AI expert work: live salary report
Hourly rates computed from the 215 live listings with disclosed pay (of 313 total roles we track), across 10 platforms. Averages use the midpoint of each listing's range. Updated 2026-08-30 22:59 UTC.
By field
| Field | Priced roles | Avg rate | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal | 23 | $189/hr | $40–$1,000 |
| Healthcare | 12 | $127/hr | $15–$450 |
| Science | 15 | $111/hr | $20–$300 |
| Finance | 8 | $101/hr | $40–$280 |
| Software | 60 | $89/hr | $7–$280 |
| Business | 19 | $69/hr | $20–$280 |
| ML, Data & AI | 56 | $63/hr | $6–$280 |
| Linguistics | 18 | $58/hr | $10–$400 |
| Other | 4 | $38/hr | $6–$160 |
By platform
| Platform | Priced roles | Avg rate | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| surge | 4 | $406/hr | $150–$1,000 |
| mercor | 13 | $140/hr | $60–$250 |
| braintrust | 24 | $105/hr | $10–$260 |
| stellar | 4 | $87/hr | $25–$200 |
| micro1 | 145 | $83/hr | $6–$400 |
| alignerr | 10 | $64/hr | $15–$120 |
| mindrift | 5 | $61/hr | $45–$90 |
| dataannotation | 5 | $52/hr | $20–$100 |
| outlier | 5 | $32/hr | $15–$50 |
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.