AI expert work: live salary report
Hourly rates computed from the 103 live listings with disclosed pay (of 213 total roles we track), across 9 platforms. Averages use the midpoint of each listing's range. Updated 2026-07-07 06:16 UTC.
By field
| Field | Priced roles | Avg rate | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Healthcare | 8 | $116/hr | $20–$250 |
| Science | 14 | $103/hr | $20–$1,000 |
| Software | 29 | $89/hr | $20–$300 |
| Legal | 4 | $82/hr | $20–$150 |
| Finance | 3 | $82/hr | $20–$180 |
| ML, Data & AI | 32 | $58/hr | $13–$120 |
| Linguistics | 7 | $55/hr | $15–$95 |
| Business | 4 | $49/hr | $6–$120 |
| Other | 2 | $20/hr | $15–$30 |
By platform
| Platform | Priced roles | Avg rate | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| surge | 1 | $575/hr | $150–$1,000 |
| mercor | 18 | $113/hr | $60–$250 |
| stellar | 4 | $87/hr | $25–$200 |
| micro1 | 56 | $65/hr | $6–$300 |
| alignerr | 10 | $64/hr | $20–$120 |
| dataannotation | 1 | $60/hr | $20–$100 |
| mindrift | 12 | $57/hr | $37–$60 |
| outlier | 1 | $38/hr | $15–$60 |
Methodology
We aggregate live listings every 6 hours from public platform pages and APIs. Only roles with disclosed hourly pay are included in averages; roles paying per-project or with undisclosed rates are excluded. Listings without pay data are still browsable on the jobs page. This is listing data, not a survey of accepted offers.