How much do AI training jobs pay?
AI trainers on the platforms tracked here advertise a median of $55/hr, with the middle half of rates between $22–$100/hr. There is no salary to quote: every network here contracts by the hour or the task, so the nearest honest equivalent is what that rate is worth at a given workload.
Computed from 7755 live listings across 33 AI-training networks - not surveys, not anecdotes. As of October 16, 2026 - recomputed on every daily build.
The median advertised rate for AI-training work is $55/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=723 distinct advertised rates across 24 platforms).
Cite this
The median advertised rate for AI-training work is $55/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=723 distinct advertised rates across 24 platforms).
HumanSourcer. (2026). Pay Index: AI-training job pay rates (October 2026 update). Retrieved 2026-10-16, from https://www.humansourcer.com/ai-training-pay/
@misc{humansourcer_pay_index_2026,
author = {HumanSourcer},
title = {Pay Index: AI-Training Job Pay Rates},
year = {2026},
note = {October 2026 update, retrieved 2026-10-16},
url = {https://www.humansourcer.com/ai-training-pay/}
}Embed this badge
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<a href="https://www.humansourcer.com/ai-training-pay/"><img src="https://www.humansourcer.com/og/badge.png" alt="HumanSourcer Pay Index - median advertised AI-training pay rate" width="340" height="68" loading="lazy" /></a>
Terms of reuse
These figures are free to quote, republish, and build on, including commercially, with attribution to HumanSourcer and a link to this page. Quote the sentence above rather than a paraphrased number, and carry the as-of date with it - the median is recomputed daily and a figure without its date will silently go stale. Corrections are welcome; the derivation is set out in full under how this figure is derived.
Is there an AI trainer salary?
No. Not one platform in this index employs the people who do this work. Every network here contracts by the hour or by the task, so there is no salary to report - the closest honest answer is what the rate is worth at a given workload.
| If you worked | At the median $55/hr | Middle half of rates |
|---|---|---|
| 10 hours a week | $29,000 | $11,000–$52,000 |
| 20 hours a week | $57,000 | $23,000–$104,000 |
| 40 hours a week | $114,000 | $46,000–$208,000 |
Those are arithmetic on the advertised rate (rate x hours x 52, rounded to the nearest thousand), not earnings anyone reported. Treat them as a ceiling on a full workload rather than an expected income: none of these platforms guarantee hours, task availability moves week to week, and several say so in their own help pages. Work that pays $55/hr for three hours one week and nothing the next is not a $57,000 job.
How this figure is derived
6440 listings quote a comparable hourly rate - out of 6740 that disclose any pay signal, and 7755 live listings in total. Between them those listings carry 723 distinct advertised rates, and the median is computed over those, not over the listings. Platforms routinely repeat one pay sentence across a whole batch of postings; counting per listing would let a single sentence vote hundreds of times and move the median without adding any information. Where two genuinely separate roles happen to advertise identical wording they collapse to one rate, so this figure understates the sample rather than inflating it.
Listings quoting only a per-task or per-project figure are counted as disclosed but excluded from the hourly statistics, because converting them would require assuming how long the work takes. Listings that state no pay are never estimated.
- 5736 (89%) were parsed from the listing text by rule.
- 628 (10%) come from a structured pay field on the source listing.
- 76 (1%) were extracted from listing prose by an AI model, which must quote the sentence it took the figure from.
3697 of those listings come from wording that hedges (“approximately”, “on average”). Individual listings show them with a “≈” and quote the source text, so you can judge them yourself.
This number moves. It is recomputed from scratch on every daily build, so it shifts as listings turn over and as pay coverage improves - it fell from $65 to $40 over six days in July 2026 with no change to what anyone pays, purely because coverage widened to include lower-paid listings that had previously been unreadable. Cite it with the date above.
