project. The highest advertised life-sciences band found on Mercor this run.	Mercor job board, Biotechnology Expert The payer's own page
Chemistry Expert talent network at Mercor (graduate-level chemistry judgment for AI model evaluation)	$65 to $105 an hour per hour (paid to the expert, past project rates)	Sep 2026	A talent-network post: the band is what past projects have paid, set per project, not a standing offer. Mercor's Biology Expert post uses the same wording at $70 to $105 an hour.	Mercor job board, Chemistry Expert The payer's own page
Audiobook QA Expert, English (US) (Mercor)	$20-$25 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Sep 2026	French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese audiobook QA list at $15-$20. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.	Mercor job board The payer's own page
Equity Research Expert, single-name analyst publications (Mercor)	$150-$250 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Sep 2026	Central bank and company-analysis expert listings carry the same band. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.	Mercor job board The payer's own page
Application user recording generalist software use (Photoshop on Windows) (Mercor)	$30-$40 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Sep 2026	Mercor's computer-use series: generalist apps $30-$40, STEM apps $45-$55, code tools $55-$65, office professionals $60-$70. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.	Mercor job board The payer's own page
Molecular Biology Experts, US (Mercor)	$70-$105 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Sep 2026	A UK variant lists the same band. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.	Mercor job board The payer's own page
AI Red Teamer, CBRNE (Remote) at Handshake AI	$65 - $158 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Sep 2026	Contract, US remote; chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosives red-teaming. Paid by Handshake AI, which sells the work to frontier labs.	Handshake careers (Ashby job board) The payer's own page
AI Red Teamer, Cybersecurity (Remote) at Handshake AI	$65 - $125 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Sep 2026	Contract, US remote. Paid by Handshake AI, which sells the work to frontier labs.	Handshake careers (Ashby job board) The payer's own page
AI Model Policy Trainer, Image Evaluation (Seattle onsite) at Handshake AI	$36 - $72 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Sep 2026	Onsite in Seattle. Paid by Handshake AI, which sells the work to frontier labs.	Handshake careers (Ashby job board) The payer's own page
AI Safety Policy Evaluator, Violence and Threats (Seattle onsite) at Handshake AI	$55 - $120 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Sep 2026	Content-policy evaluation for frontier labs; needs trust-and-safety, threat assessment or similar depth. Paid by Handshake AI, which sells the work to frontier labs.	Handshake careers (Ashby job board) The payer's own page
Google's annual contract with Surge AI	more than $100 million per year per year	Sep 2026	Forbes (September 2025) via Contrary.	Contrary Research, Surge AI memo (updated 1 September 2026) Press report
Meta's 2024 spend with Surge AI	$150 million in 2024 per year	Sep 2026	Contrary attributes the figure to The Information. One lab's annual human-data bill with one vendor.	Contrary Research, Surge AI memo (updated 1 September 2026) Press report
Surge AI's prices relative to competing human-data vendors	50% to ten times more than competitors relative to competitors' prices	Sep 2026	Forbes (September 2025) via Contrary; Surge's DataAnnotation pays $25-$50/hr generalists and $40-$150+/hr specialists, so the spread there is widest.	Contrary Research, Surge AI memo Press report
Drug Discovery Scientist at Mercor (building drug R&D evaluation problems for frontier AI models)	$60-$90 / hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Aug 2026	Hourly contract, remote. Life-sciences work next to biology: experts write research problems wrapped around messy evidence, plus the data room and the grading document.	Mercor job board, Drug Discovery Scientist The payer's own page
AI Model Policy Trainer, Generalist (Seattle) at Handshake AI	$30 - $85 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Aug 2026	Placement within the range depends on experience. Paid by Handshake AI, which sells the work to frontier labs.	Handshake careers (Ashby job board) The payer's own page
Spanish Tutors (Mercor)	$60-$65 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Aug 2026	A language role priced near expert rates. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.	Mercor job board The payer's own page
AI Model Policy Trainer, Mental Health (Seattle onsite) at Handshake AI	$45 - $65 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Aug 2026	Onsite in Seattle, Monday to Friday. Paid by Handshake AI, which sells the work to frontier labs.	Handshake careers (Ashby job board) The payer's own page
Clinicians (Mercor listing)	$120-$150 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Aug 2026	Generic clinician pool listing. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.	Mercor job board The payer's own page
micro1 net annual run rate after paying experts, on a $500M gross run rate	net annual run rate between $150 million and $200 million per year, kept by micro1	Aug 2026	$150M-$200M of $500M is 30-40% kept; the article's own wording ('retains roughly 60% to 70%') contradicts its numbers, so read it as 60-70% paid out. Single unnamed source.	TechCrunch Press report
micro1 gross margin on off-the-shelf datasets resold to several customers	as high as 80% to 90% gross margin on resold datasets	Aug 2026	Selling the same dataset more than once more than doubles the 30-40% spread on made-to-order expert work.	TechCrunch Press report
Biochemistry & Life Sciences Domain Expert at Mercor, embedded with a leading AI lab's GenAI team (USA only)	$65-$105 / hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Aug 2026	A full-time position (Bay Area, CA) advertised at an hourly rate: reviews life-sciences tasks, writes instruction specs and golden solutions and builds benchmarks. Mercor's Pharmaceutical R&D ($75-$115) and Materials Science ($70-$110) domain-expert posts are the same programme at a different band and are not repeated.	Mercor job board, Biochemistry & Life Sciences Domain Expert The payer's own page
Agent Engineer, per task (Mercor)	$100-$500 per task per task (paid to the worker)	Aug 2026	Agentic task building, paid per accepted task.	Mercor job board The payer's own page
Investment Banking & M&A finance domain expert (Mercor)	$100-$150 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Aug 2026	Private Equity and Venture Capital domain experts list at $110-$150 per hour. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.	Mercor job board The payer's own page
Partner & General Counsel, legal domain expert (Mercor)	$100-$150 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Aug 2026	Senior Counsel listings pay $85-$120 per hour. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.	Mercor job board The payer's own page
Data annotation billed by the annotator hour, all regions and skill levels	$6 to $60 per annotator hour per annotator hour, billed to the buyer	Aug 2026	What a buyer pays the vendor per hour, not what the annotator earns; the spread depends on region and skill. The same table puts medical expert review at $30 to $150+ an hour.	HabileData blog, How Much Does Data Annotation Cost? (updated 5 Aug 2026) A vendor's published price guide
Expert RLHF task such as grading code or medical answers, bought from an annotation vendor	$20 to $100+ each per expert task	Aug 2026	An annotation vendor's own price guide, which it calls indicative and aggregated from public pricing pages and quotes; the top is open-ended, and the same page's FAQ says expert evaluations for code, medical or legal content can exceed $50 per task.	HabileData blog, How Much Does Data Annotation Cost? (updated 5 Aug 2026) A vendor's published price guide
Generalist RLHF preference ranking (one pairwise comparison), bought from an annotation vendor	$0.50 – $8.00 per comparison (generalist) per comparison	Aug 2026	Vendor price guide, indicative; the page's own worked example budgets an ongoing RLHF pipeline at $4 per comparison.	HabileData blog, How Much Does Data Annotation Cost? (updated 5 Aug 2026) A vendor's published price guide
Professional documents licensed by the person who owns them (Handshake AI)	$6 per accepted page, up to $30,000 per page	Aug 2026	Only documents the person owns or may share. Work written for an employer or a client usually belongs to them, not to its author.	Business Insider, via AOL Press report
AI Safety Expert, English and Norwegian (Mercor)	$48-$62 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Jul 2026	Danish, Finnish, Swedish and Dutch carry the same band. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.	Mercor job board The payer's own page
AI Safety Expert, English and Vietnamese (Mercor)	$17-$25 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Jul 2026	Same work as the Norwegian listing at about a third of the pay; Indonesian and Malay also list at $17-$25, Thai at $24-$35. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.	Mercor job board The payer's own page
Mercor's average pay to about 30,000 contractors (H1 2026)	an average rate of $105 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Jul 2026	From financial documents reported by The Information; the same report puts H1 2026 gross revenue at $614M with over 90% from foundation model companies.	Crypto Briefing (citing The Information) Press report
Mercor gross margin on AI-lab billings, 2025	27% (2025) share of gross revenue kept after paying experts	Jul 2026	Full-year 2025. At 27% kept, a lab paid about $1.37 for each $1 Mercor paid an expert (1 / 0.73).	BigGo Finance (citing The Information) Press report
Mercor gross margin on AI-lab billings, Q2 2026	33% (Q2 2026) share of gross revenue kept after paying experts	Jul 2026	At 33% kept, about $1.49 billed for each $1 paid to an expert (1 / 0.67); the same report says contractors take roughly two-thirds of revenue.	BigGo Finance (citing The Information) Press report
