Price table, 2026
AI training data prices in 2026
Reported unit prices range from $0.001 per word of text and 2 to 16 cents per stock image to $1 to $4 per minute of video, $5,000 per book title and $70 to $150 per expert hour. Company data is priced per dataset instead: published programme ranges run from $10K to $4M+.
Page updated 19 Oct 2026. Figures checked 18 Oct 2026 at their sources.
Table 1
Unit prices
| Unit | Price as reported | Range | Who pays | Who sells | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| per photo / per video | “between 5 cents and $1 dollar per photo and more than $1 per video”Asking range from Photobucket CEO Ted Leonard for licensing its ~13 billion photos and videos; low/high apply to photos. | $0.05 to $1 | tech companies (in negotiation) | Photobucket | (Reuters via China Daily HK, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per image | “$1 to $2 per image”Rates stated by Defined.ai CEO Daniela Braga to Reuters (Apr 2024). | $1 to $2 |  AI companies buying via Defined.ai | Defined.ai (shares earnings with content providers) | (Reuters via China Daily HK, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per short-form video | “$2 to $4 per short-form video”Daniela Braga, Defined.ai CEO, to Reuters (Apr 2024). | $2 to $4 | AI companies buying via Defined.ai | Defined.ai | (Reuters via China Daily HK, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per hour of longer film | “$100 to $300 per hour of longer films”Daniela Braga, Defined.ai CEO, to Reuters (Apr 2024). | $100 to $300 | AI companies buying via Defined.ai | Defined.ai | (Reuters via China Daily HK, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per word (text) | “The market rate for text is $0.001 per word”Daniela Braga, Defined.ai CEO, to Reuters (Apr 2024). | $0.001 | AI companies | text data vendors (Defined.ai) | (Reuters via China Daily HK, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per image (nudity) | “Images of nudity, which require the most sensitive handling, go for $5 to $7”Daniela Braga, Defined.ai CEO, to Reuters (Apr 2024). | $5 to $7 | AI companies | Defined.ai | (Reuters via China Daily HK, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per image | “to license the majority of its archive of 200 million images at 2 to 4 cents per image”Freepik told Reuters (Apr 2024). | $0.02 to $0.04 | two major tech companies (unnamed) | Freepik | (Reuters via China Daily HK, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per photo | “between 6 cents and 16 cents for each photo”PYMNTS, 11 Apr 2024, citing Bloomberg. | $0.06 to $0.16 | Adobe | photographers / artists (Adobe Stock contributors) | (PYMNTS, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per minute of video | “an average of $2.62 per minute for videos”Clips of everyday actions and emotions for Adobe's video model. PYMNTS, 11 Apr 2024, citing Bloomberg (Bloomberg paywalled). | $2.62 | Adobe | photographers / artists | (PYMNTS, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per minute of unused video footage | “AI companies are currently paying between $1 and $4 per minute of footage”Bloomberg (Aisha Counts, 10 Jan 2025) on Bloomberg Law. Higher end for 4K, drone and 3D footage per other coverage. | $1 to $4 |  OpenAI, Google, Moonvalley and other AI companies |   YouTubers and creators, via Troveo AI and Calliope Networks | (Bloomberg Law, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per hour of video content | “He makes more than $33 per hour of content used by an AI company”Semafor, 30 Oct 2025: $33,000 in a year from licensing about a thousand hours of old videos. Single creator example. | $33+ | AI company (via licensing intermediary) | creator Peter Hollens | (Semafor, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per book title | “Microsoft was offering HarperCollins $5,000 per title; HarperCollins would pass on half of that fee to consenting authors”Select nonfiction backlist, three-year licence. Nieman Lab summarising Bloomberg. | $5,000 |  Microsoft | HarperCollins and opting-in authors | (Nieman Lab, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per book title (author's share) | “Authors would receive a non-negotiable amount of $2,500 per title”MediaNama, Nov 2024, based on the agent email shared by author Daniel Kibblesmith; licence period three years. | $2,500 | HarperCollins (from Microsoft licence) | authors | (MediaNama, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per book (copyright settlement) | “a gross recovery of $3,000 per work”Settlement of at least $1.5 billion for roughly 500,000 works; damages for pirated copies, not a licence fee. Final approval 20 July 2026. | $3,000 | Anthropic | authors / rightsholders (Bartz v. Anthropic class) | (NBC News, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per publisher per year (news licence offer) | “OpenAI offers some media firms between $1 million and $5 million annually to license their news articles”Offers, not closed deals. Bloomberg News on Bloomberg Law (Jan 2024) citing The Information. | $1M to $5M | OpenAI | news publishers | (Bloomberg Law, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per publisher (multi-year archive licence offer) | “multi-year deals worth at least $50 million for access to their news archives”Offer reported by The New York Times (22 Dec 2023), via Engadget; outcome unknown. | $50M+ | Apple | news publishers (Condé Nast, NBC News, IAC approached) | (Engadget, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per expert hour (software engineering) | “$70-$150 / hr”Mercor standing listing 'Software Engineering Expert': grading model-written code. Page says listings 'have posted at $70 to $150 