Pay by platform
Platforms with at least 50 open roles and 5 distinct advertised rates, ranked by median.
| Platform | Median rate | Middle half | Distinct rates | Open roles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mercor Experts | $100/hr | $75–$125/hr | 54 | 105 |
| micro1 Experts Opportunities | $95/hr | $50–$130/hr | 101 | 257 |
| AfterQuery Experts | $93/hr | $64–$122/hr | 43 | 220 |
| Handshake AI | $78/hr | $50–$111/hr | 32 | 221 |
| Alignerr | $75/hr | $50–$110/hr | 66 | 549 |
| Sepal Expert Hub | $75/hr | $60–$93/hr | 76 | 88 |
| Turing AI Advancement Work | $65/hr | $19–$113/hr | 8 | 267 |
| Rise Data Labs | $48/hr | $44–$83/hr | 12 | 116 |
| DataForce jobs | $40/hr | $30–$50/hr | 9 | 139 |
| Mindrift | $31/hr | $22–$45/hr | 19 | 850 |
| Prolific Participants | $30/hr | $20–$80/hr | 57 | 3208 |
| Meridial | $30/hr | $13–$65/hr | 59 | 833 |
| LXT AI | $24/hr | $23–$27/hr | 15 | 59 |
| TELUS International AI Community portal | $17/hr | $7–$26/hr | 20 | 64 |
| Welo Data | $13/hr | $8–$23/hr | 104 | 392 |
Pay by domain
Median disclosed rate; domains with 10+ distinct advertised rates.
| Domain | Median | Middle half | Listings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Law | $130/hr | $93–$165 | 157 |
| Consulting / Ops | $115/hr | $60–$125 | 100 |
| Finance | $100/hr | $79–$150 | 272 |
| Healthcare | $80/hr | $65–$125 | 412 |
| Science / STEM | $80/hr | $58–$118 | 811 |
| Coding | $75/hr | $55–$120 | 409 |
| Writing / Creative | $67/hr | $48–$81 | 90 |
| Safety | $60/hr | $50–$74 | 55 |
| Voice / Speech | $50/hr | $30–$73 | 462 |
| Linguistics | $34/hr | $22–$65 | 535 |
| Reasoning / Agents | $30/hr | $22–$73 | 35 |
Cite a row
- Law: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $130/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=39 distinct advertised rates from 157 live listings).
- Consulting / Ops: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $115/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=17 distinct advertised rates from 100 live listings).
- Finance: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $100/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=60 distinct advertised rates from 272 live listings).
- Healthcare: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $80/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=77 distinct advertised rates from 412 live listings).
- Science / STEM: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $80/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=99 distinct advertised rates from 811 live listings).
- Coding: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $75/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=65 distinct advertised rates from 409 live listings).
- Writing / Creative: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $67/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=20 distinct advertised rates from 90 live listings).
- Safety: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $60/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=22 distinct advertised rates from 55 live listings).
- Voice / Speech: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $50/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=44 distinct advertised rates from 462 live listings).
- Linguistics: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $34/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=49 distinct advertised rates from 535 live listings).
- Reasoning / Agents: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $30/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=11 distinct advertised rates from 35 live listings).
Each figure is recomputed on every daily build, so carry the month with it. Terms of reuse are the same as the headline figure: attribution and a link back.
Pay by task type
Median disclosed rate; task types with 10+ distinct advertised rates.
| Task type | Median | Middle half | Listings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding / software engineering | $75/hr | $50–$114 | 683 |
| Writing / editing | $71/hr | $50–$106 | 372 |
| Research / analysis | $70/hr | $43–$113 | 1552 |
| AI model evaluation | $65/hr | $25–$102 | 2469 |
| Customer support / ops | $65/hr | $30–$96 | 333 |
| Translation / linguistics | $47/hr | $23–$75 | 718 |
| Data annotation / labeling | $36/hr | $19–$70 | 476 |
| Voice / audio | $30/hr | $20–$58 | 1027 |
| Embodied / physical data capture | $20/hr | $15–$35 | 43 |
Cite a row
- Coding / software engineering: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $75/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=114 distinct advertised rates from 683 live listings).
- Writing / editing: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $71/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=120 distinct advertised rates from 372 live listings).
- Research / analysis: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $70/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=181 distinct advertised rates from 1552 live listings).
