For teams buying AI training data
AI training data vendors and how they price
How 25 vendors of human data for AI charge, which publish a price, and the fees and margins on record, each with its source.
Each vendor read against its own pages and the press; the oldest check 2 Nov 2026.
The vendors
How each vendor prices
| Vendor | How buyers pay | Price list | Figures on record |
|---|---|---|---|
| Appen | Appen publishes no price list: there is no pricing page on its site, and each project is quoted. Its reports describe revenue from projects with AI model builders and from prebuilt datasets, without unit prices. | Quote only | 6 |
| Shaip | Shaip publishes no price: its pricing page shows no figure, rate card or minimum, and asks buyers to talk to its team for a quote tailored to the project. | Quote only | 0 |
| Toloka | Toloka publishes no rate card. On its self-service platform the buyer prepays an account balance and sets the hourly rate it will pay within Toloka's suggested range; fees are shown in the account at checkout, exclude VAT, and purchases are non-refundable. Enterprise projects are quoted. | Quote only | 2 |
| TELUS Digital | TELUS Digital publishes no price or pricing model: its AI training data page offers projects by quote. | Quote only | 0 |
| Scale AI | Scale AI publishes no price: its pricing page is a form to book an introductory call. The press reports that most of its revenue comes from charging model makers for access to its network of specialised human trainers. | Quote only | 7 |
| Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) | Amazon Mechanical Turk closed for good on 30 September 2026, and SageMaker Ground Truth is closed to new customers. While open, MTurk charged 20% on the reward paid to workers, 40% on tasks with 10 or more assignments; Ground Truth charged per object labeled plus the labelers' pay. | Closed 30 Sep 2026 | 2 |
| Prolific | Prolific publishes its prices: buyers pay participants plus a platform fee, usually 42.8% for companies and 33.3% for academic and non-profit customers, with no contract or subscription. Participants must be paid at least US$8 an hour. Managed projects are quoted. | Published | 2 |
| Surge AI | Surge AI publishes no price: there is no figure anywhere on its site, and projects are scoped with its team. | Quote only | 4 |
| Labelbox | Labelbox publishes no price list today (its pricing page no longer loads), so its data work is quoted per project. | Quote only | 1 |
| Mercor | Mercor publishes no client price: it bills AI labs and companies for its experts' time and pays them hourly or per project. The press reports that it pays contractors 60% to 70% of what it bills. | Quote only | 15 |
| micro1 | micro1 publishes no price for buyers: companies reach it through a contact form, and experts are paid as contractors. | Quote only | 9 |
| Turing | Turing publishes no price for clients; its work is quoted. Its talent site lists what experts are paid per task, not what buyers pay. | Quote only | 0 |
| Invisible Technologies | Invisible publishes no price: its offerings are quoted per engagement. | Quote only | 3 |
| Sama | Sama publishes no price list: scope and pricing are set with its team per project. | Quote only | 3 |
| iMerit | iMerit publishes no price list; projects are quoted. | Quote only | 0 |
| CloudFactory | CloudFactory publishes its pricing model but no figure: consumption-based pricing on an annual spend commitment with customized rates, after a free analysis of a sample of the buyer's data. There is no free trial. | Quote only | 0 |
| Snorkel AI | Snorkel AI publishes no price: its datasets and environments are quoted. | Quote only | 2 |
| Welo Data | Welo Data publishes no price: it describes itself as a managed services partner, not a self-serve marketplace, so every program is scoped and quoted. | Quote only | 0 |
| Clickworker | Clickworker publishes its self-service fee: the buyer sets what each worker is paid, and Clickworker adds a 40% service fee plus VAT. Its managed service is quoted. | Published | 1 |
| Defined.ai | Defined.ai publishes no price for its services, which are quoted by its sales team; its marketplace lists datasets for sale. | Quote only | 0 |
| Encord | Encord publishes plan names but no prices: Starter and Team plans by volume, Enterprise by contacting sales, with add-ons such as LLM evaluation priced separately. | Quote only | 0 |
| SuperAnnotate | SuperAnnotate publishes three plans without prices (Starter, Pro and Enterprise), differing in included compute hours and support; buyers request a demo or contact sales. | Quote only | 0 |
| Centific (OneForma) | Centific publishes no price; projects are quoted. OneForma shows what contributors are paid, not what buyers pay. | Quote only | 0 |
| OpenTrain AI | OpenTrain AI publishes its fees: a 10% marketplace fee plus US$9.95 when a new contract starts, or, for its managed service, the expert's rate plus a flat 20% management fee, with no contracts or minimums. | Published | 2 |
| Handshake AI | Handshake AI publishes no price for buyers. The press reports net AI-training revenue near US$300 million on gross AI-training revenue of nearly US$1 billion, so it pays most of what it bills to its experts. | Quote only | 10 |
Published
The fees and prices vendors publish
Each vendor's newest published figure, as the vendor states it.