Mercor gross margin on AI-lab billings, 2027 target	46% (2027 target) share of gross revenue kept after paying experts	Jul 2026	A company projection, not a result: the vendor plans to widen its spread on the same work.	BigGo Finance (citing The Information) Press report
Mercor gross revenue in the first half of 2026, and the share of it from AI foundation model companies	$614 million, more than 90% from AI foundation model companies gross revenue, first half of 2026 (all customers)	Jul 2026	Aggregate revenue across all of Mercor's customers, reported from financial documents The Information saw; it shows how concentrated the buying side of expert data is.	Crypto Briefing, Mercor reports $614M in revenue, 90% from AI model firms Press report
AI Safety Red Teamer (Mercor)	$70-$84 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Jul 2026	Hazardous-domain safety roles (chemistry, nuclear, explosives) are paid per task instead, at $65-$75. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher. Closed: Mercor shows the posting no longer accepting applications (read 2026-10-17).	Mercor job board The payer's own page
Share of every dollar kept by data vendors that run delivery from lower-cost geographies	70-80%+ share of every dollar kept	Jul 2026	A practitioner's essay. The same essay says a frontier-lab contact works directly with seven data vendors, all tasked with the same type of dataset; that nothing renews by default; and that headline run rates are usually the best month multiplied by 12.	Thoroughly Intrigued (Vikram Aditya), The business of selling data to frontier labs Press report
Handshake AI's largest frontier AI lab customer accounts	$100M+ run rate per account per account per year	Jul 2026	What a single frontier lab pays Handshake a year for human data, in the vendor's own hiring copy; labs are not named.	Handshake careers, Senior Engagement Manager posting The payer's own page
Share of Mercor's topline revenue paid out to its contractors	60% to 70% share of topline revenue paid out to contractors	Jul 2026	The mirror of the margin: Mercor keeps 30% to 40% of what a lab pays, so a lab pays roughly 1.4 to 1.7 times the expert's rate.	Dealroom News, Mercor doubles to $2B gross revenue run rate Press report
Mercor's advertised headline rate (early June 2026)	$141/hr in early June 2026 per hour (paid to the worker)	Jun 2026	Third-party tracker of the homepage figure: $99/hr in April 2026, $141/hr early June, relabeled and reset to $80/hr late June, $108-$122/hr since.	UsagePricing, Mercor pricing blueprint Press report
Writing expert role on Mercor	$75 to $150 per hour per hour (paid to the expert)	May 2026	The writer read the rate off Mercor's own site; one listing, not a field average.	Moneywise (on Yahoo Finance) Press report
RLHF preference label for reward modelling, crowdsourced	$0.50 to $2 per ranking per ranking	Apr 2026	An annotation platform's published cost guide, not a quote from a named vendor; the same sentence prices 50,000 labels at $30,000 to $150,000 in total.	TaskMonk blog, Top RLHF Platforms in 2026 (updated 28 Apr 2026) A vendor's published price guide
RLHF preference label for reward modelling, by domain experts	$5 to $10 per ranking per ranking	Apr 2026	Five to ten times the crowdsourced price in the same sentence: the expert premium on the same unit of work.	TaskMonk blog, Top RLHF Platforms in 2026 (updated 28 Apr 2026) A vendor's published price guide
Human-written SFT demonstration dataset of 10,000 demonstrations	$50,000 to $300,000 per dataset of 10,000 demonstrations	Apr 2026	Platform's cost guide; demonstrations cost more than rankings because annotators write full responses.	TaskMonk blog, Top RLHF Platforms in 2026 (updated 28 Apr 2026) A vendor's published price guide
Nuanced RLHF evaluation requiring domain expertise (one comparison set)	$20-100+ per comparison set per comparison set	Apr 2026	An AI services firm's published cost analysis; open-ended top, and ten to twenty times its simple-comparison price on the same page.	AI Superior, LLM Data Labeling Cost: 2026 Industry Analysis (17 Apr 2026) A vendor's published price guide
Simple RLHF preference judgment on a straightforward query (one comparison)	$2-5 per comparison per comparison	Apr 2026	Higher than NextWealth's $0.10 to $0.50 and TaskMonk's $0.50 to $2 for crowd comparisons: guides disagree by an order of magnitude on the same unit.	AI Superior, LLM Data Labeling Cost: 2026 Industry Analysis (17 Apr 2026) A vendor's published price guide
Enterprise LLM alignment (RLHF) programme, total	$50,000 to several hundred thousand dollars per programme	Apr 2026	Enterprise programmes, far below frontier-lab contracts of $100M+ a year.	NextWealth blog, RLHF for Enterprise LLMs A vendor's published price guide
Domain-expert RLHF annotation (medical, legal, financial)	$1.50-$8.00+ per task per task	Apr 2026	Open-ended top; 15 to 16 times the general comparison price at the bottom of each range.	NextWealth blog, RLHF for Enterprise LLMs A vendor's published price guide
General RLHF preference comparison (one pair judged)	$0.10-$0.50 per comparison per comparison	Apr 2026	A services vendor's published range for buyers; general-domain raters, not experts.	NextWealth blog, RLHF for Enterprise LLMs A vendor's published price guide
Voice Actor for CX agent voice cloning, USA (Mercor)	$50-$150 per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Mar 2026	Most of the 15 voice-cloning listings (accents from Peru to Northern UK) pay $50-$100. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.	Mercor job board The payer's own page
Chemist Talent Network at Mercor (open application for future AI-training contracts in chemistry)	$60-$80 / hr per hour (paid to the worker)	Feb 2026	Part-time, remote. Mercor's Biologist Talent Network and Physical Scientist Talent Network posts show the same $60-$80 / hr band, so it is one programme rate (filed here, not repeated for biology).	Mercor job board, Chemist Talent Network The payer's own page
Effective pay for a generalist tasker on some Outlier (Scale AI) projects	around $20 an hour, down from $50 per hour (paid to the worker)	Dec 2025	One tasker's account after Meta's Scale AI deal; shows generalist rates falling while expert rates held.	Business Insider (on AOL) Press report
Handshake AI monthly payouts to its experts, against its gross run rate	~$60M a month to over 30,000 experts; ~$1B run rate per month, all experts	Nov 2025	The vendor's own figures: $60M a month is $720M a year (x12), about 72% of a ~$1B run rate, so roughly 28% stays with Handshake; about $2,000 per expert per month ($60M / 30,000). Repeated in a September 2026 red-teamer posting.	Handshake careers, Engagement Manager posting The payer's own page
Generalist data work on Mercor's Meta project Nova, after project Musen ended	$16 an hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Nov 2025	Musen paid $5 more ($21 an hour) and had more than 5,000 workers at peak; Mercor called the reporting inaccurate. The low end of Mercor's pay, for a Meta generalist project.	Business Insider (on AOL) Press report
Mercor's top industry-expert rate (October 2025)	up to $200 an hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2025	The CEO's statement; he added that labs are willing to pay even more, without a figure.	TechCrunch Press report
Former investment bankers writing prompts and building financial models for OpenAI (Project Mercury)	$150 per hour per hour (paid to the expert)	Oct 2025	Rate from a person familiar with the effort; OpenAI said experts are paid through unnamed third-party suppliers, so the buyer's bill rate is higher.	Fortune (citing Bloomberg) Press report
Mercor's average pay for experts (October 2025)	$85/hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Oct 2025	Against $105/hr in H1 2026 and a $109/hr homepage average in October 2026: average pay rose about 25% in a year.	Contrary Research, Mercor memo Press report
Google's planned 2025 spend with Scale AI for human-labeled training data	$200 million this year per year (2025, planned)	Jun 2025	Scale's largest customer at the time; Google planned to cut ties after Meta took 49% of Scale.	TechCrunch (citing Reuters) Press report
A verified universal jailbreak of Anthropic's unreleased safety classifiers (bug bounty)	up to $25,000 per verified universal jailbreak	May 2025	Against Constitutional Classifiers on Claude 3.7 Sonnet; the ceiling rose two-thirds in nine months. The programme concluded on 22 May 2025. Paid by the lab directly, no vendor.	Anthropic news The payer's own page
Annotator writing IMO-level math problems for RLHF (Abaka AI cost model)	20 USD per hour per hour (paid to the worker)	Sep 2024	A 2024 vendor cost model at one problem per hour; 2026 platform rates for formal-proof math run $90 to $200 an hour.	Abaka AI blog, LLM Data Cost Breakdown A vendor's published price guide
Supervised fine-tuning (SFT) data, one constructed entry	about 6 USD per entry per entry (2,000 entries for 12,000 USD)	Sep 2024	A vendor's 2024 worked example, older than the rest of this set.	Abaka AI blog, LLM Data Cost Breakdown A vendor's published price guide
A verified universal jailbreak of Anthropic's unreleased safety classifiers (bug bounty)	up to $15,000 per verified universal jailbreak	Aug 2024	Invite-only via HackerOne, on an unreleased safety system focused on CBRN and cyber. Paid by the lab directly, no vendor.	Anthropic news The payer's own page
Mercor markup on contractor billing (February 2024)	approximately 35% markup on contractor pay	Feb 2024	The earliest reported Mercor spread; the memo calls it both a markup and a take rate, and ties it to median BPO gross margins.	Contrary Research, Mercor memo Press report
Text labelling for ChatGPT safety, outsourced by OpenAI to Sama in Kenya (late 2021 contracts)	$12.50 an hour per hour, paid by OpenAI to Sama	Jan 2023	One of the few disclosed lab-to-vendor hourly prices; the workers took home $1.32 to $2 an hour, so the vendor kept most of the bill.	TIME Press report
Three OpenAI contracts with Sama for labelling work	about $200,000 in total per programme (three contracts)	Jan 2023	Cancelled early; OpenAI put the amount actually paid at about $150,000.	TIME Press report
Sama data labellers in Kenya working on OpenAI's ChatGPT safety project	$1.32 to $2 per hour per hour, take-home after tax	Jan 2023	Against OpenAI's $12.50 an hour billed to Sama: the worker received 11 to 16% of the bill rate ($1.32 / $12.50 to $2 / $12.50).	TIME Press report

