Every platform in the table below does the same kind of work as DataAnnotation: people write prompts, rate chatbot answers, check code and translate for AI companies, and get paid per hour or per task. On 29 October 2026, 23 of them had open roles on a public job list, so you can read the title, the countries and the listed pay of a role before you sign up anywhere.

DataAnnotation has no such list. Its projects show up inside your account after you pass its Starter Assessment, which you can take once, so it has no row in the table. If you are still waiting to hear back from DataAnnotation, or you would rather see the work before you spend that one attempt, start with the platforms below.

Open roles and listed hourly pay on 29 October 2026

The rows go by the number of open roles each platform had that day, most first, and a tie goes by name. The order never looks at pay or at who pays us, as how we rank explains.

PlatformOpen roles todayWith an hourly rateMedian listed hourly pay
Meridial57054$23
Welocalize31592$16
Mercor300264$80
micro1291288$68
SME Careers262262$50
RWS TrainAI155151$15
Weekday10788$110
TSMG1050no hourly rate
10x Team1040no hourly rate
Terac5822$90
Anyone AI5451$55
Volga4438$16
Appen407$36 thin sample
Innodata2625$15
HumanSignal2523$11
Mindrift2424$100
xAI2222$40
Turing picked by hand92$113 thin sample
G2i77$150 thin sample
Scale AI71$300 thin sample
Alignerr picked by hand33$90 thin sample
Remotasks32$15 thin sample
Handshake AI22$103 thin sample

Each row is the platform's row in the AI Training Pay Index for the same day. A role that a platform posts once for each country it hires in counts once, at the rate of its middle copy. The median is the middle of the hourly rates the roles list in US dollars, with a range counted at its midpoint. Roles paid per task, in another currency or with no rate are open roles all the same, but they stay out of the median, and a median built on very few rates carries the mark "thin sample".

The platform pages on this site, one click away on each name, count every country posting separately. Where a platform posts the same role in many countries, its page shows the bigger number, and its median can differ for the same reason.

What DataAnnotation says about pay, the assessment and payment

All of this comes from DataAnnotation's own FAQ and home page, read on 28 October 2026. The figures are the ones DataAnnotation publishes, so they tell you where its rates start, not what a worker there makes in a month.

Pay by track

The FAQ lists a starting rate for each track. General work, such as rating chatbot answers and comparing AI outputs, is "Starting at $25-$50 per hour". Multilingual work is "Starting at $25-$40 per hour". Coding is "Starting at $40-$150+ per hour". STEM work, for people with a master's or a PhD, and Professional work, for licensed people in law, finance or medicine, are each "Starting at $40-$125+ per hour". The home page shows role cards with a ceiling instead, such as "Up to $50 / hr" on the Generalist card and "Up to $40 / hr" on the language cards. The cards carry no posting date and no country, so they are not a list of open work that anyone can count.

The Starter Assessment

The FAQ says "Most Starter Assessments take about an hour to complete" and "You can only take the Starter Assessment once". In practice you get one attempt, with no retake if it goes badly. The FAQ adds that you should hear by email "within a few days after submission", and that if you have heard nothing, your application "is still under review or hasn't been accepted yet". So no answer yet does not tell you which of the two it is.

Payment

The FAQ says "We send payments via PayPal" and that deposits arrive "within a few days after you request them". You need a PayPal account that can receive money where you live.

Requirements

For generalist work the FAQ asks for "a bachelor's degree or equivalent real-world experience", and every worker "must have reliable internet access and be fluent in English".

Best-paid expert roles

For doctors, lawyers, PhDs and scientists: the highest hourly pay listed on the 23 platforms we read. Chosen by pay only, at most two per platform.

Referral link: we may earn a fee if you join through it. How this works

Countries: DataAnnotation names none, the public lists do

Neither the FAQ nor the home page lists the countries DataAnnotation hires in. Third-party reviews report the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia, as the DataAnnotation page on this site notes, and DataAnnotation has not confirmed that list.

The platforms with public lists write the countries on each role. For those six countries, and for some large countries outside that reported list, this is how many open roles accepted people there on 29 October 2026:

CountryOpen roles that accept itPlatformsMost of them at
United States1,16820Meridial (311), micro1 (283) and SME Careers (140)
India81316Meridial (240), micro1 (222) and SME Careers (127)
United Kingdom67418micro1 (232), Meridial (208) and Welocalize (51)
Brazil64316micro1 (221), Meridial (203) and SME Careers (58)
Canada62019micro1 (223), Meridial (214) and Welocalize (57)
Pakistan61011micro1 (221), Meridial (201) and SME Careers (89)
Philippines60013micro1 (221), Meridial (213) and SME Careers (61)
Vietnam57713micro1 (221), Meridial (200) and SME Careers (60)
Nigeria51312micro1 (221), Meridial (195) and Welocalize (43)
Kenya5059micro1 (221), Meridial (195) and Welocalize (41)
Australia38915Meridial (199), micro1 (46) and Welocalize (46)
New Zealand36215Meridial (197), micro1 (46) and Welocalize (42)
Ireland36113Meridial (198), micro1 (46) and Welocalize (42)

A role counts for a country when its posting names that country or says it is open worldwide, unless its platform says it cannot hire there. A role posted once per country counts once. This is the rule of the Country Job Index, applied to the same day's read. The index page itself shows a monthly edition, frozen on the day it was published, so its figures come from an earlier read than this table. "Most of them at" names the three platforms with the most of those roles, ties by name. Click a country to see its roles, filtered on the full list.

The whole grid, every platform against every country we track, is in which AI training platforms accept which countries.

Which roles match each DataAnnotation track

DataAnnotation's FAQ sorts its pay into the five tracks above. The public lists sort their roles by field, and each track maps onto one or two fields:

Each field page lists its open roles with the pay and countries of each, and the full list of open roles filters by field, platform and country at once.

How the screening differs

At DataAnnotation you take the one Starter Assessment before you see any project. On a platform with a public list you apply to a named role, so you know the field, the countries and, when the platform gives it, the rate first. Each still has its own screening step, such as a skills test, a sample task or an AI interview, and some roles ask for a degree or a licence that you may have to prove. The guide to AI training assessments covers how to prepare for each kind.

What to watch out for

  • Prepare before you start DataAnnotation's Starter Assessment. Its FAQ allows one attempt, so read the instructions and check your answers before you submit.
  • A listed rate is the price of an hour of approved work, and projects start and stop with client demand. The earnings calculator turns a rate and a number of hours into a weekly figure you can check yourself.
  • Some roles list only a ceiling ("up to"). The table counts that ceiling, so a platform that lists many of them can look higher than the middle of its real rates.
  • Check that the platform can pay you where you live. DataAnnotation pays only through PayPal, by its FAQ, and the other platforms each name their own methods.
  • Read the countries on each role page before you apply, and again at sign-up, where a platform can ask where you live.
  • If a site asks you to pay a fee to get an AI training project, stop there.

More about DataAnnotation

Is DataAnnotation legit? covers worker reviews and the 2025 lawsuit over contractor status. Outlier vs DataAnnotation sets the two side by side, and if you are leaving Outlier too, Outlier AI alternatives has its own table.

Prepare the interview: STEM and Research Reasoning interview questions.

Sources