For teams buying AI training data
Mercor pricing
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.
Read against Mercor’s own pages and the press on 2 Nov 2026. Every figure below links its source.
The figures
What Mercor 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| About 91% of H1 2026 revenue ($614M) came from foundation model companiesexpert human data | Paid by the buyer | Reported by a third party | BigGo Finance (summarising The Information), Jun 2026 |
| At a 30% to 35% margin, a $109 an hour expert costs the buyer roughly $150 to $165 an hour; a $200 specialist hour lands near $275 to $300expert hours billed to clients (buyer-guide estimate) | Buyer's price and worker's pay | Analyst estimate | HeroHunt.ai, 6 Sep 2026 |
| Percentage-based recruiting fee, typically 30%, for direct talent placementsexpert talent placement | Kept by the vendor | Analyst estimate | Sacra, 11 Oct 2026 |
| Third-party analysts estimate Mercor's take at roughly 30% to 35% of billed hours, with contractors receiving 60% to 70% of gross billingsexpert hours billed to clients | Kept by the vendor | Analyst estimate | HeroHunt.ai, 6 Sep 2026 |
| Gross margin 33% in Q2 2026; company expects 46% next year and 56% by 2030expert human data | Kept by the vendor | Reported by a third party | BigGo Finance (summarising The Information), Jun 2026 |
| Pays 60% to 70% of topline revenue to contractors; net revenue roughly $600M to $800M on a $2B gross run rateexpert human data | Kept by the vendor | Reported by a third party | Dealroom News (summarising The Information), Jun 2026 |
| Gross margin 27% in 2025expert human data | Kept by the vendor | Reported by a third party | BigGo Finance (summarising The Information), 2025 |
| $93/hr average contracted rate; $4M+ daily payouts; oncologist roles $350 to $450 an hourexpert human data (all domains) | Paid to the worker | Stated by the company | Mercor, 30 Oct 2026 |
| $101/hr average contracted rate; $4M+ daily payouts; oncologist roles $350 to $450 an hourexpert human data (all domains) | Paid to the worker | Stated by the company | Mercor, 25 Oct 2026 |
| Oncologist roles $350 to $450 an houroncologist (expert human data) | Paid to the worker | Stated by the company | Mercor, 25 Oct 2026 |
| Lawyers $100 to $150 an hour, set per project by scope and depthlawyers (JD or LLM, current licence) | Paid to the worker | Stated by the company | Mercor (job listing), 25 Oct 2026 |
| Health professions $60 to $180 an hour, set per project by scope and depthhealth professions (nurses and other clinicians) | Paid to the worker | Stated by the company | Mercor (job listing), 25 Oct 2026 |
| Data analysis experts $70 to $120 an hourdata analysis experts | Paid to the worker | Stated by the company | Mercor (job listing), 25 Oct 2026 |
| Mercor says its workers average $110 an hour; it did not have data on what share of tasks pay that rateexpert human data (all domains) | Paid to the worker | Reported by a third party | PYMNTS (citing Bloomberg), 20 Oct 2026 |
| $109/hr average contracted rate; $4M+ daily payoutsexpert human data (all domains) | Paid to the worker | Stated by the company | Mercor, 11 Oct 2026 |
From our dataset of published figures on what AI companies pay for human data: every vendor’s figures in one report.
About Mercor
What Mercor sells
Expert human data and evaluations for AI labs (physicians, lawyers, engineers, consultants), benchmarks and reinforcement-learning environments, and enterprise AI deployment.
Mercor supplies credentialed experts for AI training work, as its own pages describe.
Mercor raised a US$350 million Series C at a US$10 billion valuation in October 2025, and said in July 2026 that its annualized revenue run rate had passed US$2 billion.
- Mercor home page (Mercor, 2 Nov 2026)
- Mercor doubles to $2B gross revenue run rate (Dealroom (The Information), 6 Jul 2026)
- Mercor raises at a $10 billion valuation (CNBC, 27 Oct 2025)
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, Handshake, micro1: Roughly 60% to 70% of top-line income paid out to domain specialists (reported by a third party, TechCrunch, 22 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).
- Handshake: Net AI-training revenue approaches $300M on gross AI-training revenue of nearly $1B (reported by a third party, Dealroom News (summarising The Information), 14 Apr 2026).
- micro1: Margins are 30% to 40% (said by its founder, Henry's Best Hits (Henry Shi), interview with micro1 founder Ali Ansari, 12 Mar 2026).
Alternatives
Alternatives to Mercor
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 Mercor rather than buying data? Mercor: open roles, pay and whether it is legit.
Questions
What teams ask about Mercor
How much does Mercor charge?
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.
What have buyers paid Mercor?
About 91% of H1 2026 revenue ($614M) came from foundation model companies (reported by a third party, BigGo Finance (summarising The Information), Jun 2026). At a 30% to 35% margin, a $109 an hour expert costs the buyer roughly $150 to $165 an hour; a $200 specialist hour lands near $275 to $300 (analyst estimate, HeroHunt.ai, 6 Sep 2026).
How much of the price does Mercor keep?
Percentage-based recruiting fee, typically 30%, for direct talent placements (analyst estimate, Sacra, 11 Oct 2026). 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).
What does Mercor sell?
Expert human data and evaluations for AI labs (physicians, lawyers, engineers, consultants), benchmarks and reinforcement-learning environments, and enterprise AI deployment.
What should a buyer know about Mercor as a company?
Mercor raised a US$350 million Series C at a US$10 billion valuation in October 2025, and said in July 2026 that its annualized revenue run rate had passed US$2 billion.