Median advertised hourly pay for Agentic Tasks & RL Environments roles in AI training
Price
$50 an hour (live median)
per hour, the median of 45 advertised rates
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The median of 45 distinct advertised hourly rates across 9 platforms, from 64 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs pay explorer
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for AI Evaluation & Rating (RLHF) roles in AI training
Price
$60 an hour (live median)
per hour, the median of 94 advertised rates
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The median of 94 distinct advertised hourly rates across 16 platforms, from 151 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs pay explorer
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Coding & Software Evaluation roles in AI training
Price
$65 an hour (live median)
per hour, the median of 187 advertised rates
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The median of 187 distinct advertised hourly rates across 13 platforms, from 286 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs pay explorer
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Data Annotation & Labeling roles in AI training
Price
$30 an hour (live median)
per hour, the median of 84 advertised rates
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The median of 84 distinct advertised hourly rates across 13 platforms, from 138 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs pay explorer
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Law, Medicine & Finance roles in AI training
Price
$70 an hour (live median)
per hour, the median of 684 advertised rates
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The median of 684 distinct advertised hourly rates across 20 platforms, from 1,098 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs pay explorer
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Math & STEM roles in AI training
Price
$65 an hour (live median)
per hour, the median of 192 advertised rates
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The median of 192 distinct advertised hourly rates across 12 platforms, from 227 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs pay explorer
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Multilingual & Localization roles in AI training
Price
$65 an hour (live median)
per hour, the median of 705 advertised rates
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The median of 705 distinct advertised hourly rates across 13 platforms, from 1,010 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs pay explorer
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Red-Teaming & AI Safety roles in AI training
Price
$55 an hour (live median)
per hour, the median of 30 advertised rates
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The median of 30 distinct advertised hourly rates across 8 platforms, from 52 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs pay explorer
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Research Studies & Surveys roles in AI training
Price
$100 an hour (live median)
per hour, the median of 17 advertised rates
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The median of 17 distinct advertised hourly rates across 3 platforms, from 34 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs pay explorer
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Robotics & Physical-AI Data roles in AI training
Price
$10 an hour (live median)
per hour, the median of 59 advertised rates
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The median of 59 distinct advertised hourly rates across 6 platforms, from 64 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs pay explorer
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Transcription, Audio & Speech roles in AI training
Price
$30 an hour (live median)
per hour, the median of 334 advertised rates
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The median of 334 distinct advertised hourly rates across 13 platforms, from 521 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs pay explorer
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Median advertised hourly pay for Writing & Content roles in AI training
Price
$55 an hour (live median)
per hour, the median of 20 advertised rates
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The median of 20 distinct advertised hourly rates across 4 platforms, from 37 open roles, recomputed daily. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs pay explorer
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Biologist, PhD at Alignerr (PhD biologists writing and reviewing advanced AI evaluation questions, posted for Labelbox)
Price
$90-120/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The PhD tier. As on the Chemist, PhD post, the body still carries an older line reading $25 to $100 per hour that disagrees with the $90-120/hr in the header and in the board's own data (lower bound 90, upper bound 120); the header figure is the one the board shows.
Source
Alignerr job board, Biologist, PhD
The payer's own page
Biology Masters at Alignerr (Master's-level biologists evaluating AI answers)
Price
$35-55/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The Master's tier. About 40 listings carry this title and band, and the 'Biology Subject Matter Expert - AI Content Specialist' posts match it. The Masters/PhDs tier on the same board reads $75-90/hr (alignerr-biology-expert-hourly).
Source
Alignerr job board, Biology Masters
The payer's own page
Chemist, PhD at Alignerr (PhD chemists writing and reviewing advanced AI evaluation questions, posted for Labelbox)
Price
$90-120/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The PhD tier, the highest chemistry band on the board. The posting's body still carries an older line reading $25 to $100 per hour, which disagrees with the $90-120/hr in its header and in the board's own data (lower bound 90, upper bound 120); the header figure is the one the board shows.
Source
Alignerr job board, Chemist, PhD
The payer's own page
Chemistry Masters at Alignerr (Master's-level chemists evaluating AI answers)
Price
$35-55/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The Master's tier. About 40 listings on Alignerr's board carry this title and the same band, and the 'Chemistry Subject Matter Expert - AI Content Specialist' posts match it. The Masters/PhDs tier on the same board reads $75-90/hr (alignerr-chemistry-expert-hourly).
Source
Alignerr job board, Chemistry Masters
The payer's own page
CVAT annotation services, one-time project: per annotated object, from its worked example (minimum project $5,000)
Price
$0.10/object
per annotated object
When
Oct 2026
What to know
CVAT's own worked example: 10,000 images at about 10 objects each is 100,000 objects, $10,000 at this rate. It bills per annotated object after a proof of concept and requires a minimum project value of $5,000.
Source
CVAT.ai, annotation services pricing explainer
A vendor's published price guide
CVAT annotation services, 6-month prepaid subscription (from $5,000): reduced per-object rate
Price
$0.05–0.075 per object
per annotated object (prepaid 6-month subscription)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The prepaid subscription starts at $5,000 for 6 months, for a buyer who sends data gradually and gives a volume estimate; the same worked example comes to $5,000 to $7,500 for 100,000 objects. The high end of the range is $0.075.
Source
CVAT.ai, annotation services pricing explainer
A vendor's published price guide
Label Your Data: bounding box annotation, starting price
Price
$0.02 per object
per object (starting price)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
A 'starts at' price that depends on project complexity and volume; the page also offers a cost calculator and a free pilot. The same page's $6 per annotator hour is held as labelyourdata-annotator-hour-bill-rate.
Source
Label Your Data, data annotation pricing
A vendor's published price guide
Label Your Data: keypoint annotation, starting price
Price
$0.015 per object
per object (starting price)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
A 'starts as low as' price for keypoints on images; the actual price depends on annotation type, data volume and complexity.
Source
Label Your Data, data annotation pricing
A vendor's published price guide
Label Your Data: NLP annotation, starting price per entity
Price
$0.02 per entity
per entity (starting price)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
A 'starts as low as' price for NLP tasks, counted per entity to label; the page's calculator also prices by characters or by annotation hours.
Source
Label Your Data, data annotation pricing
A vendor's published price guide
Mercor's average contracted expert rate (homepage)
Price
$112/hr Average contracted rate
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Platform-stated average of contracted rates, up $1 from $111/hr on 15 October 2026 ($110 on 14 October, $109 on 11 October). The homepage's own data field reads 112.
Source
Mercor homepage
The payer's own page
Precise BPO: bounding box annotation, per-task rate range (dedicated offshore team)
Price
$0.01 – $0.06
per bounding box (rate range)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The cheapest published image-box range found: a low-wage dedicated team (its hourly model is $4 to $8 an hour). The same table lists polygon or instance at $0.08 – $0.35 and segmentation at $0.10 – $0.45.
Source
Precise BPO, data labeling services pricing
A vendor's published price guide
Roboflow Outsource Labeling: bounding box annotation, starting rate
Price
$0.10 per bounding box
per bounding box (starting rate)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Roboflow Outsource Labeling: pay per annotation, with discounted prepaid options; it requires an active Roboflow subscription. Pricing and turnaround vary by project.
Source
Roboflow Labeling (outsourced labelling)
A vendor's published price guide
Roboflow Outsource Labeling: classification or keypoint annotation, starting rate
Price
$0.05 per classification or keypoint annotation
per classification or keypoint annotation (starting rate)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Roboflow Outsource Labeling: pay per annotation, with discounted prepaid options; it requires an active Roboflow subscription. Pricing and turnaround vary by project.
Source
Roboflow Labeling (outsourced labelling)
A vendor's published price guide
Roboflow Outsource Labeling: polygon annotation, starting rate
Price
$0.20 per polygon
per polygon (starting rate)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Roboflow Outsource Labeling: pay per annotation, with discounted prepaid options; it requires an active Roboflow subscription. Pricing and turnaround vary by project.
Source
Roboflow Labeling (outsourced labelling)
A vendor's published price guide
US-DATA: image bounding box annotation, indicative price per object
Price
1 object from $0.08
per object (indicative 'from' price)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The page calls its prices indicative and 'not a public offer'; the final cost is set after task analysis and a pilot.
Source
US-DATA, AI data annotation pricing
A vendor's published price guide
US-DATA: named entity recognition (NER) text annotation, indicative price per text
Price
1 text from $0.25
per text (indicative 'from' price)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
An indicative 'from' price from the same table that lists text classification at $0.06 a text and dialogue annotation at $1.25 a dialogue; not a public offer.
Source
US-DATA, AI data annotation pricing
A vendor's published price guide
Lawyers (Mercor listing)
Price
$100-$120 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Generic lawyer pool listing, US only; the band rose from $70-$110 (read 11 Oct 2026). Paid by Mercor; the lab bill rate is higher. Closed: Mercor shows the posting no longer accepting applications (read 2026-10-17).
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
Chemistry Specialist, Freelance AI Trainer Project (Meridial, global remote contractor)
Price
$8-to- $65 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
One band for the whole Freelance AI Trainer Project programme: the same $8 to $65 an hour appears on Meridial's Biology Specialist, Analytical, Organic/Inorganic, Synthetic and Radiochemistry posts and on its Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo language posts, with the exact rate set by experience and geographic location. Its Microbiology, Neuroscience and plain Medicine Specialist posts start at $6. The floor is a geography effect, not a skill price.
Source
Meridial job board (Greenhouse), Chemistry Specialist - Freelance AI Trainer Project