an hour, set per project'. | $70 to $150 |  Mercor | software engineers (AI training and evaluation work) | (Mercor job listing, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per expert hour (management consulting) | “$90-$120 / hr”Mercor standing listing 'Management Consulting Expert': writing case prompts with reference answers, grading model market sizings. | $90 to $120 | Mercor | management consultants | (Mercor job listing, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per expert hour (business operations) | “$90-$120 / hr”Mercor standing listing 'Business Operations Expert' (served at the old customer-service-experts URL): writing operating problems with reference answers, grading model analysis. | $90 to $120 | Mercor | business operators | (Mercor job listing, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per expert hour (electrical engineering) | “Up to $150 USD/hr”Outlier expert recruiting page. | up to $150 |  Outlier (Scale AI) | electrical engineering experts (Masters required; PhD preferred) | (Outlier, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per expert hour (ML / RL environments) | “Earn Up to $150 USD/hr - Plus additional incentives”Outlier expert page: writing automated graders and verifiers for agents, ML-research challenge problems, rubrics against reward hacking. | up to $150 | Outlier (Scale AI) | CS / ML experts | (Outlier, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per hour (generalist / coding / STEM / professional / language) | “Generalist up to $50 / hr; Coding up to $150+ / hr; STEM up to $125+ / hr; Finance, Legal, Medical, Accounting, Engineering up to $125+ / hr; Data & ML up to $150+ / hr; Language specialists up to $40 / hr”DataAnnotation home page rate list (ceilings, not averages). | up to $150 |  DataAnnotation | AI trainers | (DataAnnotation, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| per expert hour (medicine) | “Hourly rate $110.00 – $140.00 per hour”Handshake posting 'Medicine Domain Expert - AI Research (contract)' on Reach Capital's portfolio job board: domain prompts, rubrics, evaluating LLM responses. Closed, listed more than six months ago. | $110 to $140 | Handshake AI | medical experts | (Handshake job posting, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
Table 2
Disclosed deal values
| Parties | Value as reported | Period | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reddit and Google | “worth about $60 million per year, according to one of the sources” | per year | 2024 | (Reuters via Yahoo, checked 18 Oct 2026)press |
| Reddit and unnamed data licensees | “data licensing arrangements with an aggregate contract value of $203.0 million and terms ranging from two to three years; minimum of $66.4 million of revenue to be recognized during 2024” | over 2 to 3 years (signed January 2024) | 2024 | (TechCrunch, checked 18 Oct 2026)press |
 News Corp and OpenAI | “could be worth more than $250 million over five years” | over 5 years | 2024 | (Variety via Yahoo, checked 18 Oct 2026)press |
 Amazon and The New York Times | “between $20 million to $25 million per year” | per year (multiyear deal) | 2025 | (TheWrap, checked 18 Oct 2026)press |
 Dotdash Meredith (IAC) and OpenAI | “a minimum of around $16 million per year” | per year (fixed component only) | 2024 | (Adweek, checked 18 Oct 2026)press |
| Axel Springer and OpenAI | “tens of millions of euros ... as part of a three-year deal, Bloomberg reported” | over 3 years | 2023 | (Euronews, checked 18 Oct 2026)press |
 Informa (Taylor & Francis) and Microsoft | “payment to Informa of both an initial data access fee ($10m+) and a recurring payment across three years (2025, 2026, 2027)” | initial fee plus recurring payments 2025-2027 (agreement runs 2024 to 2027) | 2024 | (Informa RNS, checked 18 Oct 2026)company |
| Informa (Taylor & Francis) and Microsoft and second unnamed AI partner | “AI partnership revenues to $75m+ in 2024” | calendar year 2024 (expected) | 2024 | (Informa RNS, checked 18 Oct 2026)company |
 John Wiley & Sons and unnamed large tech companies | “$40 million in total AI licensing revenue realized in Fiscal 2025 compared to $23 million in Fiscal 2024” | fiscal year ended 30 April 2025 | 2025 | (SEC filing, checked 18 Oct 2026)filing |
| John Wiley & Sons and unnamed AI licensees | “AI license revenue was $49.1 million in the year ended April 30, 2026 compared to $40 million in the prior year” | fiscal year ended 30 April 2026 | 2026 | (SEC filing, checked 18 Oct 2026)filing |
 Shutterstock and AI companies (OpenAI and others) | “earned $104 million in annual revenue from AI licensing agreements in 2023” | calendar year 2023 | 2023 | (Business Insider via AOL, checked 18 Oct 2026)press |
| Shutterstock and big tech AI buyers | “initially ranged from $25 million to $50 million each” | per deal | 2024 | (Reuters via China Daily HK, checked 18 Oct 2026)press |
| Anthropic and book authors and publishers (Bartz v. Anthropic class) | “at least $1.5 billion ... a gross recovery of $3,000 per work ... roughly 500,000 published works” | one-off (settlement) | 2025 | (NBC News, checked 18 Oct 2026)press |
| HarperCollins and Microsoft | “Microsoft was offering HarperCollins $5,000 per title; HarperCollins would pass on half of that fee to consenting authors” | per title (three-year licence) | 2024 | (Nieman Lab, checked 18 Oct 2026)press |
| Perplexity and news publishers (Comet Plus programme) | “$42.5 million pool of money has been set aside to share with publishers and is expected to grow over time” | initial pool (revenue share) | 2025 | (AFP via The Daily Star, checked 18 Oct 2026)press |
Notes, caveats and context for each deal are on the disclosed deals page.
