What AI training work pays, by profession
Listed pay $15to 200+ / hr across the 493 open roles that state a rate
Every open contract and part-time role we track on micro1, Mercor and Terac, grouped into 26 professions and ranked by the top of the range. Nothing here is estimated.
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.
- Lawyers Listed pay $60to 400 / hr
- Machine learning engineers Listed pay $60to 280 / hr
- Researchers and academics Listed pay $30to 280 / hr
- Writers and editors Listed pay $30to 280 / hr
- Software engineers Listed pay $25to 280 / hr
- Accountants and finance experts Listed pay $20to 280 / hr
- Business and operations specialists Listed pay $18to 280 / hr
- Doctors and clinicians Listed pay $55to 250 / hr
- Physicists Listed pay $60to 200 / hr
- QA engineers Listed pay $40to 200 / hr
- Medical coders and auditors Listed pay $25to 190 / hr
- Generalists Listed pay $6to 180 / hr
- Sales and CRM specialists Listed pay $10to 160 / hr
- Engineers Listed pay $40to 150 / hr
- Video recorders Listed pay $6to 140 / hr
- CAD and manufacturing specialists Listed pay $30to 130 / hr
- IT support specialists Listed pay $80to 120 / hr
- Life scientists Listed pay $30to 120 / hr
- Data analysts Listed pay $25to 120 / hr
- Designers Listed pay $15to 100 / hr
- Mathematicians and statisticians Listed pay $25to 90 / hr
- Video editors and animators Listed pay $15to 85 / hr
- Bilingual speakers Listed pay $18to 65 / hr
- Voice and audio recorders Listed pay $10to 65 / hr
- Dispatchers Listed pay $30to 55 / hr
- Transcribers Listed pay $10to 35 / hr
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.
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, exactly as the platform lists them. No conversion, no rounding, no figure that is not on a live posting.
- Compiled from 493 open micro1, Mercor and Terac listings, 493 of which state a rate. Placeholder sample rows the site shows while a profession is thin are excluded from every figure here.
- A listing and an opening are different things: one listing 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 and Terac, read from the postings themselves.
Cite this page
Red Pen Jobs, “What AI training work pays, by profession”, checked 13 Sep 2026. https://redpenjobs.com/pay/
Quote it, screenshot it, link to it. If a figure here is out of date, it is because the posting changed: the date above is the one to cite.
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.