Microtask crowd · Salaried delivery centers
Sama
Unlike gig platforms, Sama hires salaried employees into delivery teams in Kenya, Uganda and India to annotate text, image, video, 3D and sensor data for AI, and markets itself as an ethical, living-wage employer (a certified B-Corp). In East Africa people join as Data Training Agents after its 10-day AI 101 training (sama.com/ai101, read 5 Nov 2026); in India it posts associate roles on its job board. Pay is a salary with a bonus, not a self-set hourly rate, and Sama does not post the figure.
Third-party reports
Buying AI training data from Sama? Sama pricing for AI teams
Is Sama legit?
Markets itself as the ethical, B-Corp employer; payment reliability is not in question, but has faced high-profile controversies over content-moderation pay and conditions. It pays Salaried; not posted (Kenya, 2023: $1.32–$3.74/hr) (third-party reports).
Listed in our live directory
A salary on Sama's payroll with a bonus and benefits (its careers page); temporary project roles are on payroll without benefits.
Mixed (controversy-shaped)
Delivery work in Nairobi (Kenya), Gulu and Kampala (Uganda), where agents apply to the site closest to them (sama.com/careers and sama.com/ai101, read 5 Nov 2026), and Bangalore (India), where its two current associate roles are (its Greenhouse board, read 5 Nov 2026); offices also in San Francisco, Montréal, San José (Costa Rica) and The Hague (sama.com/careers, read 5 Nov 2026).
Honest catches
- Pay here is third-party reports, not measured live from a job feed, so treat it as a benchmark rather than a guaranteed rate.
What Sama pays
Third-party reports · as of 2026-11-05Researched rate card, third-party reports, as of 2026-11-05
Sama states no salary figure: its careers page (sama.com/careers, read 5 Nov 2026) offers a 'Competitive salary with bonus' with health and retirement plans, its AI 101 page (read 5 Nov 2026) names no pay, and its two associate postings in India on its Greenhouse board (read 5 Nov 2026) state none (the Spanish one is temporary, on payroll without benefits). The only pay on that board is a 4-month driving contract for self-driving car data in San Francisco at $25 an hour. The last published East Africa figures are TIME's (18 Jan 2023, on Sama's 2021 to 2022 OpenAI labeling contract in Nairobi): agents on a basic salary of KES 21,000 (about $170) a month plus about $70 a month for explicit content, a take-home of $1.32 to $1.44 an hour after tax and up to $2 for quality analysts; Sama told TIME its workers earned $1.46 to $3.74 an hour after taxes. No newer first-hand figure was found (Kenyan job sites list its 2026 Nairobi roles with the salary not disclosed).
| Role | Kind of work | Researched pay |
|---|---|---|
| Data training agent / annotator | Data Annotation | KES 21,000 (~$170)/mo base (Kenya, 2023) |
| Quality analyst | AI Evaluation | up to ~$2/hr take-home (Kenya, 2023) |
| Associate, product data review (India) | Data Annotation | Not stated |
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The work Sama hires for
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From the forum
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Frequently asked questions
Is Sama legit?
Markets itself as the ethical, B-Corp employer; payment reliability is not in question, but has faced high-profile controversies over content-moderation pay and conditions.
Does Sama pay?
Yes. Markets itself as the ethical, B-Corp employer; payment reliability is not in question, but has faced high-profile controversies over content-moderation pay and conditions. Payouts: A salary on Sama's payroll with a bonus and benefits (its careers page); temporary project roles are on payroll without benefits.
How much does Sama pay?
Salaried; not posted (Kenya, 2023: $1.32–$3.74/hr). Sama states no salary figure: its careers page (sama.com/careers, read 5 Nov 2026) offers a 'Competitive salary with bonus' with health and retirement plans, its AI 101 page (read 5 Nov 2026) names no pay, and its two associate postings in India on its Greenhouse board (read 5 Nov 2026) state none (the Spanish one is temporary, on payroll without benefits). The only pay on that board is a 4-month driving contract for self-driving car data in San Francisco at $25 an hour. The last published East Africa figures are TIME's (18 Jan 2023, on Sama's 2021 to 2022 OpenAI labeling contract in Nairobi): agents on a basic salary of KES 21,000 (about $170) a month plus about $70 a month for explicit content, a take-home of $1.32 to $1.44 an hour after tax and up to $2 for quality analysts; Sama told TIME its workers earned $1.46 to $3.74 an hour after taxes. No newer first-hand figure was found (Kenyan job sites list its 2026 Nairobi roles with the salary not disclosed).
Is Sama worth it?
Sama pays Salaried; not posted (Kenya, 2023: $1.32–$3.74/hr) (third-party reports). It suits flexible microtask income rather than a dependable hourly wage. Worker sentiment: Mixed (controversy-shaped).
How does Sama pay out?
A salary on Sama's payroll with a bonus and benefits (its careers page); temporary project roles are on payroll without benefits.
Where can you work for Sama?
Delivery work in Nairobi (Kenya), Gulu and Kampala (Uganda), where agents apply to the site closest to them (sama.com/careers and sama.com/ai101, read 5 Nov 2026), and Bangalore (India), where its two current associate roles are (its Greenhouse board, read 5 Nov 2026); offices also in San Francisco, Montréal, San José (Costa Rica) and The Hague (sama.com/careers, read 5 Nov 2026).
Compare Sama with
The original microtask crowd: earn per HIT at requester-set rates.
~$2–$3/hr effective (2018 study); closedThird-party reports
Crypto data-labeling crowd that closed its paid task app in March 2026 for expert validation (Proof of Quality).
Task app closed Mar 2026; validator pay set per project, none postedPlatform-stated
Project-based AI training platform (prompts, coding challenges, evals) that is closing: it wound down its annotation work in October 2026.
Closing (Oct 2026); paid $25/hr+ while openPlatform-stated
A large global contributor crowd, strong on multilingual speech and evaluation.
$2.40–$100/hr; CrowdGen experts up to $450/hrPlatform-statedOrdered by what applying is worth, lifted by a referral boost for the platforms that pay us a referral fee; it never changes what a platform pays you.
Short of experts at Sama? We find the experts (you contract them yourself) or we run the project (we deliver the expert work).