- AI model evaluation: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $65/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=254 distinct advertised rates from 2469 live listings).
- Customer support / ops: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $65/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=69 distinct advertised rates from 333 live listings).
- Translation / linguistics: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $47/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=77 distinct advertised rates from 718 live listings).
- Data annotation / labeling: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $36/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=81 distinct advertised rates from 476 live listings).
- Voice / audio: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $30/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=87 distinct advertised rates from 1027 live listings).
- Embodied / physical data capture: the median advertised rate for AI-training work is $20/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, October 2026; n=11 distinct advertised rates from 43 live listings).
Each figure is recomputed on every daily build, so carry the month with it. Terms of reuse are the same as the headline figure: attribution and a link back.
How often is pay disclosed at all?
6740 of 7755 current listings disclose some pay signal.
| Disclosed pay | Listings | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Under $20/hr | 472 | 6% |
| $20–40/hr | 1939 | 25% |
| $40+/hr | 4059 | 52% |
| Per-task / project | 261 | 3% |
| Unspecified | 1015 | 13% |
Methodology
HumanSourcer collects publicly available job listings from 33 AI-training networks daily. Where a listing discloses pay - as structured fields or in the listing text - it's parsed; explicit hourly figures (preferring the top of a stated range) feed the rate statistics above, project/deliverable pay is counted separately, and undisclosed pay is never estimated. Medians are used throughout because disclosed rates have a long right tail of specialist roles. Explore the same dataset interactively on the market-data dashboard, or browse all open roles.
Read the rates in context
- State of AI Training Pay: Q3 2026: a frozen October 1 snapshot explaining how coverage changes the market median.
- How pay and tiers work: read providers' public pay rules and distinguish advertised rates from available work.
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Frequently asked questions
How much do AI training jobs pay?
Across 723 distinct advertised rates, drawn from 6440 currently listed AI-training roles that disclose an hourly rate, the median is $55/hr, with the middle half of rates between $22–$100/hr. Rates run from $1 to $450/hr depending on domain and expertise. Updated daily from 7755 live listings.
What's the average AI trainer salary?
AI training work is contract/freelance, not salaried, so there's no single "AI trainer salary" - the closest live equivalent is the median hourly rate across 723 distinct advertised rates: $55/hr, with the middle half between $22–$100/hr. How much AI trainers make varies by platform, domain, and expertise; see the by-platform and by-domain breakdowns below. At that median, a 20-hour week works out to about $57,000 a year and a 40-hour week to about $114,000 - arithmetic on the rate, not observed earnings, since none of these platforms guarantee hours.
Which AI training platforms pay the most?
By median disclosed hourly rate across current listings: Mercor Experts ($100/hr), micro1 Experts Opportunities ($95/hr), AfterQuery Experts ($93/hr), Handshake AI ($78/hr), Alignerr ($75/hr). Only platforms with at least 50 open roles and 5 distinct advertised rates are ranked.
Which domains pay the most for AI training work?
By median disclosed rate: Law ($130/hr), Consulting / Ops ($115/hr), Finance ($100/hr). Specialist domains consistently price above generalist annotation work.
Do AI training jobs pay hourly or per project?
Of 7755 current listings, 261 advertise project- or deliverable-based pay and 6440 disclose an hourly rate; the rest don't state pay upfront. Hourly is the dominant disclosed model.
How is this pay data collected?
HumanSourcer collects data from 33 AI-training networks daily and parses pay wherever a listing discloses it. Nothing is estimated: 6740 of 7755 current roles disclose some pay signal, and only the 6440 quoting a comparable hourly rate enter the rate statistics. Of those, 628 come from a structured pay field on the source listing, 5736 were parsed from the listing text by rule, and 76 were extracted from listing prose by an AI model that must quote the exact sentence it took the figure from. Those 6440 listings carry 723 distinct advertised rates, because platforms repeat one pay sentence across a whole batch of listings - the median is computed over the distinct rates, so a single sentence can't vote hundreds of times. Figures are recomputed from scratch on every daily build, so the median moves as listings turn over - cite it with a date.