Pricing
Human Data for LLM Projects: cost and pricing in India
Indicative rate bands for human data for llm projects, the five specification decisions that move the number most, and how a fixed quote is put together from a written spec.
- Pricing model
- Per delivered unit, fixed against spec
- Minimum
- ~50 hours or equivalent per language
- Turnaround
- 2-6 weeks depending on task complexity and contributor screening depth.
- Quote time
- One working day
What drives the price of llm human data
Human-generated text and speech for LLM training and evaluation in Indian languages: prompts, preference rankings, instruction-response pairs, red-teaming and cultural-fit review.
- Language tier: widely spoken languages have deeper recruitment pools and cost less per unit than low-resource ones
- Demographic narrowness: a 50/50 gender split across three age bands is routine; a narrow cohort multiplies recruitment effort
- Task types — Prompt writing, response ranking, instruction-response pairs, adversarial testing. Moving this off the standard changes the unit cost directly.
- Languages — Any language in the network, including code-mixed Hinglish. Moving this off the standard changes the unit cost directly.
- Contributors — Screened by domain, education band and language proficiency. Moving this off the standard changes the unit cost directly.
- Agreement — Overlapping assignments with adjudication. Moving this off the standard changes the unit cost directly.
- QA threshold and rework policy: a higher accept bar means more re-collection, which is priced in rather than absorbed later
Where the cost sits in llm human data
Contributor pools are built per domain; the same pool is not reused across conflicting tasks.
Turnaround: 2-6 weeks depending on task complexity and contributor screening depth.
Indicative rate bands
| Scope | Unit | Indicative band |
|---|---|---|
| Widely spoken language, standard spec | per delivered hour | ₹3,200 – ₹6,500 |
| Regional language, standard spec | per delivered hour | ₹4,200 – ₹8,200 |
| Low-resource language or narrow cohort | per delivered hour | ₹5,500 – ₹11,000 |
| Verbatim transcription add-on | per audio hour | ₹900 – ₹2,400 |
| Pilot batch (10-20 hours) | fixed | Quoted separately, credited against the full run |
These are bands, not a price list. Two projects with the same hour count can differ by 3x on cohort design alone, which is why every number here is replaced by a fixed figure once we see your specification.
What the price includes
- Task data in your schema
- Rubric and calibration results
- Contributor metadata (anonymised)
- Agreement statistics
How the quote is built
- Task specification and rubric design
- Contributor screening against the rubric
- Calibration round with feedback
- Production with overlap and gold items
- Adjudication and delivery
Where budgets get wasted
The most expensive mistake in a data purchase is buying volume before the specification is settled. Re-collecting 200 hours because the noise profile did not match deployment costs more than the entire QA layer would have.
Every item is traceable to a screened contributor, which matters when a model vendor audits your data provenance.
Best suited for
- LLM fine-tuning
- RLHF-style preference data
- Multilingual evaluation
- Red-teaming
Frequently asked
How much does llm human data cost per hour in India?
Most programmes land between ₹3,200 and ₹11,000 per delivered unit depending on language tier, cohort narrowness, recording condition and annotation depth. A written specification converts that band into a single fixed number.
Is there a minimum order?
Around 50 hours or equivalent per language for a production run. Pilots of 10-20 hours are accepted when they lead into a larger build, since most setup cost sits in specification and recruitment.
Do you charge for rejected audio?
No. You pay for delivered units that pass the agreed QA threshold. Rejected material is re-collected at our cost.
Can the price be fixed rather than estimated?
Yes. Once the specification is signed the price is fixed against it. Changes to quotas, conditions or annotation depth are re-quoted before work continues.
Related pages
Get a fixed price for llm human data
Send the volume, languages and quality bar you have in mind and you get a scoped price within a working day.