Reference
Guides
The things we wish someone had explained before we started: what the work is, what it pays by specialty, and what you owe at the end of the year. Every figure in these guides is computed from the 937 live listings we mirror from the platforms' own job boards, updated daily.
Start hereWhat AI training work actually isThe eight task types you'll actually be asked to do — writing reference answers, ranking responses, grading against rubrics, red-teaming — each with a worked example, plus an honest read on what the work feels like day to day.PayWhat your specialty is actually worthMedian and full pay spread by specialty, computed from every priced listing on the board. The gap between the top and bottom specialties is far larger than most of this niche admits.ToolEffective pay calculatorAn advertised rate is not your rate. Put in your paid and unpaid hours — onboarding, qualification tests, hunting for tasks — and see what you'd really earn per hour worked.MoneyTaxes and 1099s on this incomeYou're an independent contractor, so nothing is withheld and the bill arrives later. How estimated taxes work, what's deductible, and the one thing people get wrong about 1099 thresholds. General information, not tax advice.ReferenceGlossary of platform and AI-training jargonBatch, qualification, rubric, RLHF, gold standard, inter-annotator agreement — plain-English definitions for the words onboarding uses without explaining.
Method
Where the numbers come from
Pay figures across this site are computed on every request from the job boards we mirror. We don't retype them, so they can't drift from the source, and we label anything we haven't verified ourselves.
The full spread runs $6–$400/hr, but those two ends are the extremes of the board, not a range to plan around. All of it is what the platforms advertise, not what anyone has been shown to earn.
Law$120/hr
Business Operations$100/hr
Data Analysis$100/hr
Education & Teaching$100/hr
Finance$88/hr
Medicine$85/hr
Cybersecurity$83/hr
- $75/hr
- $50–$105/hr
- 697