Skip to content

Research · Compiled from public sources

What Robot Training Data Costs: Buyer Prices and What Recorders Are Paid

50 published prices of robot training data: 11 that buyers pay per hour of data and 39 that the people who record it or teleoperate are paid, each linked to its source.

Covers
19 Aug 2024 to 18 Oct 2026
Dated by when each event occurred
Calculated
18 Oct 2026, 20:07 UTC
Sources last checked 18 Oct 2026
Where it comes from
Vendors' and employers' own pages and postings, and reporting by major outlets, each linked beside its price with a verbatim quote kept in the dataset.
Method
Revision 1. Terms defined
CC BY 4.0, citing this report
Every figure as CSVJSON

What the data shows

  1. 1

    Buyers' published prices for an hour of robot training data start from $1 and reach $1,200 per hour (8 US-dollar prices).

    Figure 1
  2. 2

    The people who record or operate are paid from $1 to $150 an hour where pay is stated in US dollars per hour (26 rates); the median of those lower figures is $25.25.

    Figure 2
  3. 3

    13 prices are published in yuan or rupees (China and India), many of them a small fraction of U.S. rates; they are kept in their own currency.

    Figure 2

Figure 1

What buyers pay for robot training data

What does an hour of robot, teleoperation or first-person training data cost the company that buys it?

What is boughtPrice as statedUS$ per hour (from)
one recorded hour of humanoid bimanual teleoperation with dexterous hands (10 hour minimum)Robotics Center$1,200 / hour, 10 h minimum
$1,200
one recorded hour of VR-teleoperated, action-labelled arm and gripper episodes (10 hour minimum)Robotics Center$450 / hour, 10 h minimum
$450
one hour of custom UMI demonstration dataPantheonas much as $150/hr
$150
one recorded hour of household egocentric video, 1080p, unlabelled (10 hour minimum)Robotics Center$90 / hour, 10 h minimum
$90
one hour of robot training dataConstruction Physics$60 to $100 per hour
$60
one hour of existing (off-the-shelf) UMI demonstration dataPantheonaround $60/hr
$60
one hour of annotated and packaged egocentric data collected in IndiaInc42$15- $ 50 per hour
$15
one hour of egocentric data, priced by task complexityInc42around $1-10 per hour (about ₹95-₹946)
$1
one hour of factory egocentric recordingInc42₹450-500 per hour
n/a
one hour of embodied AI training data (overall market range)The Paper (Pengpai)200至500元/小时
n/a
one hour of real-robot (teleoperated, on-robot) data in ChinaThe Paper (Pengpai)500元到1000元/小时
n/a

Base: 11 published buyer prices (reviewed 18 Oct 2026).

US$ per hour is the lower figure of a stated range, only where the source states US dollars per hour; prices in yuan or rupees stay in their own currency.

List prices are asking prices, not completed sales.

Credit: compiled by RobotTraining.jobs Research, What Robot Training Data Costs: Buyer Prices and What Recorders Are Paid, checked 18 Oct 2026.

CSV

Figure 2

What the people who make the data are paid

What are the people who film tasks, wear cameras or teleoperate robots paid for each hour of data?

