Data report · Q4 2026
What AI labs pay experts: Q4 2026
Published hourly rates for expert AI training work, from 1147 rates posted on 1853 open jobs across 12 platforms. Data as of 2026-10-21, recomputed daily from live listings.
- $100/hr
- median, Legal
- $83/hr
- median, Health & Medicine
- $83/hr
- median, Finance & Accounting
Pay by field
| Field | Median | Middle 50% | Jobs with a rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal | $100/hr | $83-135/hr | 73 |
| Health & Medicine | $83/hr | $68-143/hr | 87 |
| Finance & Accounting | $83/hr | $80-91/hr | 96 |
| Science & Research | $83/hr | $68-95/hr | 130 |
| Engineering | $78/hr | $60-91/hr | 71 |
| Business, Consulting & Operations | $60/hr | $53-80/hr | 112 |
Pay by field and platform
| Field | Platform | Median | Jobs with a rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal | micro1 | $115/hr | 48 |
| Legal | Mercor | $95/hr | 11 |
| Legal | DataAnnotation | $83/hr | 10 |
| Health & Medicine | Mercor | $120/hr | 29 |
| Health & Medicine | micro1 | $103/hr | 36 |
| Health & Medicine | DataAnnotation | $83/hr | 8 |
| Health & Medicine | Alignerr | $55/hr | 13 |
| Finance & Accounting | Mercor | $115/hr | 18 |
| Finance & Accounting | micro1 | $100/hr | 20 |
| Finance & Accounting | DataAnnotation | $83/hr | 19 |
| Finance & Accounting | Alignerr | $80/hr | 35 |
| Science & Research | micro1 | $90/hr | 15 |
| Science & Research | Alignerr | $83/hr | 59 |
| Science & Research | Mercor | $80/hr | 50 |
| Engineering | DataAnnotation | $83/hr | 10 |
| Engineering | micro1 | $78/hr | 29 |
| Engineering | Mercor | $70/hr | 23 |
| Engineering | Alignerr | $48/hr | 9 |
| Business, Consulting & Operations | Mercor | $65/hr | 34 |
| Business, Consulting & Operations | micro1 | $60/hr | 38 |
| Business, Consulting & Operations | Alignerr | $53/hr | 31 |
Expert jobs open to residents, by country
| Country | Median | Open expert jobs | Jobs with a rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | $100/hr | 203 | 188 |
| Canada | $100/hr | 205 | 190 |
| Germany | $100/hr | 198 | 186 |
| France | $100/hr | 198 | 186 |
| Singapore | $100/hr | 201 | 186 |
| Switzerland | $100/hr | 194 | 186 |
| Netherlands | $100/hr | 194 | 186 |
| Denmark | $100/hr | 198 | 186 |
| United States | $90/hr | 394 | 353 |
How long postings stay open
| Platform | Median days open | Closed postings |
|---|---|---|
| Mindrift | 3 days | 346 |
| Alignerr | 8 days | 16 |
| micro1 | 23 days | 81 |
| Mercor | 48 days | 89 |
| xAI | 191 days | 13 |
Expert roles fill fast on some platforms: when one fits you, apply early.
Method
SideHustler reads the public postings of 12 AI training platforms every night. For each open job in an expert field (health and medicine, law, finance, science and research, business and consulting, engineering) that publishes an hourly rate in US dollars, we take the middle of its published range, then compute the median and the middle 50%. A line needs at least 8 published rates to appear. These are rates platforms publish, not what anyone earned: hours and project availability vary. Posting lifetimes run from the posting date to the first night the posting was gone.
Use this data
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, with a link to this page. Download the CSV.
Cite as: SideHustler, "AI Training Pay Report, Q4 2026", https://sidehustler.tech/reports/ai-training-pay (data as of 2026-10-21).
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