The payer's own page
All AI-training work: live median advertised hourly pay across 26 platforms (AITraining.jobs pay report)
Price
median $65/hr; typical $35-$120/hr
per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Median of 2,493 distinct advertised rates across 26 platforms from 3,725 open roles (1,960 rates, 21 platforms and $60 on 14 Oct). Same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Handshake AI: median advertised hourly pay across its open AI-training roles (AITraining.jobs)
Price
$90/hr median; typical $55-$150/hr
per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Median of the rates Handshake AI states in its live job feed, first listed in the report's platform table on 15 Oct 2026; one platform's rate card, not a market rate. Same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform)
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Terac: median advertised hourly pay across its open AI-training roles (AITraining.jobs)
Price
$85/hr median; typical $55-$105/hr
per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Median of the rates Terac states in its live job feed; one platform's rate card, not a market rate. Up from $75 (typical $50-$100) on 14 Oct. Same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform)
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Dutch Audio Transcriptionist (AI Training) at Alignerr
Price
$10-35/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Reposted under a new address with the floor cut from $15 to $10 an hour (the old posting now answers 404); native Dutch speakers in the US.
Source
Alignerr job board, Dutch Audio Transcriptionist
The payer's own page
Medical expert work on Mercor, nurses and other clinical professions (standing talent network band)
Price
$60 to $180 an hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The posting closed; its page now shows the standing Mercor talent network for the field, which states the band its listings have paid and names a project's own rate only when it invites someone (was $55 to $65 an hour for registered nurses on the posting). The band spans professions, so it is wider than any one role's rate.
Source
Mercor, RN Annotators (closed) and its Medical Expert talent network
The payer's own page
Physician (MD/DO) work on Mercor, clinical documentation and AI evaluation (standing talent network band)
Price
$115-$150 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The posting closed; its page now shows the standing Mercor talent network for the field, which states the band its listings have paid and names a project's own rate only when it invites someone (was $170 an hour on the posting).
Source
Mercor, Primary Care Physician (MD) (closed) and its Medical Expert (M.D./D.O.) talent network
The payer's own page
Babel Audio: median advertised hourly pay across its live roles
Price
$105/hr median; typical $105-$150/hr
per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Median of the hourly rates Babel Audio states in its live job feed, measured by AITraining.jobs. First listed among the platforms with enough rates to measure on 14 October 2026. AITraining.jobs has the same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform)
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Mindrift (Toloka): median advertised hourly pay across its open AI-training roles (AITraining.jobs)
Price
$100/hr median; typical $100-$105/hr
per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Median of the rates Mindrift (Toloka) states in its live job feed, with the 25th to 75th percentile band $54-$130/hr; one platform's rate card, not a market rate. Same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform)
A catalogue or marketplace listing
RemoExperts: median advertised hourly pay across its open AI-training roles (AITraining.jobs)
Price
$95/hr median; typical $70-$150/hr
per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Median of the rates RemoExperts states in its live job feed, with the 25th to 75th percentile band $71-$108/hr; one platform's rate card, not a market rate. Same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform)
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Sovrano AI: median advertised hourly pay across its open AI-training roles (AITraining.jobs)
Price
$80/hr median; typical $80-$125/hr
per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Median of the rates Sovrano AI states in its live job feed, with the 25th to 75th percentile band $60-$82/hr; one platform's rate card, not a market rate. Same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform)
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Data annotation billed by time (Label Your Data)
Price
$6 per annotator hour
per annotator hour, billed to the buyer
When
Oct 2026
What to know
A vendor's own typical hourly bill rate for generalist annotation; undated page read on 2026-10-14.
Source
Label Your Data, Pricing (FAQ)
A vendor's published price guide
Mercor: Consulting Expert (role on the homepage)
Price
$95/hr
per hour (paid to the expert)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Hourly rate Mercor shows for a role among its latest roles on its homepage, which rotates; 70 people recently hired. Closed: The role left Mercor's homepage and is not among its 299 open listings (read 2026-10-17).
Source
Mercor
The payer's own page
Mercor: Legal Expert (role on the homepage)
Price
$90/hr
per hour (paid to the expert)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Hourly rate Mercor shows for a role among its latest roles on its homepage, which rotates; 65 people recently hired.
Source
Mercor
The payer's own page
Simple annotation on Appen's self-service platform
Price
rates starting around $0.01–$0.10 per simple annotation
per simple annotation task
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Self-service only; Vendr says managed services are quoted as project totals or retainers and enterprise deals as minimum annual spend against per-task or hourly rates.
Source
Vendr marketplace, Appen pricing FAQ
Press report
Annotation task bought from Appen, typical per-task price across complexity
Price
Typical per-task range $0.01–$0.50+ depending on complexity
per task
When
Oct 2026
What to know
A procurement marketplace's benchmark, which it says draws on its transaction data; open-ended top. Appen itself publishes custom quotes only. Undated page read on 2026-10-14.
Source
Vendr marketplace, Appen pricing (Appen vs. Scale AI comparison)
Press report
Annotation task bought from Scale AI, typical per-task price across complexity
Price
$0.05–$1.00+ depending on complexity
per task
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Second column of Vendr's Appen vs. Scale AI table: Scale's typical per-task price runs about two to five times Appen's. Benchmark for commodity annotation tasks, not expert or coding tasks.
Source
Vendr marketplace, Appen pricing (Appen vs. Scale AI comparison)
Press report
AI Tutor roles in 13 languages at xAI (Croatian, Finnish, French, Hausa, Italian, Khmer, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Yoruba)
Price
$35/hour - $45/hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Same band on every open language tutor posting read on 15 Oct 2026 (French, Spanish, Yoruba quoted); the German, Chinese, Polish, Romanian and Russian postings have closed. US pay; candidates elsewhere get a recruiter estimate. xAI hires tutors directly, so this is a lab paying the worker with no vendor in between.
Source
xAI careers (Greenhouse job board), AI Tutor - French
The payer's own page
BioInformatics Experts at Mercor (writing multi-step bioinformatics data-analysis tasks with validated answers)
Price
$90-$110 / hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Hourly contract, remote. The work is genomics-style data analysis (public archives such as GEO, SRA and PDB, or the expert's own data) with a reproducing Jupyter notebook per task.
Source
Mercor job board, BioInformatics Experts
The payer's own page
AfterQuery: median advertised hourly pay across its open AI-training roles (AITraining.jobs)
Price
$75/hr median; typical $45-$125/hr
per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Median of the rates AfterQuery states in its live job feed, with the 25th to 75th percentile band $45-$101/hr; one platform's rate card, not a market rate. Same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform)
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Babel Audio: median advertised hourly pay across its open AI-training roles (AITraining.jobs)
Price
$105/hr median; typical $105/hr
per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Median of the rates Babel Audio states in its live job feed, with the 25th to 75th percentile band $105/hr; one platform's rate card, not a market rate. Same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform)
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Mercor: median advertised hourly pay across its open AI-training roles (AITraining.jobs)
Price
$80/hr median; typical $55-$150/hr
per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Median of the rates Mercor states in its live job feed, with the 25th to 75th percentile band $56-$95/hr; one platform's rate card, not a market rate. Same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform)
A catalogue or marketplace listing
micro1: median advertised hourly pay across its open AI-training roles (AITraining.jobs)
Price
$70/hr median; typical $45-$280/hr
per hour (median advertised rate, paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Median of the rates micro1 states in its live job feed, with the 25th to 75th percentile band $45-$115/hr; one platform's rate card, not a market rate. Same owner as AIData.Broker.
Source
AITraining.jobs, The State of AI Training Pay 2026 (by platform)
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Accounting & Finance Expert at Alignerr
Price
$60-100/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Finance teaching and economist listings on the same board pay $35-70/hr.
Source
Alignerr job board
The payer's own page
AI Red Team Tester at Alignerr
Price
$40-120/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
15 listings at this band on the day read.
Source
Alignerr job board
The payer's own page
Average pay across Alignerr (Labelbox) experts
Price
$80/hr Average pay
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Platform-stated average; the same page says $1M is paid weekly and 1K+ are hired weekly. Its job board listed 5,704 roles the same day.
Source
Alignerr homepage
The payer's own page
Biology Expert (Masters/PhDs) at Alignerr
Price
$75-90/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Biology Masters listings on the same board pay $35-55/hr.
Source
Alignerr job board
The payer's own page
Chemistry Expert (Masters/PhDs) at Alignerr
Price
$75-90/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Chemistry Masters listings on the same board pay $35-55/hr.
Source
Alignerr job board
The payer's own page
Creative Writing Evaluator at Alignerr
Price
$40-120/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Prompt Writer listings carry the same band.
Source
Alignerr job board
The payer's own page
Lean 4 Proof Engineer - Mathematical Formalization (Alignerr)
Price
$170-200/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
About 130 Lean 4 and formal-verification listings on the board carry this band, the top of Alignerr's STEM pay.
Source
Alignerr job board
The payer's own page
Legal & Government Policy Analyst (AI Training) at Alignerr
Price
$20-40/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Alignerr listed only 16 legal roles, nearly all at this band; no attorney-level legal role was open.
Source
Alignerr job board
The payer's own page
Mathematics Expert (Masters/PhDs) at Alignerr
Price
$75-90/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The chemistry and biology Masters/PhD expert listings carry the same $75-90/hr band.
Source
Alignerr job board
The payer's own page
Machine Learning Evaluation Specialist at Alignerr (designing ML challenges that stump frontier models)
Price
$200-400/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The highest band on Alignerr's board (7 listings).
Source
Alignerr job board
The payer's own page
Oncology Clinical Researcher at Alignerr
Price
$40-80/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The commonest band among Alignerr's ~800 health and clinical listings; no physician-specific role was listed.
Source
Alignerr job board
The payer's own page
Physicist, PhD at Alignerr
Price
$90-120/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Most of Alignerr's 183 physics listings pay less ($35-55/hr for Masters, $40-80/hr for applied physics).
Source
Alignerr job board
The payer's own page
Software Developer paid to build their own project with an AI coding assistant (Alignerr)
