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How much do AI training jobs pay?

Computed from 6741 live listings across 34 AI-training networks - not surveys, not anecdotes. As of September 14, 2026 - recomputed on every daily build.

Median disclosed rate
$50/hr
across 706 distinct advertised rates
Middle half of rates
$20–$90/hr
25th–75th percentile
Full disclosed range
$1–$400/hr
lowest to highest listed rate

The median advertised rate for AI-training work is $50/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, September 2026; n=706 distinct advertised rates across 34 platforms).

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Plain text
The median advertised rate for AI-training work is $50/hr (HumanSourcer Pay Index, September 2026; n=706 distinct advertised rates across 34 platforms).
APA
HumanSourcer. (2026). Pay Index: AI-training job pay rates (September 2026 update). Retrieved 2026-09-14, from https://www.humansourcer.com/ai-training-pay/
BibTeX
@misc{humansourcer_pay_index_2026,
  author = {HumanSourcer},
  title = {Pay Index: AI-Training Job Pay Rates},
  year = {2026},
  note = {September 2026 update, retrieved 2026-09-14},
  url = {https://www.humansourcer.com/ai-training-pay/}
}
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HumanSourcer Pay Index - median advertised AI-training pay rate

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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.

How this figure is derived

5552 listings quote a comparable hourly rate - out of 5766 that disclose any pay signal, and 6741 live listings in total. Between them those listings carry 706 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.

2941 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.

PlatformMedian rateMiddle halfDistinct ratesOpen roles
Mercor Experts$90/hr$60–$130/hr121375
Handshake AI$83/hr$59–$113/hr28200
micro1 Experts Opportunities$80/hr$40–$120/hr111326
Sepal Expert Hub$75/hr$60–$93/hr7688
Rise Data Labs$48/hr$44–$83/hr12116
DataForce jobs$41/hr$30–$52/hr8155
SME Careers$40/hr$26–$70/hr37253
Mindrift$40/hr$34–$50/hr13145
Prolific Participants$30/hr$21–$80/hr583099
Meridial$30/hr$12–$65/hr58831
Turing AI Advancement Work$20/hr$15–$65/hr7216
TELUS International AI Community portal$15/hr$6–$25/hr1773
Welo Data$14/hr$8–$23/hr97436

Pay by domain

Median disclosed rate; domains with 10+ distinct advertised rates.

Pay by task type

Median disclosed rate; task types with 10+ distinct advertised rates.

How often is pay disclosed at all?

5766 of 6741 current listings disclose some pay signal.

Methodology

HumanSourcer collects publicly available job listings from 34 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.

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Frequently asked questions

How much do AI training jobs pay?

Across 706 distinct advertised rates, drawn from 5552 currently listed AI-training roles that disclose an hourly rate, the median is $50/hr, with the middle half of rates between $20–$90/hr. Rates run from $1 to $400/hr depending on domain and expertise. Updated daily from 6741 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 706 distinct advertised rates: $50/hr, with the middle half between $20–$90/hr. How much AI trainers make varies by platform, domain, and expertise; see the by-platform and by-domain breakdowns below.

Which AI training platforms pay the most?

By median disclosed hourly rate across current listings: Mercor Experts ($90/hr), Handshake AI ($83/hr), micro1 Experts Opportunities ($80/hr), Sepal Expert Hub ($75/hr), Rise Data Labs ($48/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 ($120/hr), Consulting / Ops ($100/hr), Finance ($95/hr). Specialist domains consistently price above generalist annotation work.

Do AI training jobs pay hourly or per project?

Of 6741 current listings, 200 advertise project- or deliverable-based pay and 5552 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 34 AI-training networks daily and parses pay wherever a listing discloses it. Nothing is estimated: 5766 of 6741 current roles disclose some pay signal, and only the 5552 quoting a comparable hourly rate enter the rate statistics. Of those, 1202 come from a structured pay field on the source listing, 4279 were parsed from the listing text by rule, and 71 were extracted from listing prose by an AI model that must quote the exact sentence it took the figure from. Those 5552 listings carry 706 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.