Skip to content

Research · October 2026 edition

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.

Read the month's story: Robot Training Jobs in October 2026: The Month in Data

Not final yet. The month has ended, yet stragglers in the data may still land up to 3 Nov 2026; after that the edition is locked permanently.

Covers
19 Aug 2024 to 18 Oct 2026
Dated by when each event occurred
Calculated
1 Nov 2026, 06:05 UTC
Settles when locked
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

Each figure here comes as CSV and JSON files, emailed to your work address.

Need robot training data collected? We run the project: teleoperation sessions, first-person video, filmed household tasks or labeled robot video, staffed from the people who apply for this work through us, checked against your standard, starting with a paid pilot.

How we run projects

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 CenterRobotics Center and its data sellers$1,200 / hour, 10 h minimumas of 18 Oct 2026
one recorded hour of VR-teleoperated, action-labelled arm and gripper episodes (10 hour minimum)Robotics CenterRobotics Center and its data sellers$450 / hour, 10 h minimumas of 18 Oct 2026
one hour of custom UMI demonstration dataPantheonUMI data suppliersas much as $150/hr6 Oct 2026
one recorded hour of household egocentric video, 1080p, unlabelled (10 hour minimum)Robotics CenterRobotics Center and its data sellers$90 / hour, 10 h minimumas of 18 Oct 2026
one hour of robot training dataConstruction PhysicsRobot data vendors$60 to $100 per hour15 Oct 2026
one hour of existing (off-the-shelf) UMI demonstration dataPantheonUMI data suppliersaround $60/hr6 Oct 2026
one hour of annotated and packaged egocentric data collected in IndiaInc42Indian egocentric data suppliers$15- $ 50 per hour1 Jul 2026
one hour of egocentric data, priced by task complexityInc42Human Archivearound $1-10 per hour (about ₹95-₹946)1 Jul 2026
one hour of factory egocentric recordingInc42Factory owners₹450-500 per hour
n/a
1 Jul 2026
one hour of embodied AI training data (overall market range)The Paper (Pengpai)Embodied AI data vendors200至500元/小时
n/a
6 May 2026
one hour of real-robot (teleoperated, on-robot) data in ChinaThe Paper (Pengpai)Embodied AI data vendors500元到1000元/小时
n/a
6 May 2026

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, October 2026 edition.