Price
$60-120/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Listed in 25 cities at the same band; the developer keeps the code, and the sessions are the data.
Source
Alignerr job board
The payer's own page
Voice Actor - German Speakers at Alignerr
Price
$250-280/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
German voice actors were the best-paid voice roles; Italian and French voice actors listed at $170-200/hr, UK and Australian English at $120-200/hr, Indian English and Mexican Spanish at $40-80/hr.
Source
Alignerr job board
The payer's own page
Alignerr (Labelbox) weekly payouts to experts
Price
$1M Paid weekly
per week, all experts
When
Oct 2026
What to know
About $52M a year if sustained (x52); far below Handshake's ~$60M a month.
Source
Alignerr homepage
The payer's own page
Software engineering, data science and ML roles on DataAnnotation
Price
$40 – $150+ / hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Posted pay band for software engineering, data science and ML roles on the platform's own site; the top is open-ended.
Source
DataAnnotation
The payer's own page
Finance, legal, medical, cybersecurity, engineering and STEM roles on DataAnnotation
Price
$40 – $125+ / hr; generalists $25 – $50 / hr; language specialists $25 – $40 / hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Same page sets generalist work at $25 to $50 and language work at $25 to $40, so credentialed fields earn roughly 1.6 to 3 times generalist pay.
Source
DataAnnotation
The payer's own page
Clinical Annotator III: GSA schedule ceiling rate billed to US government buyers (FedPoint Systems)
Price
$124.84 per hour
per hour, ceiling rate billed to the buyer
When
Oct 2026
What to know
A published contract ceiling (MAS contract 47QTCA23D00AR, Bachelors, 4+ years, customer facility), not a paid invoice; a rare public bill rate for annotation labour.
Source
GSA CALC+ ceiling-rate API (Multiple Award Schedule)
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Data Labeler III (TS/SCI): GSA schedule ceiling rate billed to US government buyers (Chenega Technology & Modernized Solutions)
Price
$72.98 per hour
per hour, ceiling rate billed to the buyer
When
Oct 2026
What to know
A published contract ceiling (MAS contract 47QTCA26D009E, Bachelors, 5+ years, customer facility), not a paid invoice; a rare public bill rate for annotation labour.
Source
GSA CALC+ ceiling-rate API (Multiple Award Schedule)
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Data Labeler, Intermediate: GSA schedule ceiling rate billed to US government buyers (Chenega Systems)
Price
$94.33 per hour
per hour, ceiling rate billed to the buyer
When
Oct 2026
What to know
A published contract ceiling (MAS contract 47QTCA24D0075, Bachelors, 5+ years, customer facility), not a paid invoice; a rare public bill rate for annotation labour.
Source
GSA CALC+ ceiling-rate API (Multiple Award Schedule)
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Medical Annotator III: GSA schedule ceiling rate billed to US government buyers (FedPoint Systems)
Price
$152.72 per hour
per hour, ceiling rate billed to the buyer
When
Oct 2026
What to know
A published contract ceiling (MAS contract 47QTCA23D00AR, Bachelors, 4+ years, customer facility), not a paid invoice; a rare public bill rate for annotation labour.
Source
GSA CALC+ ceiling-rate API (Multiple Award Schedule)
A catalogue or marketplace listing
Cumulative payouts to Handshake AI fellows
Price
$500M+ payouts made
cumulative total, all fellows
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Total paid to 188k+ fellows since Handshake AI launched in January 2025; a payout total, not a rate.
Source
Handshake AI, fellowship homepage
The payer's own page
Handshake AI data business gross margin
Price
gross margins around ~30%
share of gross revenue kept after paying experts
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Research-firm figure; the same page puts AI gross revenue near $1B (April 2026) and net after payouts near $300M, consistent with about 30% kept.
Source
Sacra, Handshake company page
Press report
Handshake AI experts in mathematics, physics and computer science
Price
$100–125 per hour
per hour (paid to the expert)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Research-firm estimate, not a Handshake rate card; Handshake job posts seen the same day ranged from $75 to $100 (chemistry) to $110 to $140 (medicine).
Source
Sacra
Press report
AI Evaluation Specialist (Handshake AI fellowship, trending opportunity)
Price
Up to $17/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
A ceiling, not a typical rate. The same page lists Game Developer/Designer and PCB Tool Specialist at up to $125/hr and an AI Evaluation Specialist at up to $17/hr.
Source
Handshake AI, fellowship homepage
The payer's own page
FP&A Analyst (Handshake AI fellowship, trending opportunity)
Price
Up to $80/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
A ceiling, not a typical rate. The same page lists Game Developer/Designer and PCB Tool Specialist at up to $125/hr and an AI Evaluation Specialist at up to $17/hr.
Source
Handshake AI, fellowship homepage
The payer's own page
Philosophy Expert (Handshake AI fellowship, trending opportunity)
Price
Up to $120/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
A ceiling, not a typical rate. The same page lists Game Developer/Designer and PCB Tool Specialist at up to $125/hr and an AI Evaluation Specialist at up to $17/hr.
Source
Handshake AI, fellowship homepage
The payer's own page
Software Engineer (Handshake AI fellowship, trending opportunity)
Price
Up to $120/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
A ceiling, not a typical rate. The same page lists Game Developer/Designer and PCB Tool Specialist at up to $125/hr and an AI Evaluation Specialist at up to $17/hr.
Source
Handshake AI, fellowship homepage
The payer's own page
Applied Physics Benchmark Specialist role on Mercor's live board
Price
$61-$77/hr
per hour (paid to the expert)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
A benchmark-writing role, priced well below the data science role on the same page. Closed: The role left Mercor's homepage and is not among its 299 open listings (read 2026-10-17).
Source
Mercor
The payer's own page
Chemists, explosives and nuclear security specialists writing safety tasks on Mercor
Price
$65 - $75 / task
per task (paid to the expert)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
About a dozen hazardous-domain roles (toxicological chemist, blasting engineer, nonproliferation analyst, nuclear engineer) all carried the same per-task band; the generalist role on the same page paid $50 - $60 / hour.
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
Share of Mercor's gross revenue paid to contractors
Price
60-70% of top-line revenue
share of gross revenue
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Implies the lab pays about $1.43 to $1.67 for each $1 an expert receives (1 / 0.70 to 1 / 0.60).
Source
Sacra, Mercor company page
Press report
Mercor daily payouts to experts
Price
$4M+ Daily payouts
per day, all experts
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Up from more than $1.5M a day in October 2025 and more than $2M a day in mid-2026; $4M a day is about $1.46B a year (x365).
Source
Mercor homepage
The payer's own page
Data Science Expert role on Mercor's live board
Price
$100-$150/hr
per hour (paid to the expert)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Live listing on Mercor's homepage the day it was read; the same page shows a $109/hr average contracted rate, and listings change daily. Closed: The role left Mercor's homepage and is not among its 299 open listings (read 2026-10-17).
Source
Mercor
The payer's own page
Inorganic Chemistry & Synthesis Expert (PhD-level evaluation of materials synthesis problems) at Mercor
Price
$84 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
A single fixed hourly rate, not a band; hourly contract, remote. Mercor pays the expert; the lab's bill rate is higher.
Source
Mercor job board, Inorganic Chemistry & Synthesis Expert
The payer's own page
Mindrift (Toloka) AI trainers, domain experts
Price
$60-100+/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Open-ended top for experts; the same page caps monthly earnings by project at $5,400 (coding) to $8,000 (consulting).
Source
Mindrift homepage
The payer's own page
Mindrift (Toloka) AI trainers, entry level
Price
$15-30 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Open-ended top for experts; the same page caps monthly earnings by project at $5,400 (coding) to $8,000 (consulting).
Source
Mindrift homepage
The payer's own page
A software expert recording and narrating real work on screen (Mercor listing)
Price
Up to $65 an hour
per hour, paid to the person
When
Oct 2026
What to know
What the person is paid, not what the lab pays. Vendors pass roughly 60 to 70% of the lab's price to the person.
Source
Mercor
The payer's own page
OpenTrain AI managed AI-training teams
Price
Cost-plus 20% management fee
fee on top of trainer cost
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Managed recruiting, vetting, daily management and QA for 20% over cost: well below the 30-40% gross margins reported for Mercor, Handshake and micro1.
Source
OpenTrain AI, Pricing
A vendor's published price guide
OpenTrain AI self-service fee on payments to AI trainers and annotators
Price
10% marketplace fee plus $9.95 per contract
fee on payments to talent, plus a per-contract charge
When
Oct 2026
What to know
A published buyer-side markup: 10% on top of the trainer's rate (low/high are the $9.95 initiation fee per contract).
Source
OpenTrain AI, Pricing
A vendor's published price guide
Cumulative payouts to Outlier (Scale AI) contributors
Price
$500M+ Paid to experts
cumulative total, all contributors
When
Oct 2026
What to know
A payout total, not a rate; Outlier publishes no hourly schedule on its homepage.
Source
Outlier homepage
The payer's own page
Prolific participant and tasker pay, minimum
Price
$8.00 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Prolific recommends higher pay for AI annotation, coding or advanced STEM tasks.
Source
Prolific, Pricing FAQ
The payer's own page
Prolific participant and tasker pay, recommended
Price
$12.00 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Prolific recommends higher pay for AI annotation, coding or advanced STEM tasks.
Source
Prolific, Pricing FAQ
The payer's own page
Prolific platform fee on participant and AI-tasker rewards (academic or non-profit customers)
Price
33.3% platform fee
fee on top of worker pay
When
Oct 2026
What to know
A published markup: the buyer pays the worker's reward plus 33.3%. Managed services and AI-tasker programmes are quoted privately.
Source
Prolific, Pricing FAQ
A vendor's published price guide
Prolific platform fee on participant and AI-tasker rewards (corporate customers)
Price
42.8% platform fee
fee on top of worker pay
When
Oct 2026
What to know
A published markup: the buyer pays the worker's reward plus 42.8%. Managed services and AI-tasker programmes are quoted privately.
Source
Prolific, Pricing FAQ
A vendor's published price guide
Surge AI expert contractor (award-winning author or journalist tier)
Price
$200-400 / hour, contractor
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The only rate on Surge's own workforce page, shown above an award-winning author journalist profile; other profiles (constitutional lawyer, investment banker, professor) carry no rate.
Source
Surge AI, Workforce page
The payer's own page
Oncologist (Mercor listing)
Price
$350-$450 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The highest hourly band on Mercor's open board the day it was read. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
A developer's own AI coding session, shared as data (Mercor)
Price
$200 per task
per task (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Pays for existing work sessions, not new labour: the closest a vendor listing comes to buying data a person already has. Closed: Mercor shows the posting no longer accepting applications (read 2026-10-17).
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
Database Systems Evaluation Expert, per task (Mercor)
Price
$2.2K per task
per task (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
The highest per-task price on Mercor's board the day read.
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
Research Advisor, Human Frontier Collective (Scale AI): senior finance, legal and medical experts
Price
$300/hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
Part-time contract for partners, senior counsel, board-certified MDs and bulge-bracket finance seniors; the role also represents Scale with clients. The HFC Fellow roles on the same board state no rate.
