A private agent task is priced from the human time it takes to solve
Evaluators that buy private tasks directly size the payment by the professional time the task takes: METR paid a base of 3x the human cost to complete it plus up to 50% bonus (2023), then $300 per professional-hour (2024); the UK AI Safety Institute indicated GBP 100 to 200 per development hour, GBP 3,000 to 15,000 per task (2024). Both pay in full only once the task passes their QA, and METR requires the task to stay off the public web.
Dated 5 Nov 2024Source checked 14 Oct 2026Quote found on its page again 17 Oct 2026Basis: strong
“we'll pay a base price of 3x the estimated $ cost of getting a human to complete the task”
METR, Bounty: Diverse hard tasks for LLM agents, checked 16 Dec 2023
Everything read from this source (2)Archived copy, 30 Sep 2026
METR Task Development Guide, Introduction, checked Nov 2024
Everything read from this source (2)Archived copy, 2 Oct 2026
UK AI Security Institute, evals bounty, checked 5 Nov 2024
Everything read from this source (3)Archived copy, 1 Oct 2026
- One private agent-evaluation task implementation for METR that takes an experienced engineer about 10 hours (worked example)
- Private agent-evaluation task for METR, priced by the hours a professional would need to complete it
- Development time on an evaluation task for the UK AI Safety Institute (evals bounty indication)
- One successful dangerous-capability or autonomous-agent evaluation task built for the UK AI Safety Institute (evals bounty)
It is shown on its own, not counted into a figure.
Cited in this guide