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 WorldTeleoperators in Manilabetween $250 and $315 per month
n/a
20 Oct 2025
Robotics data vendors (rate cited by Encord cofounder Ulrik Hansen)Business InsiderContributors filming highly technical tasksup to $150 an hour10 Oct 2025
InstaworkLos Angeles TimesGig workers in Los Angeles recording chores$80 for two hours of footage
n/a
12 Mar 2026
Sunday RoboticsSunday Robotics (Ashby job board)Remote Memory Developers recording household demonstrationsup to $60 per hour of approved data19 Nov 2025
Micro1Forbes Australia (Forbes)AnnotatorsUS$50 to US$90 per hour22 Sep 2026
SkydioSkydio (Ashby job board)Flight test operators (fixed term)$50 - $60 per hour9 Sep 2026
Tech firms training household robotsNBC NewsGig workers recording household choresup to $50 per hour of recordings7 Jul 2026
Sunday RoboticsSunday Robotics (Ashby job board)In-house Memory Developers (Redwood City)$35 per hour15 Jul 2026
Figure AIFigure AI (Greenhouse job board)Humanoid robot pilots (San Jose)$32.00 per houras of 18 Oct 2026
WaabiWaabi (Lever job board)CDL vehicle operators (Dallas)$31 - $43 /hour USD24 Jan 2025
Dyna RoboticsDyna Robotics (Ashby job board)Data collection operators (Redwood City)$30 - $32 per hour8 May 2026
Sunday RoboticsSunday Robotics (Ashby job board)Remote Memory Developers recording household demonstrations$30 per hour of approved data19 Nov 2025
1X Technologies1X Technologies (Ashby job board)Data collection operators (San Carlos)$28.00 - $36.00/hr9 Sep 2026
NuroNuro (Greenhouse job board)Autonomous vehicle operators (South San Francisco)$27 per hour (AM and PM shifts), $28.25 per hour overnightas of 18 Oct 2026
TeslaBusiness Insider (via AOL)Vehicle operators (robotaxi test operators) in New York City$25.25 to $30.60 an hour base, up to $33.66 with shift premium12 Aug 2025
TeslaBusiness InsiderOptimus data collection operators (motion-capture suit)$25.25 to $48 per hour19 Aug 2024
Physical IntelligencePhysical Intelligence (Ashby job board)Robot operators$25/hour6 Aug 2026
Micro1Business InsiderContributors filming household tasks$25 to $50 an hour10 Oct 2025
ClaruClaruRemote contributors in United States$15/hour USD26 May 2026
Micro1MIT Technology ReviewData recorder in Nigeria$15 an hour1 Apr 2026
DoorDash (Tasks app)WIREDCouriers and app users filming tasks$15 an hour21 Mar 2026
ClaruClaruRemote contributors in Canada$10/hour USD26 May 2026
Unnamed stealth robotics startup (Craigslist ad, New York)Business InsiderPeople filming chores with their iPhones$10 to $20 an hour10 Oct 2025
ClaruClaruRemote contributors in Latin America$6/hour USD27 May 2026
ClaruClaruRemote contributors in Asia (India, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam)$5/hour USD26 May 2026
AsimovY Combinator (Work at a Startup)Remote contributors worldwide$5-15/hr base pay, raises up to $30/hr after the first 5 hours collected13 Feb 2026
ObjectwaysNPRRecorders in Karur, India (home chores and textile factory)about $2.60 an hour14 Oct 2026
Human ArchiveTechCrunchIndian home services gig workers$1 per hour26 May 2026
DoorDash (Tasks app)WIREDCouriers and app users filming tasks$0.37 for this video
n/a
21 Mar 2026
Chinese robot data collection employers (roles advertised on job platforms)The Star (South China Morning Post)Freelance robot trainersbetween 4,000 yuan and 6,000 yuan (US$600 and US$900) a month
n/a
15 Oct 2026
Unnamed robot training data studio in ChinaThe Star (South China Morning Post)Student robot trainer120 yuan (US$18) for a day shift and 135 yuan for a night shift
n/a
15 Oct 2026
Jiahe Shengxin (partner of Mifeng Technology)21st Century Business Herald (21jingji, China Securities Journal report)Crowdsourced device holders collecting data每小时10元至30元
n/a
10 Oct 2026
Egocentric data startups in Indian garment factoriesInc42Garment factory workers wearing camerasroughly ₹400 daily
n/a
1 Jul 2026
InstaworkThe News MinuteMarket vendors in Bengaluru wearing head camerasRs 300 per hour
n/a
14 Jun 2026
InstaworkThe News MinuteMarket vendors in Bengaluru wearing head camerasRs 200 per hour
n/a
14 Jun 2026
ObjectwaysKhaleej Times (AFP)Homemaker in Chennai recording chores250 rupees an hour
n/a
11 Jun 2026
Unnamed Chinese robotics data collection programRest of WorldStay-at-home recorder in Shandong20 yuan ($3) per hour
n/a
3 Jun 2026
Other egocentric data companies in India (per an Economic Times report)TechCrunchWorkers recording egocentric data₹250 to ₹400 per hour (roughly $2.63 to $4.20)
n/a
26 May 2026
JD.com (Suqian embodied AI data collection community)National Business Daily (每日经济新闻)Community residents collecting data月收入3000元到3500元
n/a
21 May 2026

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, October 2026 edition.

Robotics labs · Fleet operators · Data vendors · Research teams

Buy the data behind this report

This report sums up records we gather ourselves, day after day:

  • 1,432 robot training roles followed, history included

    Every role on 100 employer job boards, read each day since 12 Sep 2026: its pay, its place, and the first and last day it was up.

  • 536 apply clicks over 28 days

    Which robot training roles people really apply to, by kind of work, pay and place. The clicks happen here, so no one else can count them.

  • 25 sourced industry datasets

    Funding, revenue, deals, fleets, deployments and prices across the robot training industry, each record linked to the publication it comes from.

On offer

  • 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.

Need the people behind this data for your own robots? (you contract them yourself) or (we deliver the robot data).

Investing in robotics, AV or robot-data companies? The Robot hiring radar is these records role by role, every day, as files.

Robot hiring brief: free, once a month

The robot-training job market in figures, on the first weekday of each month: open roles, what opened and closed, who added and who cut, and posted pay by kind of work. To your work email.

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.

  • Live pageLatest review
  • October 2026 edition (you are here)Will lock when the next daily refresh runs

Quoting this report

You may quote, chart or republish these figures under CC BY 4.0, provided you link back to this page. This edition is locked: its numbers will not change.

Citation

RobotTraining.jobs (2026). What Robot Training Data Costs: Buyer Prices and What Recorders Are Paid, October 2026 edition. https://robottraining.jobs/research/robot-training-data-prices/2026-10

BibTeX

@misc{robottrainingjobs_robot_training_data_prices_2026_10,
  author = {{RobotTraining.jobs}},
  title = {What Robot Training Data Costs: Buyer Prices and What Recorders Are Paid, October 2026 edition},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://robottraining.jobs/research/robot-training-data-prices/2026-10}},
}
Files: every figure in one CSV (a row per value) or as JSON, emailed to your work address.Other open data: datasets and API

Keep reading

Browse all 91 reports