Source
Scale AI careers (Greenhouse), Research Advisor, Human Frontier Collective (US)
The payer's own page
AI Tutor, Video at xAI
Price
$40/hour - $75/hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
US pay; a weekend variant of the role carries the same band. xAI hires tutors directly, so this is a lab paying the worker with no vendor in between.
Source
xAI careers (Greenhouse job board)
The payer's own page
AI Red Teamer (LLM generalist, Remote) at Handshake AI
Price
$32 - $95 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
W-2 hourly through TCWGlobal, 40 hours a week; a Seattle variant carries the same band. Paid by Handshake AI, which sells the work to frontier labs.
Source
Handshake careers (Ashby job board)
The payer's own page
AI Tutor, Design at xAI
Price
$35/hour - $75/hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
US pay; first published 3 September 2026. xAI hires tutors directly, so this is a lab paying the worker with no vendor in between.
Source
xAI careers (Greenhouse job board)
The payer's own page
AI Tutor, Humanities at xAI
Price
$35/hour - $75/hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2026
What to know
US pay; first published 3 September 2026. xAI hires tutors directly, so this is a lab paying the worker with no vendor in between.
Source
xAI careers (Greenhouse job board)
The payer's own page
Lean Engineer, formal mathematics (Lean 4, Mathlib) (Mercor)
Price
$90-$110 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Sep 2026
What to know
Compare Alignerr's Lean 4 listings at $170-200/hr the same day. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
AI Tutor, Legal and Compliance at xAI
Price
$50/hour - $100/hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Sep 2026
What to know
The highest band among xAI's tutor postings; US pay. xAI hires tutors directly, so this is a lab paying the worker with no vendor in between.
Source
xAI careers (Greenhouse job board)
The payer's own page
AI Tutor, Software Engineering at xAI
Price
$40/hour - $100/hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Sep 2026
What to know
US pay; xAI also lists an Expert Team Lead, SWE at $104,000 to $170,400 a year. xAI hires tutors directly, so this is a lab paying the worker with no vendor in between. Closed: The posting returns 404 and xAI's board has no software-engineering tutor role (read 2026-10-17).
Source
xAI careers (Greenhouse job board)
The payer's own page
AI Tutor, Writing at xAI
Price
$35/hour - $75/hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Sep 2026
What to know
US pay; the posting says the rate depends on the subspecialty applied for. xAI hires tutors directly, so this is a lab paying the worker with no vendor in between.
Source
xAI careers (Greenhouse job board)
The payer's own page
Condensed Matter Physicist (PhD) (Mercor)
Price
$80-$110 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Sep 2026
What to know
Ten physics PhD subfield listings opened on 25 September 2026 all carry $80-$110. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
Biotechnology Expert talent network at Mercor (bioprocess and therapeutic judgment for AI model evaluation)
Price
$110 to $125 an hour
per hour (paid to the expert, past contract rates)
When
Sep 2026
What to know
A talent-network post: the band is what past contracts in the field have paid, set per project. The highest advertised life-sciences band found on Mercor this run.
Source
Mercor job board, Biotechnology Expert
The payer's own page
Chemistry Expert talent network at Mercor (graduate-level chemistry judgment for AI model evaluation)
Price
$65 to $105 an hour
per hour (paid to the expert, past project rates)
When
Sep 2026
What to know
A talent-network post: the band is what past projects have paid, set per project, not a standing offer. Mercor's Biology Expert post uses the same wording at $70 to $105 an hour.
Source
Mercor job board, Chemistry Expert
The payer's own page
Audiobook QA Expert, English (US) (Mercor)
Price
$20-$25 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Sep 2026
What to know
French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese audiobook QA list at $15-$20. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
Equity Research Expert, single-name analyst publications (Mercor)
Price
$150-$250 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Sep 2026
What to know
Central bank and company-analysis expert listings carry the same band. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
Application user recording generalist software use (Photoshop on Windows) (Mercor)
Price
$30-$40 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Sep 2026
What to know
Mercor's computer-use series: generalist apps $30-$40, STEM apps $45-$55, code tools $55-$65, office professionals $60-$70. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
Molecular Biology Experts, US (Mercor)
Price
$70-$105 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Sep 2026
What to know
A UK variant lists the same band. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
AI Red Teamer, CBRNE (Remote) at Handshake AI
Price
$65 - $158 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Sep 2026
What to know
Contract, US remote; chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosives red-teaming. Paid by Handshake AI, which sells the work to frontier labs.
Source
Handshake careers (Ashby job board)
The payer's own page
AI Red Teamer, Cybersecurity (Remote) at Handshake AI
Price
$65 - $125 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Sep 2026
What to know
Contract, US remote. Paid by Handshake AI, which sells the work to frontier labs.
Source
Handshake careers (Ashby job board)
The payer's own page
AI Model Policy Trainer, Image Evaluation (Seattle onsite) at Handshake AI
Price
$36 - $72 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Sep 2026
What to know
Onsite in Seattle. Paid by Handshake AI, which sells the work to frontier labs.
Source
Handshake careers (Ashby job board)
The payer's own page
AI Safety Policy Evaluator, Violence and Threats (Seattle onsite) at Handshake AI
Price
$55 - $120 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Sep 2026
What to know
Content-policy evaluation for frontier labs; needs trust-and-safety, threat assessment or similar depth. Paid by Handshake AI, which sells the work to frontier labs.
Source
Handshake careers (Ashby job board)
The payer's own page
Google's annual contract with Surge AI
Price
more than $100 million per year
per year
When
Sep 2026
What to know
Forbes (September 2025) via Contrary.
Source
Contrary Research, Surge AI memo (updated 1 September 2026)
Press report
Meta's 2024 spend with Surge AI
Price
$150 million in 2024
per year
When
Sep 2026
What to know
Contrary attributes the figure to The Information. One lab's annual human-data bill with one vendor.
Source
Contrary Research, Surge AI memo (updated 1 September 2026)
Press report
Surge AI's prices relative to competing human-data vendors
Price
50% to ten times more than competitors
relative to competitors' prices
When
Sep 2026
What to know
Forbes (September 2025) via Contrary; Surge's DataAnnotation pays $25-$50/hr generalists and $40-$150+/hr specialists, so the spread there is widest.
Source
Contrary Research, Surge AI memo
Press report
Drug Discovery Scientist at Mercor (building drug R&D evaluation problems for frontier AI models)
Price
$60-$90 / hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Aug 2026
What to know
Hourly contract, remote. Life-sciences work next to biology: experts write research problems wrapped around messy evidence, plus the data room and the grading document.
Source
Mercor job board, Drug Discovery Scientist
The payer's own page
AI Model Policy Trainer, Generalist (Seattle) at Handshake AI
Price
$30 - $85 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Aug 2026
What to know
Placement within the range depends on experience. Paid by Handshake AI, which sells the work to frontier labs.
Source
Handshake careers (Ashby job board)
The payer's own page
Spanish Tutors (Mercor)
Price
$60-$65 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Aug 2026
What to know
A language role priced near expert rates. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
AI Model Policy Trainer, Mental Health (Seattle onsite) at Handshake AI
Price
$45 - $65 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Aug 2026
What to know
Onsite in Seattle, Monday to Friday. Paid by Handshake AI, which sells the work to frontier labs.
Source
Handshake careers (Ashby job board)
The payer's own page
Clinicians (Mercor listing)
Price
$120-$150 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Aug 2026
What to know
Generic clinician pool listing. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
micro1 net annual run rate after paying experts, on a $500M gross run rate
Price
net annual run rate between $150 million and $200 million
per year, kept by micro1
When
Aug 2026
What to know
$150M-$200M of $500M is 30-40% kept; the article's own wording ('retains roughly 60% to 70%') contradicts its numbers, so read it as 60-70% paid out. Single unnamed source.
Source
TechCrunch
Press report
micro1 gross margin on off-the-shelf datasets resold to several customers
Price
as high as 80% to 90%
gross margin on resold datasets
When
Aug 2026
What to know
Selling the same dataset more than once more than doubles the 30-40% spread on made-to-order expert work.
Source
TechCrunch
Press report
Biochemistry & Life Sciences Domain Expert at Mercor, embedded with a leading AI lab's GenAI team (USA only)
Price
$65-$105 / hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Aug 2026
What to know
A full-time position (Bay Area, CA) advertised at an hourly rate: reviews life-sciences tasks, writes instruction specs and golden solutions and builds benchmarks. Mercor's Pharmaceutical R&D ($75-$115) and Materials Science ($70-$110) domain-expert posts are the same programme at a different band and are not repeated.
Source
Mercor job board, Biochemistry & Life Sciences Domain Expert
The payer's own page
Agent Engineer, per task (Mercor)
Price
$100-$500 per task
per task (paid to the worker)
When
Aug 2026
What to know
Agentic task building, paid per accepted task.
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
Investment Banking & M&A finance domain expert (Mercor)
Price
$100-$150 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Aug 2026
What to know
Private Equity and Venture Capital domain experts list at $110-$150 per hour. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
Partner & General Counsel, legal domain expert (Mercor)
Price
$100-$150 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Aug 2026
What to know
Senior Counsel listings pay $85-$120 per hour. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
Data annotation billed by the annotator hour, all regions and skill levels
Price
$6 to $60 per annotator hour
per annotator hour, billed to the buyer
When
Aug 2026
What to know
What a buyer pays the vendor per hour, not what the annotator earns; the spread depends on region and skill. The same table puts medical expert review at $30 to $150+ an hour.
Source
HabileData blog, How Much Does Data Annotation Cost? (updated 5 Aug 2026)
A vendor's published price guide
Expert RLHF task such as grading code or medical answers, bought from an annotation vendor
Price
$20 to $100+ each
per expert task
When
Aug 2026
What to know
An annotation vendor's own price guide, which it calls indicative and aggregated from public pricing pages and quotes; the top is open-ended, and the same page's FAQ says expert evaluations for code, medical or legal content can exceed $50 per task.
Source
HabileData blog, How Much Does Data Annotation Cost? (updated 5 Aug 2026)
A vendor's published price guide
Generalist RLHF preference ranking (one pairwise comparison), bought from an annotation vendor
Price
$0.50 – $8.00 per comparison (generalist)
per comparison
When
Aug 2026
What to know
Vendor price guide, indicative; the page's own worked example budgets an ongoing RLHF pipeline at $4 per comparison.
Source
HabileData blog, How Much Does Data Annotation Cost? (updated 5 Aug 2026)
A vendor's published price guide
Professional documents licensed by the person who owns them (Handshake AI)
Price
$6 per accepted page, up to $30,000
per page
When
Aug 2026
What to know
Only documents the person owns or may share. Work written for an employer or a client usually belongs to them, not to its author.
Source
Business Insider, via AOL
Press report
AI Safety Expert, English and Norwegian (Mercor)
Price
$48-$62 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Jul 2026
What to know
Danish, Finnish, Swedish and Dutch carry the same band. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
AI Safety Expert, English and Vietnamese (Mercor)
