For teams buying AI training data
Clickworker pricing
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.
Read against Clickworker’s own pages and the press on 2 Nov 2026. Every figure below links its source.
The figures
What Clickworker charges, keeps and pays
Each figure as its source published it, with whose money it is: what a buyer pays, what the vendor keeps, or what the person doing the work receives.
| Figure as published | Whose money | Basis | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| The buyer sets what each participant is paid; Clickworker multiplies it by 1.4 (a 40% service fee) plus VATcrowd microtasks and surveys (Self Service Marketplace) | Buyer's price and worker's pay | Stated by the company | Clickworker, 21 Mar 2025 |
From our dataset of published figures on what AI companies pay for human data: every vendor’s figures in one report.
About Clickworker
What Clickworker sells
Crowd microtasks: AI training data, surveys, tagging, testing and text work, through a self-service marketplace and API or a managed service.
- What is the cost of my order? (Clickworker, 21 Mar 2025)
- Pricing (Clickworker, 2 Nov 2026)
What an expert hour costs
Start from what the expert is paid
Every vendor's price for an expert hour is the expert's pay plus the vendor's share. We read the pay of every open AI-training role on the major platforms every hour, so here is what each kind of US expert is paid for AI work today.
| 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.
What other vendors keep
- 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).
Alternatives
Alternatives to Clickworker
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 (the table above) plus our fee for running the project, and the quote shows both.
Looking for paid work at Clickworker rather than buying data? Clickworker: open roles, pay and whether it is legit.
Questions
What teams ask about Clickworker
How much does Clickworker charge?
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.
What have buyers paid Clickworker?
The buyer sets what each participant is paid; Clickworker multiplies it by 1.4 (a 40% service fee) plus VAT (stated by the company, Clickworker, 21 Mar 2025).
What does Clickworker sell?
Crowd microtasks: AI training data, surveys, tagging, testing and text work, through a self-service marketplace and API or a managed service.