For teams buying AI training data
Encord pricing
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.
Read against Encord’s own pages and the press on 2 Nov 2026. Every figure below links its source.
The figures
What Encord charges, keeps and pays
No published or reported price for Encord is on record. What it charges is set per project in its quote.
About Encord
What Encord sells
A multimodal data platform for annotation, curation and model evaluation, plus an annotation and data collection service focused on physical AI, robotics and healthcare.
Encord announced a US$60 million Series C on 26 February 2026, bringing its funding to US$110 million.
- Pricing (Encord, 2 Nov 2026)
- Encord announces $60 million Series C (Encord, 26 Feb 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 Encord
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.
Questions
What teams ask about Encord
How much does Encord charge?
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.
What does Encord sell?
A multimodal data platform for annotation, curation and model evaluation, plus an annotation and data collection service focused on physical AI, robotics and healthcare.
What should a buyer know about Encord as a company?
Encord announced a US$60 million Series C on 26 February 2026, bringing its funding to US$110 million.