Price
$17-$25 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Jul 2026
What to know
Same work as the Norwegian listing at about a third of the pay; Indonesian and Malay also list at $17-$25, Thai at $24-$35. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
Mercor's average pay to about 30,000 contractors (H1 2026)
Price
an average rate of $105 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Jul 2026
What to know
From financial documents reported by The Information; the same report puts H1 2026 gross revenue at $614M with over 90% from foundation model companies.
Source
Crypto Briefing (citing The Information)
Press report
Mercor gross margin on AI-lab billings, 2025
Price
27% (2025)
share of gross revenue kept after paying experts
When
Jul 2026
What to know
Full-year 2025. At 27% kept, a lab paid about $1.37 for each $1 Mercor paid an expert (1 / 0.73).
Source
BigGo Finance (citing The Information)
Press report
Mercor gross margin on AI-lab billings, Q2 2026
Price
33% (Q2 2026)
share of gross revenue kept after paying experts
When
Jul 2026
What to know
At 33% kept, about $1.49 billed for each $1 paid to an expert (1 / 0.67); the same report says contractors take roughly two-thirds of revenue.
Source
BigGo Finance (citing The Information)
Press report
Mercor gross margin on AI-lab billings, 2027 target
Price
46% (2027 target)
share of gross revenue kept after paying experts
When
Jul 2026
What to know
A company projection, not a result: the vendor plans to widen its spread on the same work.
Source
BigGo Finance (citing The Information)
Press report
Mercor gross revenue in the first half of 2026, and the share of it from AI foundation model companies
Price
$614 million, more than 90% from AI foundation model companies
gross revenue, first half of 2026 (all customers)
When
Jul 2026
What to know
Aggregate revenue across all of Mercor's customers, reported from financial documents The Information saw; it shows how concentrated the buying side of expert data is.
Source
Crypto Briefing, Mercor reports $614M in revenue, 90% from AI model firms
Press report
AI Safety Red Teamer (Mercor)
Price
$70-$84 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Jul 2026
What to know
Hazardous-domain safety roles (chemistry, nuclear, explosives) are paid per task instead, at $65-$75. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher. Closed: Mercor shows the posting no longer accepting applications (read 2026-10-17).
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
Share of every dollar kept by data vendors that run delivery from lower-cost geographies
Price
70-80%+
share of every dollar kept
When
Jul 2026
What to know
A practitioner's essay. The same essay says a frontier-lab contact works directly with seven data vendors, all tasked with the same type of dataset; that nothing renews by default; and that headline run rates are usually the best month multiplied by 12.
Source
Thoroughly Intrigued (Vikram Aditya), The business of selling data to frontier labs
Press report
Handshake AI's largest frontier AI lab customer accounts
Price
$100M+ run rate per account
per account per year
When
Jul 2026
What to know
What a single frontier lab pays Handshake a year for human data, in the vendor's own hiring copy; labs are not named.
Source
Handshake careers, Senior Engagement Manager posting
The payer's own page
Share of Mercor's topline revenue paid out to its contractors
Price
60% to 70%
share of topline revenue paid out to contractors
When
Jul 2026
What to know
The mirror of the margin: Mercor keeps 30% to 40% of what a lab pays, so a lab pays roughly 1.4 to 1.7 times the expert's rate.
Source
Dealroom News, Mercor doubles to $2B gross revenue run rate
Press report
Mercor's advertised headline rate (early June 2026)
Price
$141/hr in early June 2026
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Jun 2026
What to know
Third-party tracker of the homepage figure: $99/hr in April 2026, $141/hr early June, relabeled and reset to $80/hr late June, $108-$122/hr since.
Source
UsagePricing, Mercor pricing blueprint
Press report
Writing expert role on Mercor
Price
$75 to $150 per hour
per hour (paid to the expert)
When
May 2026
What to know
The writer read the rate off Mercor's own site; one listing, not a field average.
Source
Moneywise (on Yahoo Finance)
Press report
RLHF preference label for reward modelling, crowdsourced
Price
$0.50 to $2 per ranking
per ranking
When
Apr 2026
What to know
An annotation platform's published cost guide, not a quote from a named vendor; the same sentence prices 50,000 labels at $30,000 to $150,000 in total.
Source
TaskMonk blog, Top RLHF Platforms in 2026 (updated 28 Apr 2026)
A vendor's published price guide
RLHF preference label for reward modelling, by domain experts
Price
$5 to $10 per ranking
per ranking
When
Apr 2026
What to know
Five to ten times the crowdsourced price in the same sentence: the expert premium on the same unit of work.
Source
TaskMonk blog, Top RLHF Platforms in 2026 (updated 28 Apr 2026)
A vendor's published price guide
Human-written SFT demonstration dataset of 10,000 demonstrations
Price
$50,000 to $300,000
per dataset of 10,000 demonstrations
When
Apr 2026
What to know
Platform's cost guide; demonstrations cost more than rankings because annotators write full responses.
Source
TaskMonk blog, Top RLHF Platforms in 2026 (updated 28 Apr 2026)
A vendor's published price guide
Nuanced RLHF evaluation requiring domain expertise (one comparison set)
Price
$20-100+ per comparison set
per comparison set
When
Apr 2026
What to know
An AI services firm's published cost analysis; open-ended top, and ten to twenty times its simple-comparison price on the same page.
Source
AI Superior, LLM Data Labeling Cost: 2026 Industry Analysis (17 Apr 2026)
A vendor's published price guide
Simple RLHF preference judgment on a straightforward query (one comparison)
Price
$2-5 per comparison
per comparison
When
Apr 2026
What to know
Higher than NextWealth's $0.10 to $0.50 and TaskMonk's $0.50 to $2 for crowd comparisons: guides disagree by an order of magnitude on the same unit.
Source
AI Superior, LLM Data Labeling Cost: 2026 Industry Analysis (17 Apr 2026)
A vendor's published price guide
Enterprise LLM alignment (RLHF) programme, total
Price
$50,000 to several hundred thousand dollars
per programme
When
Apr 2026
What to know
Enterprise programmes, far below frontier-lab contracts of $100M+ a year.
Source
NextWealth blog, RLHF for Enterprise LLMs
A vendor's published price guide
Domain-expert RLHF annotation (medical, legal, financial)
Price
$1.50-$8.00+ per task
per task
When
Apr 2026
What to know
Open-ended top; 15 to 16 times the general comparison price at the bottom of each range.
Source
NextWealth blog, RLHF for Enterprise LLMs
A vendor's published price guide
General RLHF preference comparison (one pair judged)
Price
$0.10-$0.50 per comparison
per comparison
When
Apr 2026
What to know
A services vendor's published range for buyers; general-domain raters, not experts.
Source
NextWealth blog, RLHF for Enterprise LLMs
A vendor's published price guide
Voice Actor for CX agent voice cloning, USA (Mercor)
Price
$50-$150 per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Mar 2026
What to know
Most of the 15 voice-cloning listings (accents from Peru to Northern UK) pay $50-$100. Paid by Mercor; the lab's bill rate is higher.
Source
Mercor job board
The payer's own page
Chemist Talent Network at Mercor (open application for future AI-training contracts in chemistry)
Price
$60-$80 / hr
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Feb 2026
What to know
Part-time, remote. Mercor's Biologist Talent Network and Physical Scientist Talent Network posts show the same $60-$80 / hr band, so it is one programme rate (filed here, not repeated for biology).
Source
Mercor job board, Chemist Talent Network
The payer's own page
Effective pay for a generalist tasker on some Outlier (Scale AI) projects
Price
around $20 an hour, down from $50
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Dec 2025
What to know
One tasker's account after Meta's Scale AI deal; shows generalist rates falling while expert rates held.
Source
Business Insider (on AOL)
Press report
Handshake AI monthly payouts to its experts, against its gross run rate
Price
~$60M a month to over 30,000 experts; ~$1B run rate
per month, all experts
When
Nov 2025
What to know
The vendor's own figures: $60M a month is $720M a year (x12), about 72% of a ~$1B run rate, so roughly 28% stays with Handshake; about $2,000 per expert per month ($60M / 30,000). Repeated in a September 2026 red-teamer posting.
Source
Handshake careers, Engagement Manager posting
The payer's own page
Generalist data work on Mercor's Meta project Nova, after project Musen ended
Price
$16 an hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Nov 2025
What to know
Musen paid $5 more ($21 an hour) and had more than 5,000 workers at peak; Mercor called the reporting inaccurate. The low end of Mercor's pay, for a Meta generalist project.
Source
Business Insider (on AOL)
Press report
Mercor's top industry-expert rate (October 2025)
Price
up to $200 an hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2025
What to know
The CEO's statement; he added that labs are willing to pay even more, without a figure.
Source
TechCrunch
Press report
Former investment bankers writing prompts and building financial models for OpenAI (Project Mercury)
Price
$150 per hour
per hour (paid to the expert)
When
Oct 2025
What to know
Rate from a person familiar with the effort; OpenAI said experts are paid through unnamed third-party suppliers, so the buyer's bill rate is higher.
Source
Fortune (citing Bloomberg)
Press report
Mercor's average pay for experts (October 2025)
Price
$85/hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Oct 2025
What to know
Against $105/hr in H1 2026 and a $109/hr homepage average in October 2026: average pay rose about 25% in a year.
Source
Contrary Research, Mercor memo
Press report
Google's planned 2025 spend with Scale AI for human-labeled training data
Price
$200 million this year
per year (2025, planned)
When
Jun 2025
What to know
Scale's largest customer at the time; Google planned to cut ties after Meta took 49% of Scale.
Source
TechCrunch (citing Reuters)
Press report
A verified universal jailbreak of Anthropic's unreleased safety classifiers (bug bounty)
Price
up to $25,000
per verified universal jailbreak
When
May 2025
What to know
Against Constitutional Classifiers on Claude 3.7 Sonnet; the ceiling rose two-thirds in nine months. The programme concluded on 22 May 2025. Paid by the lab directly, no vendor.
Source
Anthropic news
The payer's own page
Annotator writing IMO-level math problems for RLHF (Abaka AI cost model)
Price
20 USD per hour
per hour (paid to the worker)
When
Sep 2024
What to know
A 2024 vendor cost model at one problem per hour; 2026 platform rates for formal-proof math run $90 to $200 an hour.
Source
Abaka AI blog, LLM Data Cost Breakdown
A vendor's published price guide
Supervised fine-tuning (SFT) data, one constructed entry
Price
about 6 USD per entry
per entry (2,000 entries for 12,000 USD)
When
Sep 2024
What to know
A vendor's 2024 worked example, older than the rest of this set.
Source
Abaka AI blog, LLM Data Cost Breakdown
A vendor's published price guide
A verified universal jailbreak of Anthropic's unreleased safety classifiers (bug bounty)
Price
up to $15,000
per verified universal jailbreak
When
Aug 2024
What to know
Invite-only via HackerOne, on an unreleased safety system focused on CBRN and cyber. Paid by the lab directly, no vendor.
Source
Anthropic news
The payer's own page
Mercor markup on contractor billing (February 2024)
Price
approximately 35%
markup on contractor pay
When
Feb 2024
What to know
The earliest reported Mercor spread; the memo calls it both a markup and a take rate, and ties it to median BPO gross margins.
Source
Contrary Research, Mercor memo
Press report
Text labelling for ChatGPT safety, outsourced by OpenAI to Sama in Kenya (late 2021 contracts)
Price
$12.50 an hour
per hour, paid by OpenAI to Sama
When
Jan 2023
What to know
One of the few disclosed lab-to-vendor hourly prices; the workers took home $1.32 to $2 an hour, so the vendor kept most of the bill.
Source
TIME
Press report
Three OpenAI contracts with Sama for labelling work
Price
about $200,000 in total
per programme (three contracts)
When
Jan 2023
What to know
Cancelled early; OpenAI put the amount actually paid at about $150,000.
Source
TIME
Press report
Sama data labellers in Kenya working on OpenAI's ChatGPT safety project
Price
$1.32 to $2 per hour
per hour, take-home after tax
When
Jan 2023
What to know
Against OpenAI's $12.50 an hour billed to Sama: the worker received 11 to 16% of the bill rate ($1.32 / $12.50 to $2 / $12.50).
Source
TIME
Press report