- micro1 (buyer publishing what it pays): $100K to $500K qualified partnerships; $500K to $2M large-scale datasets; $2M+ highly unique proprietary data (micro1, 30 Oct 2026).
- Amazon Mechanical Turk: 20% fee on the reward and bonus; a further 20% on tasks with 10 or more assignments (40% in all); 5% more to use Masters workers (Amazon Mechanical Turk, 25 Oct 2026).
- OpenTrain AI: Managed service: the expert's rate plus a flat 20% management fee, so a $30 an hour expert costs the client $36 an hour; no contracts, no minimums (OpenTrain AI, 25 Oct 2026).
- FileYield: 8% from sellers and 6% from buyers (FileYield, 11 Oct 2026).
- Prolific: Platform fee usually 42.8% for corporate customers, 33.3% for academic or non-profit; minimum participant pay $8.00/hr, recommended at least $12.00/hr (Prolific, 11 Oct 2026).
- SpeechData.ai: Catalog datasets at $60 to $95 per hour across 60 languages and dialects (SpeechData.ai, 18 Jun 2026).
- Clickworker: The buyer sets what each participant is paid; Clickworker multiplies it by 1.4 (a 40% service fee) plus VAT (Clickworker, 21 Mar 2025).
Margins
What vendors keep of what buyers pay
Stated in filings, reported by the press, or estimated by analysts, as each line says.
- Scale AI: Monetizes per task, marking up the cost of labor, for 50%+ gross margin (analyst estimate, Sacra, 11 Oct 2026).
- Handshake: AI data business gross margins around 30%, versus about 80% for the job board (analyst estimate, Sacra, 11 Oct 2026).
- Mercor: Percentage-based recruiting fee, typically 30%, for direct talent placements (analyst estimate, Sacra, 11 Oct 2026).
- Mercor, Handshake, micro1: Roughly 60% to 70% of top-line income paid out to domain specialists (reported by a third party, TechCrunch, 22 Sep 2026).
- Mercor: Third-party analysts estimate Mercor's take at roughly 30% to 35% of billed hours, with contractors receiving 60% to 70% of gross billings (analyst estimate, HeroHunt.ai, 6 Sep 2026).
- Handshake AI: Pays about $60 million a month to more than 30,000 individuals, on a run rate of about $1 billion (stated by the company, Handshake (job board), 5 Sep 2026).
- micro1: Gross margins on off-the-shelf data as high as 80% to 90% (reported by a third party, TechCrunch, 20 Aug 2026).
- micro1: Net annual run rate $150M to $200M on a $500M gross run rate (about 30% to 40% retained) (reported by a third party, TechCrunch, 20 Aug 2026).
- Mercor: Pays 60% to 70% of topline revenue to contractors; net revenue roughly $600M to $800M on a $2B gross run rate (reported by a third party, Dealroom News (summarising The Information), Jun 2026).
