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What AI training work pays, by profession

Listed pay $2 to 400 / hr across the 1759 open roles that state a rate

Every open contract and part-time role we track on micro1, Mercor, Terac, AfterQuery, Turing, SME Careers, Ethos and Sovrano AI, grouped into 27 professions and ranked by the top of the range. Nothing here is estimated, and the data is free to reuse.

Checked

Hourly ranges, highest first

Each bar runs from the lowest to the highest rate listed in that profession, on one shared scale. A wide bar means the same profession advertises very different money at each end of the range.

  1. Lawyers Listed pay $25 to 400 / hr 2,201 openings from 96 roles
  2. Data analysts Listed pay $20 to 350 / hr 458 openings from 27 roles
  3. Marketing professionals Listed pay $20 to 350 / hr 213 openings from 95 roles
  4. Business and operations specialists Listed pay $8 to 350 / hr 2,976 openings from 290 roles
  5. Doctors and clinicians Listed pay $40 to 300 / hr 2,223 openings from 95 roles
  6. Software engineers Listed pay $25 to 300 / hr 3,470 openings from 117 roles
  7. Accountants and finance experts Listed pay $20 to 300 / hr 1,681 openings from 247 roles
  8. Machine learning engineers Listed pay $30 to 280 / hr 3,499 openings from 29 roles
  9. IT support specialists Listed pay $55 to 250 / hr 10 openings from 10 roles
  10. Physicists Listed pay $35 to 200 / hr 2,059 openings from 15 roles
  11. Researchers and academics Listed pay $30 to 200 / hr 2,393 openings from 107 roles
  12. Engineers Listed pay $20 to 200 / hr 14,772 openings from 73 roles
  13. Voice and audio recorders Listed pay $15 to 200 / hr 412 openings from 26 roles
  14. Bilingual speakers Listed pay Up to $200 / hr 543 openings from 120 roles
  15. Medical coders and auditors Listed pay $20 to 190 / hr 383 openings from 12 roles
  16. Life scientists Listed pay Up to $175 / hr 8,150 openings from 44 roles
  17. Mathematicians and statisticians Listed pay $40 to 150 / hr 108 openings from 9 roles
  18. Generalists Listed pay $8 to 150 / hr 130,170 openings from 72 roles
  19. Writers and editors Listed pay $15 to 140 / hr 179 openings from 29 roles
  20. Designers Listed pay $35 to 135 / hr 140 openings from 29 roles
  21. Sales and CRM specialists Listed pay $20 to 110 / hr 1,012 openings from 109 roles
  22. CAD and manufacturing specialists Listed pay Up to $90 / hr 252 openings from 10 roles
  23. Video editors and animators Listed pay Up to $75 / hr 15 openings from 5 roles
  24. QA engineers Listed pay $31 to 60 / hr 253 openings from 2 roles
  25. Transcribers Listed pay $8 to 50 / hr 191 openings from 12 roles
  26. Video recorders Listed pay $2 to 30 / hr 8,640 openings from 11 roles

Ranked by the top of each range; a tie goes to the profession with the higher bottom. The scale runs from $0 to $400 an hour, the highest rate listed anywhere in the data. Each profession links to its open roles. To cite one row, add # and the profession to the address, as in #lawyers.

One profession with no listed pay

This profession has no range above because no open role in it states a rate, and we do not estimate one. It stays on this page so you can see what is quiet rather than wonder whether we looked.

How we work this out

  • A profession's range is the lowest and the highest hourly rate listed across the open roles in that profession. Nothing in between is implied: a $100–200 profession has roles advertised at both ends, not an average of $150.
  • Roles that do not state a rate are left out of the ranges. A profession whose open roles all omit pay gets no range at all, and is named separately rather than dropped.
  • These are advertised rates, not reported earnings. They are before tax, they say nothing about how many hours you are actually assigned, and they do not count unpaid application, screening or interview time.
  • All rates are hourly and in US dollars, as the platform lists them, rounded to the nearest whole dollar. No currency conversion, no figure that is not on a live posting.
  • 61 open roles pay a fixed amount per session or per task instead of an hourly rate. Those are not rates, so they are left out of these ranges; each shows its own amount on its role page. We never convert a fee into an hourly figure.
  • Compiled from 1,823 open micro1, Mercor, Terac, AfterQuery, Turing, SME Careers, Ethos and Sovrano AI roles, 1759 of which state a rate. Placeholder sample rows the site shows while a profession is thin are excluded from every figure here.
  • A role and an opening are different things: one role can carry many openings. Counts on this page say which.
  • Last checked . We check every morning and rebuild, so this page is never older than a day.

Source: open roles listed on micro1, Mercor, Terac, AfterQuery, Turing, SME Careers, Ethos and Sovrano AI, read from the postings themselves.

Cite this page

Red Pen Jobs, “What AI training work pays, by profession”, checked 29 Oct 2026. https://redpenjobs.com/pay/

Quote it, screenshot it, link to it. The figures move when the postings do, so cite the date above, or the monthly copy below, which never changes.

Reuse the data

Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0: credit Red Pen Jobs with a link to this page.

Monthly copies

Each month's figures as they stood on the day we took them. They never change, so an old citation stays true.

This page carries no referral links and nothing to apply to. The roles are one click away on each profession page, and that is where we say plainly how this site earns money.