Why labs pay for it

No archive contains an expert's judgment about a new problem. Most of what labs spend on data goes here: by our sum of the large vendors' newest reported annual revenue and run rates, roughly $8.1B a year.

RisingThe largest vendor of expert work passed a $2 billion gross run rate in mid-2026. Rates for generalists are falling while credentialed specialists hold $75 to $200 an hour.

Who holds it

Professionals in any field
Multilingual speakers
Independent consultants
Teams who can work to a brief

What it looks like

A lawyer writing and grading legal tasks
An accountant recording a month-end close on screen, with narration
Conversations recorded in a chosen language
Professional documents licensed by their author

Raises the price

A credential and real experience in the field
A scarce language
Work in specialist software few people know
Reliability over many accepted units

Lowers it

General tasks anyone can do
Work a model can already check by itself

The rights question

Work made to a buyer's brief belongs to the buyer under the contract. Past work written for an employer or a client is theirs, not its author's, and cannot be sold by the person who wrote it.

How we take it to buyers

Commissioned to a buyer's spec through AITraining.jobs, a job board for AI training work that has the same owner as this marketplace. People are paid per accepted unit.

AITraining.jobs, which shares an owner with this site, measures what AI training work pays per hour by kind of work from live job feeds.

Who buys it

SuperAnnotate

"Indicative $100K – $1M+", priced on rarity, depth and exclusivity.

SuperAnnotate, data partnerships page

Datacurve (Shipd)

Example bounties in the sample panels on its homepage run from $80 to $220 (read 16 Oct 2026; 2,847 registered contributors on its live counter). The panels show sample issues and challenges, not a rate card: "New quests launch every month across dozens of STEM categories".

Shipd, site

Halluminate

Publishes nothing about price.

Halluminate, data partnerships page

Every buyer and what it publishes

Where expert work comes from

The whole supply map

862,800
There were 862,800 physician and surgeon jobs in the US in 2025, a credentialed pool expert-data platforms recruit from.
Reaches buyers: Not reaching buyers (labour pool)
BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Physicians and Surgeons, 27 Aug 2026
~$60M to over 30K individuals every month
Handshake says its AI business reached about a $1B run rate and pays about $60M a month to over 30,000 people.
Reaches buyers: Contributor platform
Handshake job posting (Base10 job board), Fellow Experience Specialist (Contract), 15 Jun 2026
nearly five million experts
Mercor says it has nearly five million experts on its platform.
Reaches buyers: Contributor platform
Mercor, Update on Mercor security incident, 25 Jun 2026
900K+
Outlier says it has 900K+ AI trainers (master's holders, PhDs and graduates) and has paid experts more than $500M.
Reaches buyers: Contributor platform
Outlier, homepage, Oct 2026
more than 22%
In Q2 2026, Upwork's gross services volume from AI-related work grew more than 22% year over year, while total gross services volume fell 4% to $966.4 million.
Reaches buyers: Contributor platform (general freelance marketplace)
SEC EDGAR, Upwork Q2 2026 press release (8-K Ex. 99.1), 10 Aug 2026
about $500 million a year
The six largest Chinese AI labs spend about $500 million a year with American data-labelling companies, according to two founders in the sector who received market-size estimates from Tencent and ByteDance executives (Forbes).
Reaches buyers: US data vendors selling to Chinese labs
Forbes Colombia, Spanish edition of the Forbes article by Anna Tong (5 August 2026), 5 Aug 2026