OpenTrain AI vs Outlier
Side by side from today's live listings and each platform's own documentation.
| OpenTrain AI | Outlier | |
|---|---|---|
| Live roles | 672 | Behind login |
| Median hourly | $55 | n/a |
| Top rate | $400 | n/a |
| How it pays | OpenTrain says it is free for freelancers, with no fees or subscriptions. Clients fund each milestone before work starts, and OpenTrain pays out to your connected payout method when the client approves the milestone. It doesn't publish a fixed payout schedule. | Weekly, through PayPal or Airtm, according to Outlier's own job pages. Rates are set per project and country and published as ceilings, from up to $28/hr for Swedish writing to up to $150/hr for electrical engineering experts. Onboarding and overtime phases pay less than core work. |
| Hiring | Create a free profile with your domains, languages and hourly rate, then apply to listings. Some listings hire through OpenTrain; others link you straight to the hiring platform. | Sign up at outlier.ai, complete onboarding and skill assessments, then projects appear in your dashboard. |
| Run by | OpenTrain AI, a freelance marketplace that connects AI trainers with companies and data platforms that need them. | Scale AI, which runs Outlier as its contributor platform. Meta took a minority stake in Scale (reported as 49%) in June 2025. |
Median hourly by field
| Field | OpenTrain AI | Outlier |
|---|---|---|
| Medicine & health | $90 (42) | n/a |
| Mental health | $150 (8) | n/a |
| Law | $125 (61) | n/a |
| Finance & accounting | $90 (38) | n/a |
| Chemistry | $69 (12) | n/a |
| Biology & life sciences | $70 (9) | n/a |
| Physics | $75 (11) | n/a |
| Math & statistics | $25 (18) | n/a |
| Energy & earth sciences | $60 (4) | n/a |
| Business & operations | $60 (38) | n/a |
| Engineering | $60 (44) | n/a |
| Software & coding | $65 (69) | n/a |
| Machine learning | $90 (24) | n/a |
| Data & analytics | $20 (39) | n/a |
| Cybersecurity | $70 (7) | n/a |
| Design & media | $53 (12) | n/a |
| Writing & editing | $60 (8) | n/a |
| Languages & translation | $25 (108) | n/a |
| Voice & audio | $20 (42) | n/a |
| Teaching | $20 (3) | n/a |
| Humanities & policy | $65 (10) | n/a |
| Generalist | $40 (46) | n/a |
Number of hourly listings in brackets.