Pay index · updated 2026-10-13
What AI work pays: the live index
Computed from 3,608 live listings carrying 540 distinct advertised rates across 23 platforms' own job feeds. Every figure is the top of the advertised pay band: the most each role says it can pay. A platform re-posting one pay band across 300 country variants counts once, not 300 times. Per-task pay excluded (methodology).
One caveat if you cite these numbers: a role must advertise at least $10/hr to be listed here, so the figures below describe the roles in this directory, not the whole market. Lower-paid rating work exists and is easy to find on the platforms' own boards.
New data report: which platforms publish a concrete hourly figure, only a ceiling, or no numeric pay. Viral lists mix lanes: the AI training market map separates high-end training, annotation, and crowdwork using advertised rates.
- $35–$110
- typical top rate (p25–p75)
- $70
- median top rate
- 3,234
- live roles
The 3,608 above counts open listings that carry an hourly rate in US dollars, each country copy of a role included, while the 3,234 counts distinct open roles, with country copies folded into one and roles without an hourly rate in dollars included. A rate in another currency is listed with its own sign and left out of these figures, because this directory converts no currency.
By field
Each row measures the roles its page lists and shows the same figures that page does. A pay band posted in two fields counts in both, so the rows do not add up to the figures above. Those also leave out a band whose top is more than 3 times its bottom when one platform repeats it on more than 30 listings, which reads as a disclaimer rather than an offer. The field rows keep such bands, as their pages do. Roles counts every role on the page, including roles without an hourly rate.
| Field | Top | Median | Typical (p25–p75) | Distinct rates | Roles |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Medicine & health | $450/hr | $100/hr | $70–$140 | 83 | 148 |
| Software engineering | $400/hr | $95/hr | $65–$120 | 140 | 481 |
| Law & legal | $400/hr | $120/hr | $100–$150 | 53 | 107 |
| Finance | $350/hr | $105/hr | $85–$150 | 77 | 174 |
| Business & ops | $350/hr | $80/hr | $55–$103 | 39 | 87 |
| Voice & audio | $280/hr | $30/hr | $20–$50 | 92 | 431 |
| Cybersecurity | $250/hr | $90/hr | $60–$120 | 27 | 58 |
| Multilingual | $200/hr | $35/hr | $20–$50 | 76 | 676 |
| Science & math | $200/hr | $77/hr | $60–$115 | 67 | 207 |
| Model evaluation & rating | $200/hr | $45/hr | $30–$65 | 46 | 212 |
| Marketing & sales | $150/hr | $65/hr | $50–$80 | 16 | 27 |
| Education | $150/hr | $60/hr | $40–$85 | 15 | 27 |
| Writing & content | $140/hr | $68/hr | $43–$100 | 19 | 41 |
| Data annotation | $125/hr | $28/hr | $15–$50 | 32 | 68 |
By platform (live feeds, ≥5 distinct rates)
| Platform | Median | Typical | Top | Distinct | Listings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mercor | $105/hr | $70–$150 | $450/hr | 83 | 215 |
| Turing | $100/hr | $20–$100 | $150/hr | 6 | 23 |
| AfterQuery | $93/hr | $63–$123 | $175/hr | 43 | 219 |
| micro1 | $90/hr | $45–$130 | $400/hr | 128 | 343 |
| Handshake AI | $80/hr | $55–$110 | $300/hr | 30 | 222 |
| Alignerr | $75/hr | $50–$120 | $400/hr | 67 | 627 |
| xAI Specialist AI Tutors | $75/hr | $75–$100 | $100/hr | 5 | 25 |
| Terac | $65/hr | $40–$90 | $200/hr | 13 | 19 |
| SME Careers | $50/hr | $27–$80 | $120/hr | 26 | 735 |
| Meridial (Invisible) | $45/hr | $28–$65 | $200/hr | 29 | 762 |
| Rise Data Labs | $45/hr | $40–$60 | $150/hr | 11 | 88 |
| Grayder | $45/hr | $20–$50 | $185/hr | 9 | 13 |
| Claru | $35/hr | $25–$50 | $100/hr | 11 | 40 |
| Braintrust | $29/hr | $18–$90 | $150/hr | 20 | 25 |
| Lionbridge | $22/hr | $17–$34 | $45/hr | 25 | 40 |
| RWS TrainAI | $20/hr | $16–$24 | $36/hr | 18 | 64 |
How these numbers have moved: pay over time, by platform.
Cite this data
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with a link to aipaylist.com/pay. Machine-readable: /pay.json
Quoting a figure in an article? These numbers move several times a day, so cite the frozen September 2026 edition, which keeps the medians, ranges and counts by field and by platform as they stood on the day it was read. Those figures never change.
The middle half of top hourly rates currently advertised by AI-work platforms runs from $35 to $110/hr (median top rate $70/hr, n=540 distinct advertised rates across 23 platforms). AIPayList Pay Index, 2026-10-13, https://aipaylist.com/pay
AIPayList. (2026). AI work pay index. Retrieved 2026-10-13, from https://aipaylist.com/pay
@misc{aipaylist2026,
title = {AI Work Pay Index},
author = {{AIPayList}},
year = {2026},
url = {https://aipaylist.com/pay},
note = {Accessed 2026-10-13}
}Figures recompute as feeds refresh (several times a day). Historical rate-change tracking began 2026-08-20; trend lines will appear as history accrues. Since 2026-08-25 all statistics run on the top of each advertised band, so figures before that date are not directly comparable. Browse the roles behind these numbers: live feed →