Paid byPay as statedUS$ per hour (from)
Astro Robotics (operating Telexistence robots for Japanese convenience stores)Rest of Worldbetween $250 and $315 per month
n/a
Robotics data vendors (rate cited by Encord cofounder Ulrik Hansen)Business Insiderup to $150 an hour
$150
InstaworkLos Angeles Times$80 for two hours of footage
n/a
Sunday RoboticsSunday Robotics (Ashby job board)up to $60 per hour of approved data
$60
Micro1Forbes Australia (Forbes)US$50 to US$90 per hour
$50
SkydioSkydio (Ashby job board)$50 - $60 per hour
$50
Tech firms training household robotsNBC Newsup to $50 per hour of recordings
$50
Sunday RoboticsSunday Robotics (Ashby job board)$35 per hour
$35
Figure AIFigure AI (Greenhouse job board)$32.00 per hour
$32
WaabiWaabi (Lever job board)$31 - $43 /hour USD
$31
Dyna RoboticsDyna Robotics (Ashby job board)$30 - $32 per hour
$30
Sunday RoboticsSunday Robotics (Ashby job board)$30 per hour of approved data
$30
1X Technologies1X Technologies (Ashby job board)$28.00 - $36.00/hr
$28
NuroNuro (Greenhouse job board)$27 per hour (AM and PM shifts), $28.25 per hour overnight
$27
TeslaBusiness Insider (via AOL)$25.25 to $30.60 an hour base, up to $33.66 with shift premium
$25
TeslaBusiness Insider$25.25 to $48 per hour
$25
Physical IntelligencePhysical Intelligence (Ashby job board)$25/hour
$25
Micro1Business Insider$25 to $50 an hour
$25
ClaruClaru$15/hour USD
$15
Micro1MIT Technology Review$15 an hour
$15
DoorDash (Tasks app)WIRED$15 an hour
$15
ClaruClaru$10/hour USD
$10
Unnamed stealth robotics startup (Craigslist ad, New York)Business Insider$10 to $20 an hour
$10
ClaruClaru$6/hour USD
$6
ClaruClaru$5/hour USD
$5
AsimovY Combinator (Work at a Startup)$5-15/hr base pay, raises up to $30/hr after the first 5 hours collected
$5
ObjectwaysNPRabout $2.60 an hour
$3
Human ArchiveTechCrunch$1 per hour
$1
DoorDash (Tasks app)WIRED$0.37 for this video
n/a
Chinese robot data collection employers (roles advertised on job platforms)The Star (South China Morning Post)between 4,000 yuan and 6,000 yuan (US$600 and US$900) a month
n/a
Unnamed robot training data studio in ChinaThe Star (South China Morning Post)120 yuan (US$18) for a day shift and 135 yuan for a night shift
n/a
Jiahe Shengxin (partner of Mifeng Technology)21st Century Business Herald (21jingji, China Securities Journal report)每小时10元至30元
n/a
Egocentric data startups in Indian garment factoriesInc42roughly ₹400 daily
n/a
InstaworkThe News MinuteRs 300 per hour
n/a
InstaworkThe News MinuteRs 200 per hour
n/a
ObjectwaysKhaleej Times (AFP)250 rupees an hour
n/a
Unnamed Chinese robotics data collection programRest of World20 yuan ($3) per hour
n/a
Other egocentric data companies in India (per an Economic Times report)TechCrunch₹250 to ₹400 per hour (roughly $2.63 to $4.20)
n/a
JD.com (Suqian embodied AI data collection community)National Business Daily (每日经济新闻)月收入3000元到3500元
n/a

Base: 39 published pay rates.

A job posting's range is the advertised offer, not measured earnings.

US$ per hour is the lower figure of a stated range, only where the source states US dollars per hour.

Credit: compiled by RobotTraining.jobs Research, What Robot Training Data Costs: Buyer Prices and What Recorders Are Paid, checked 18 Oct 2026.

CSV

Robotics labs · Fleet operators · Data vendors · Research teams

Buy the data behind these reports

employer job boards read every day
103employer job boards read every day
every role's history kept since
12 Sep 2026every role's history kept since
apply clicks in the last 30 days
392apply clicks in the last 30 days
  • The raw records

    Every robot training role we track: title, employer, place, kind of work, pay as stated, and the days it was first and last open.

  • A regular feed

    New and closed roles every week or month, as file drops or through the data endpoints.

  • A custom cut

    Any figure here by country, city, kind of work, vehicle, employer or date, or your own hiring benchmarked against the market.

Each report's own figures stay free to download and reuse under CC BY 4.0.

How it was measured

Vendors' and employers' own pages and postings, and reporting by major outlets, each linked beside its price with a verbatim quote kept in the dataset. Each row carries a link to its publication and gives the number exactly as published, with no estimates or conversions. A note under every figure says what it covers.

Buyer price
What a company building robots pays a vendor or marketplace for data, per hour of recorded data unless stated otherwise.
Pay rate
What the person who records, films or teleoperates is paid, as the employer or an outlet states it.

Limits of this data

  • Built only from public sources. Anything never announced or reported is absent, and private-company figures are whatever the company or the press said, unaudited.
  • Prices are published unevenly; most buyers never disclose what they pay, so the buyer side is a small sample.
  • Currencies are not converted: prices in yuan and rupees stay as published.

Collection and classification of listings are explained on the methodology page. Freshness, completeness and consistency are tested daily in the data quality report.

Monthly editions

The live page shows the dataset as of its latest review, and new events join it once they are made public. Every finished month also gets its own edition, locked two days after month end, so a number quoted from it stays fixed.

Quoting this report

You may quote, chart or republish these figures under CC BY 4.0, provided you link back to this page. The live numbers shift every day. For a figure that stays put, quote a monthly edition, or note the date you accessed this page.

Citation

RobotTraining.jobs (2026). What Robot Training Data Costs: Buyer Prices and What Recorders Are Paid (live data, 19 Aug 2024 to 18 Oct 2026). https://robottraining.jobs/research/robot-training-data-prices (accessed 18 Oct 2026)

BibTeX

@misc{robottrainingjobs_robot_training_data_prices_live,
  author = {{RobotTraining.jobs}},
  title = {What Robot Training Data Costs: Buyer Prices and What Recorders Are Paid (live data, 19 Aug 2024 to 18 Oct 2026)},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://robottraining.jobs/research/robot-training-data-prices}},
  note = {Accessed 18 Oct 2026},
}

Files: every figure in one CSV (a row per value) or as JSON. Each figure can also be downloaded separately. Other open data: datasets and API.

Keep reading

Browse all 80 reports