For teams buying AI training data
Shaip pricing
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.
Read against Shaip’s own pages and the press on 2 Nov 2026. Every figure below links its source.
The figures
What Shaip charges, keeps and pays
No published or reported price for Shaip is on record. What it charges is set per project in its quote.
About Shaip
What Shaip sells
Managed data services: data collection and annotation, training and evaluation data for language models (fine-tuning, human feedback, retrieval, multimodal), and licensed off-the-shelf datasets such as physician dictation audio.
Shaip supplies credentialed experts for AI training work, as its own pages describe.
- Pricing (Shaip, 2 Nov 2026)
- Data annotation services (Shaip, 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 Shaip
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 Shaip rather than buying data? Shaip (Collaborate by Shaip): open roles, pay and whether it is legit.
Questions
What teams ask about Shaip
How much does Shaip charge?
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.
What does Shaip sell?
Managed data services: data collection and annotation, training and evaluation data for language models (fine-tuning, human feedback, retrieval, multimodal), and licensed off-the-shelf datasets such as physician dictation audio.