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What AI training work pays, by profession

Listed pay $6 to 400 / hr across the 1621 open roles that state a rate

Every open contract and part-time role we track on micro1, Mercor, 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 1,989 openings from 83 roles
  2. Doctors and clinicians Listed pay $40 to 300 / hr 1,059 openings from 66 roles
  3. Accountants and finance experts Listed pay $20 to 300 / hr 826 openings from 225 roles
  4. Machine learning engineers Listed pay $30 to 285 / hr 465 openings from 22 roles
  5. Generalists Listed pay $8 to 285 / hr 113,586 openings from 66 roles
  6. IT support specialists Listed pay $70 to 250 / hr 7 openings from 6 roles
  7. Software engineers Listed pay $20 to 250 / hr 2,426 openings from 89 roles
  8. Physicists Listed pay $35 to 200 / hr 35 openings from 10 roles
  9. Engineers Listed pay $20 to 200 / hr 1,091 openings from 69 roles
  10. Medical coders and auditors Listed pay $50 to 190 / hr 572 openings from 15 roles
  11. Business and operations specialists Listed pay $10 to 170 / hr 1,048 openings from 286 roles
  12. CAD and manufacturing specialists Listed pay Up to $165 / hr 182 openings from 12 roles
  13. Data analysts Listed pay $20 to 150 / hr 312 openings from 17 roles
  14. Life scientists Listed pay Up to $140 / hr 922 openings from 37 roles
  15. Mathematicians and statisticians Listed pay $40 to 125 / hr 106 openings from 6 roles
  16. Designers Listed pay $20 to 125 / hr 1,816 openings from 36 roles
  17. Researchers and academics Listed pay $30 to 120 / hr 1,147 openings from 90 roles
  18. Marketing professionals Listed pay $25 to 120 / hr 229 openings from 101 roles
  19. Writers and editors Listed pay $10 to 120 / hr 331 openings from 21 roles
  20. Sales and CRM specialists Listed pay $40 to 110 / hr 3,294 openings from 108 roles
  21. Voice and audio recorders Listed pay $15 to 100 / hr 420 openings from 16 roles
  22. QA engineers Listed pay $21 to 85 / hr 557 openings from 3 roles
  23. Bilingual speakers Listed pay Up to $65 / hr 549 openings from 95 roles
  24. Video editors and animators Listed pay $10 to 51 / hr 422 openings from 6 roles
  25. Transcribers Listed pay $8 to 50 / hr 161 openings from 9 roles
  26. Video recorders Listed pay $6 to 30 / hr 13,200 openings from 6 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.
  • 5 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 1,642 open micro1, Mercor, Turing, SME Careers, Ethos and Sovrano AI roles, 1621 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, 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 9 Nov 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.