data labeling vendors

ranked on what they'll tell you: what it costs, who actually does the labelling, and what the public record says about how those people are treated.

11 listed · 8 of them researched by us · featured first, then most upvoted

the open-source annotation tool behind heartex, self-hostable

#open-source#self-hosted

managed annotation workforce with published ethical-sourcing commitments

#managed#impact

long-running managed teams for annotation and data work

#managed#teams

we checked thisnot published

reduces how much human labelling you need in the first place, which is the only structural answer to this category's problems.

#teams-with-domain-heavy-#documents-who-would-rath

we checked thisfree

free open-source annotation tooling with no workforce attached — which is both its strength and the reason it can't finish first.

#teams-with-their-own-ann#or-open-communities-labe

we checked thisnot published

annotation platform plus an expert marketplace, with the highest reported pay band of the crowd-model vendors.

#teams-wanting-tooling#on-demand-domain-experts#including-medical

we checked thisnot published

the largest open crowd here at the lowest reported pay, and a corporate lineage worth tracing before you sign.

#very-high-volume-microta

we checked thisnot published

bootstrapped, profitable and serving the frontier labs — facing a class action over how it classifies the people doing the work.

#frontier-lab-grade-rlhf#reasoning-data-where-qua

we checked thisnot published

human-plus-automation services at enterprise scale, with worker complaints that echo the category's pattern.

#enterprises-outsourcing-

we checked this$60-120/hr contractor bands

the only vendor that publishes what it pays, and the only one that lost its contractors' passports and biometrics.

#sourcing-credentialed-ex#lawyers#senior-engineers-at-rate

we checked thisnot published

the biggest vendor in the category, part-owned by one of your competitors, with the longest labour record to read.

#frontier-scale-programme#government-work#for-buyers-who-have-weig

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