- Mercor: Gross margin 33% in Q2 2026; company expects 46% next year and 56% by 2030 (reported by a third party, BigGo Finance (summarising The Information), Jun 2026).
What an expert hour costs
What US experts are paid for AI work today
Every vendor's price for an expert hour starts from the expert's pay. We read the pay of every open AI-training role on the major platforms every hour.
| Expert | Typical rate | Range | Measured from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Physicians | $125/hr | $100 to $270 | 66 rates, 13 platforms |
| Lawyers | $110/hr | $75 to $400 | 96 rates, 20 platforms |
| Psychologists | $85/hr | $35 to $95 | 9 rates, 5 platforms |
| Accountants | $80/hr | $60 to $125 | 42 rates, 16 platforms |
| Actuaries and insurance experts | $80/hr | $50 to $125 | 18 rates, 8 platforms |
| Finance professionals | $80/hr | $60 to $150 | 166 rates, 21 platforms |
| Cybersecurity experts | $80/hr | $60 to $125 | 31 rates, 7 platforms |
| Biologists | $80/hr | $40 to $125 | 39 rates, 11 platforms |
| Environmental scientists | $80/hr | $45 to $100 | 16 rates, 7 platforms |
| Mechanical engineers | $80/hr | $55 to $135 | 37 rates, 15 platforms |
| Electrical engineers | $80/hr | $65 to $145 | 23 rates, 14 platforms |
| Chemical engineers and materials scientists | $80/hr | $40 to $135 | 18 rates, 10 platforms |
| Economists | $75/hr | $50 to $120 | 16 rates, 6 platforms |
| Software engineers | $75/hr | $40 to $150 | 206 rates, 21 platforms |
| Mathematicians | $75/hr | $40 to $200 | 46 rates, 15 platforms |
| Chemists | $70/hr | $40 to $125 | 36 rates, 13 platforms |
| Pharmacists, dentists and other clinicians | $65/hr | $40 to $135 | 68 rates, 19 platforms |
| Paralegals, law students and notaries | $65/hr | $60 to $150 | 11 rates, 5 platforms |
| Physicists | $65/hr | $45 to $200 | 30 rates, 16 platforms |
| Nurses | $60/hr | $50 to $125 | 12 rates, 8 platforms |
| Nuclear and CBRN experts | $60/hr | $40 to $130 | 19 rates, 8 platforms |
| Civil engineers and architects | $55/hr | $45 to $120 | 16 rates, 11 platforms |
| Writers and editors | $55/hr | $35 to $120 | 18 rates, 8 platforms |
| Teachers | $50/hr | $45 to $75 | 29 rates, 10 platforms |
| Translators and linguists | $30/hr | $20 to $75 | 19 rates, 6 platforms |
Typical rate: the middle of what the open roles naming that profession pay, for roles open to US experts; the range runs from the 25th percentile of those roles to the 90th-percentile advertised ceiling. Read live.
Expert data from US professionals, run end to end
Evaluations, rubrics, fine-tuning data and red-teaming by US doctors, nurses, lawyers, finance professionals, scientists and engineers from our own network. An expert hour is priced at what that kind of expert is paid today plus our fee for running the project, and the quote shows both.
Questions
What teams ask when they compare vendors
Which AI training data vendors publish their prices?
Of the 25 vendors on this page, 4 publish a price, fee or rate card: Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), Prolific, Clickworker, OpenTrain AI. The others quote per project.
What decides the price of expert data?
Mostly the expert's pay: an hour of a physician's or a lawyer's judgment costs what that expert is paid plus the vendor's share for recruiting, checking and running the work. The table of US experts' pay on this page is read live from the open roles of the major platforms.
How do we buy expert data from AITraining.jobs?
Tell us the work, the field and how many experts it needs. We price each expert hour at what that kind of expert is paid today plus our fee for running the project, and the quote shows both.
Every figure on record, vendor by vendor: what AI companies pay for human data.