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For teams buying AI training data

Toloka pricing

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.

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Read against Toloka’s own pages and the press on 2 Nov 2026. Every figure below links its source.

The figures

What Toloka 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 publishedWhose moneyBasisSource
$30 to $90 an hour on specialized projects; all-access projects typically under $20; maximums by domain: coding and STEM $90, agentic evaluation $80, legal $75, consulting $70, design $50, writing $30specialized AI training projects (coding, STEM, agentic evaluation, legal, consulting, design)Paid to the workerStated by the companyMindrift, 6 Oct 2026
Legal projects: up to $75 an hour for a licensed practitionerlegal projects (licensed practitioner)Paid to the workerStated by the companyMindrift, 6 Oct 2026

From our dataset of published figures on what AI companies pay for human data: every vendor’s figures in one report.

About Toloka

What Toloka sells

Expert and crowd data for language-model and agent training: fine-tuning and human feedback data, reinforcement-learning environments, AI evaluation and red teaming, robotics and first-person video data, and off-the-shelf datasets, through a self-service platform and managed enterprise projects.

Toloka supplies credentialed experts for AI training work, as its own pages describe.

In May 2025 Bezos Expeditions led a strategic investment in Toloka; Nebius Group kept a majority economic stake and gave up majority voting control, and Shopify's CTO Mikhail Parakhin became executive chairman.

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.

ExpertTypical rateRangeMeasured from
Physicians$125/hr$100 to $27066 rates, 13 platforms
Lawyers$110/hr$75 to $40096 rates, 20 platforms
Psychologists$85/hr$35 to $959 rates, 5 platforms
Accountants$80/hr$60 to $12542 rates, 16 platforms
Actuaries and insurance experts$80/hr$50 to $12518 rates, 8 platforms
Finance professionals$80/hr$60 to $150166 rates, 21 platforms
Cybersecurity experts$80/hr$60 to $12531 rates, 7 platforms
Biologists$80/hr$40 to $12539 rates, 11 platforms
Environmental scientists$80/hr$45 to $10016 rates, 7 platforms
Mechanical engineers$80/hr$55 to $13537 rates, 15 platforms
Electrical engineers$80/hr$65 to $14523 rates, 14 platforms
Chemical engineers and materials scientists$80/hr$40 to $13518 rates, 10 platforms
Economists$75/hr$50 to $12016 rates, 6 platforms
Software engineers$75/hr$40 to $150206 rates, 21 platforms
Mathematicians$75/hr$40 to $20046 rates, 15 platforms
Chemists$70/hr$40 to $12536 rates, 13 platforms
Pharmacists, dentists and other clinicians$65/hr$40 to $13568 rates, 19 platforms
Paralegals, law students and notaries$65/hr$60 to $15011 rates, 5 platforms
Physicists$65/hr$45 to $20030 rates, 16 platforms
Nurses$60/hr$50 to $12512 rates, 8 platforms
Nuclear and CBRN experts$60/hr$40 to $13019 rates, 8 platforms
Civil engineers and architects$55/hr$45 to $12016 rates, 11 platforms
Writers and editors$55/hr$35 to $12018 rates, 8 platforms
Teachers$50/hr$45 to $7529 rates, 10 platforms
Translators and linguists$30/hr$20 to $7519 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 Toloka

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.

How our expert data projects work
Appen pricingAppen 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.Shaip pricingShaip 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.TELUS Digital pricingTELUS Digital publishes no price or pricing model: its AI training data page offers projects by quote.Scale AI pricingScale 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.Prolific pricingProlific 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.Surge AI pricingSurge AI publishes no price: there is no figure anywhere on its site, and projects are scoped with its team.

All 25 data vendors and how each prices

Looking for paid work at Toloka rather than buying data? Toloka: open roles, pay and whether it is legit.

Questions

What teams ask about Toloka

How much does Toloka charge?

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.

What does Toloka sell?

Expert and crowd data for language-model and agent training: fine-tuning and human feedback data, reinforcement-learning environments, AI evaluation and red teaming, robotics and first-person video data, and off-the-shelf datasets, through a self-service platform and managed enterprise projects.

What should a buyer know about Toloka as a company?

In May 2025 Bezos Expeditions led a strategic investment in Toloka; Nebius Group kept a majority economic stake and gave up majority voting control, and Shopify's CTO Mikhail Parakhin became executive chairman.