On 26 October 2026 we counted 2,544 open AI training roles at 23 platforms. Four platforms posted 56% of them. 44.9% name a work language other than English. The median listed hourly rate was $55, and the five specialist fields together listed a median of $80 against $39 for generalist roles.

The figures come from the public job boards that AI Work Central reads once a day. Every pay figure is the rate a posting lists. This edition is rebuilt with the daily read until the end of October and keeps the figures of its last day after that.

Who is hiring

PlatformOpen rolesWith an hourly rateMedian listed rateMiddle half
G2i7 roles, 7 with a rate77$150$150
Weekday166 roles, 135 with a rate166135$100$70 to $120
Terac57 roles, 21 with a rate5721$90$60 to $100
Mercor295 roles, 259 with a rate295259$80$55 to $105
Mindrift19 roles, 19 with a rate1919$70$69 to $100
micro1269 roles, 261 with a rate269261$67.50$50 to $110
SME Careers262 roles, 262 with a rate262262$50$25 to $70
Anyone AI47 roles, 44 with a rate4744$45$40 to $62.50
xAI18 roles, 18 with a rate1818$40$40 to $55
Appen54 roles, 11 with a rate5411$36$33.75 to $47.75
Meridial570 roles, 54 with a rate57054$23.25$20 to $60
Welocalize314 roles, 90 with a rate31490$16$8.50 to $25
RWS TrainAI136 roles, 132 with a rate136132$16$8 to $21.12
Volga43 roles, 37 with a rate4337$16$7 to $25
Innodata26 roles, 25 with a rate2625$15$15 to $20
HumanSignal25 roles, 23 with a rate2523$11$8 to $14.30
10x Team104 roles, 0 with a rate1040too few rates
TSMG103 roles, 0 with a rate1030too few rates
Scale AI12 roles, 1 with a rate121too few rates
Turing picked by hand9 roles, 2 with a rate92too few rates
Alignerr picked by hand3 roles, 3 with a rate33too few rates
Remotasks3 roles, 2 with a rate32too few rates
Handshake AI2 roles, 2 with a rate22too few rates

Platforms are listed from the highest median down. The medians need a few notes. Where a platform posts one company-wide range on most of its roles, that range is not the pay of any role, so it is left out (513 roles this month). Where a platform lists only a top rate ("up to"), the top rate is what we count, and its median reads high. Full pay tables by platform and field are in the AI Training Pay Index, and pay by field and country in short is in the pay report for October.

2,605 open roles at 22 platforms today

See all 2,605 rolesCompare the platforms

Which fields

FieldOpen rolesWith an hourly rateMedian listed rateMiddle half
Law121 roles, 108 with a rate121108$110$65 to $135
Medicine140 roles, 106 with a rate140106$100$70 to $150
Finance121 roles, 86 with a rate12186$90.50$60 to $110
Coding245 roles, 172 with a rate245172$70$60 to $96.25
STEM349 roles, 220 with a rate349220$69$50 to $90
Writing82 roles, 59 with a rate8259$67.50$55 to $82.50
Trades13 roles, 7 with a rate137$60$39.55 to $67.50
Generalist310 roles, 211 with a rate310211$35$19 to $70
Languages1,150 roles, 427 with a rate1,150427$22.50$12.68 to $36.25
Robotics13 roles, 12 with a rate1312$10.50$9 to $20

Language work is most of the volume and sits at the low end of pay. Law, finance and medicine are among the smallest fields and list the highest rates. Across law, medicine, coding, STEM and finance, the median was $80 (664 rates, middle half $60 to $110). For generalist roles it was $39 (198 rates, middle half $16.12 to $70). Both figures leave Meridial out, as the Pay Index does.

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.

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Which languages

1,303 roles (44.9%) name a work language other than English, spread over 127 language codes. 1,597 roles name English only.

LanguageOpen rolesHourly ratesMedian
French6525$22
Spanish8134$40
German6228$49
Chinese6934$35
Portuguese6427$22.95
Arabic4912$15
Japanese4317$40
Korean3711$28
Dutch3112$23.25
Italian2910$20.75

Roles that name English, alone or with another language, listed a median of $57.50 on 1,339 rates. A role that names two languages counts in both rows. By language: AI training jobs by language.

Which countries the postings name

  • 340 roles (11.7%) say worldwide.
  • 2,332 name a list of countries. Most lists hold one country: a role for Mexican Spanish names Mexico.
  • 228 name no country. We count those as unknown, never as open.
CountryRoles open thereShare of all rolesMedian listed rate
United States1,19741.3%$70
India82028.3%$57.50
United Kingdom66422.9%$65
Germany65522.6%$65
Brazil65122.4%$60
Pakistan61921.3%$60
Canada61021.0%$65
Indonesia61021.0%$65
Philippines60720.9%$65
Portugal57319.8%$65
Nigeria51817.9%$61.25

"Open there" means the posting names the country or says worldwide. The medians look alike because the same large lists (the worldwide roles, and a long country list that many micro1 roles share) appear in almost every row. Roles open to someone in an EU country listed a median of $57.50 (1,045 roles). Roles not open to the EU listed $39.75 (1,343 roles). For one country in detail, see AI training jobs in Portugal.

What opened and closed

The daily record covers 12 to 26 October 2026. Roles that appeared and vanished within two days, and roles a platform only renumbered, are removed first.

  • 605 roles opened. Another 982 came from sources we first read in that period. They were already open, so we do not count them as new.
  • 372 roles closed and 5 reopened.
  • Pay changed on 131 roles: 39 raises, 40 cuts, 19 where a wide placeholder range was replaced by a real rate (not a cut), and 33 we cannot rank because the unit or currency changed.
PlatformOpenedClosed
Meridial1870
micro1133134
RWS TrainAI8423
Mercor4921
Welocalize2982
Terac2415
HumanSignal203
SME Careers1615
Appen138
Mindrift111
TSMG80
xAI717
G2i72
Volga70
Innodata50
Scale AI50
Weekday051

The record is young. It cannot say yet how long a role stays open.

How we count

  • Each role counts once, at the middle of its listed hourly range in US dollars. A role listed at $40 to $60 counts as $50.
  • A role that lists only a maximum counts at that maximum, so some medians read high.
  • Roles that carry a company-wide range instead of their own rate are left out of every pay figure.
  • Roles with no pay, and roles that pay per task, count as open roles but not in the pay figures.
  • There is no median with fewer than 5 rates.
  • What you earn depends on the hours a project offers, how fast you work and whether you pass the platform's tests. The listed rate is the posting's.

The same rules as the Pay Index produce every number here, from the same daily read. The Pay Index has its method and CSV files.

Cite and reuse

AI Work Central, AI Training Jobs Report, October 2026 (figures as of 26 October 2026), https://aiworkcentral.com/blog/ai-training-jobs-report-2026-10. The derived figures (counts, medians, shares) are licensed CC BY 4.0: reuse them with credit and a link. The role postings belong to the platforms that publish them.

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