Company data: priced per dataset
The unit prices above come mostly from media: images, video, books and news. The price per word of text, worked out for book deals shows how far apart those rates sit. Company records (chat, email, tickets, code, CRM) are not sold by the word. Buyers price a whole dataset after looking at a sample, and the programmes that buy it publish ranges per company instead:
| Programme | Published range | How it pays | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Replay | $10K to $1M+ by headcount“20-50 employees $10K-$100K; 50-250 employees $100K-$1M; 250+ employees $1,000,000+” | Upfront cash plus a perpetual revenue share | (Replay, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| Handshake AI | $100K to $4M+“Earn $100K to $4M+” | Licence; lump sum or recurring not stated | (Handshake AI, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| micro1 | $100K to $500K, $500K to $2M, $2M+ tiers“$100K-500K qualified partnerships; $500K-2M large-scale datasets; $2M+ highly unique proprietary data” | Lump sum within 30 days of acceptance; licence, company keeps ownership | (micro1, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| Grepped | $20K to $5M“Your company's data could be worth $20K-$5M” | Marketplace; paid in as little as 7 days | (Grepped, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| Polyshares | $100K to $2M“Typically $100K to $2M, paid by us to the company” | Licence for a term; Net 30 to 60 after approval | (Polyshares, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| Turing (Project Lazarus) | Up to $1M, one payment“a single payout of up to $1M” | One payment, no recurring commitment | (Turing, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| Pewter | $385K to $895K at 100 staff, 10 years“Estimator default (100 employees, 10 years): $385K to $895K, an illustration only” | Licence; buyer pays Pewter a fee at close | (Pewter, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| SimpleClosure (AssetHub) | Tens to hundreds of thousands“deals in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for unique assets” | Sale or licence; takes a percentage on success | (SimpleClosure, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
| Troveo | From six figures“Typical deals start at six figures” | Licence; paid on every resale | (Troveo, checked 18 Oct 2026) |
How to read these numbers
- Reported, not quoted. Most unit prices are what an executive told a reporter (Reuters, Bloomberg) about a market rate or an offer. Offers are marked as offers.
- Dated. Many rates were reported in 2024. Each row says who reported it and when; we checked the source still says so on 18 Oct 2026.
- Currency as published. Figures stay in the currency the source used, nearly always US dollars. We do not convert.
- Ranges are marketing. Programme ranges are what buyers publish to attract companies. A real price comes after a sample review. The offer check holds an amount against them.
- Expert hours are not data sales. Hourly rates are what experts are paid to create or grade training data, included because they show what labs pay for expert judgement.
The CSV (prices.csv) carries every row in both tables with its source URL, source type and check date. It is regenerated from the same data file each time the site is built.
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FAQ
Frequently asked questions
01How much does AI training data cost per word?
Defined.ai's CEO told Reuters in April 2024 that the market rate for text is $0.001 per word. That is for general text; company records with decisions and context are priced per dataset, not per word.
02How much do AI companies pay per image or video?
Reported rates run from 2 to 4 cents per image (Freepik) and 6 to 16 cents per photo (Adobe) to $1 to $2 per image and $2 to $4 per short video through Defined.ai. Unused video footage has fetched $1 to $4 per minute.
03What do labs pay for books?
Microsoft offered HarperCollins $5,000 per title for a three-year licence, with $2,500 passed to each opting-in author. The Anthropic copyright settlement pays a gross $3,000 per work, but that is damages, not a licence fee.
04What do experts earn producing AI training data?
Listings show $70 to $150 an hour for software engineering experts at Mercor, $90 to $120 for consulting and operations experts, up to $150 at Outlier and DataAnnotation, and $110 to $140 for medical experts at Handshake AI.
05Is company data priced per unit too?
Rarely. Programmes that buy company records publish ranges per company, set by headcount, years and completeness: Replay from $10K to $1M+, Handshake AI $100K to $4M+, Polyshares $100K to $2M. See the payout ranges page.
06Can I download the data?
Yes. The CSV holds every unit price and disclosed deal on this page, with the source link, source type and the date each row was checked. It is free to reuse with a link back.
07How current are these prices?
Every row was checked on 18 October 2026. Many unit prices were first reported in 2024, so they show what was paid then, not today's rate. Each row says when and where it was reported.
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