Price a project
Multiply items by minutes per item, add time for review, and price the hours at an expert rate. Published reference points run from $8 an hour (Prolific's participant minimum) to $150 an hour (the top of Alignerr's stated expert pay); vendor fees come on top and are not published.
Expert time and pay for one round
What do typical projects come to?
Three worked examples using the same formula. The hourly figures are assumptions within the published range, not vendor prices.
| Project | Items | Min/item | Hours | At | Expert pay |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Preference pairs, software | 1,000 | 6 | 125 | $100/hr | $12,500 |
| Rubric-graded legal answers | 500 | 20 | 250 | $150/hr | $37,500 |
| Graduate science problems with solutions | 200 | 90 | 450 | $120/hr | $54,000 |
Which published figures can anchor a budget?
- Prolific: pays participants at least $8 an hour and suggests $12; its own fee is extra, at a rate that article leaves out. Participants are the general public unless you screen for more.
- Alignerr (Labelbox): states expert pay of up to $150 an hour.
- Handshake AI: pay varies by project; the rate is shown to a fellow before joining. No figure published.
- Epoch AI on RL tasks: task and grader together "$200 to $2000 mostly"; exclusivity multiplies the price by roughly four or five. Interview estimates.
Every other vendor on this site quotes per project and publishes no buyer price.
Where these figures come from
- Prolific help center: how payment works for researchers, dated July 17, 2026 (page checked November 7, 2026)
- alignerr.com/about (Labelbox’s expert network) (page checked November 7, 2026)
- "An FAQ on reinforcement learning environments", Epoch AI Gradient Updates, January 12, 2026 (page checked November 7, 2026)
Questions buyers ask
Why does the pricer ask for an hourly figure instead of giving one?
Because no vendor on this site publishes what it charges buyers per expert hour. The published numbers are what experts or participants are paid, so the pricer shows expert time and expert pay, and you choose the rate.
How much do vendors add on top of expert pay?
Not published by any vendor we checked. Recruiting, project management, review and margin all sit on top of what the expert earns, so treat the pricer’s figure as a floor.
What about RL environments and verifiable tasks?
They are priced per task, not per hour. For a task plus its grader, Epoch AI's interviewees quoted "$200 to $2000 mostly"; $20,000 was the outlier. Those are interview estimates, not contracts.
Is a pilot worth paying for?
Usually. A pilot of a few hundred items tells you the real minutes per item and the acceptance rate, the two numbers that move the budget most.
Get a quote
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