Braintrust

How it works

Braintrust is a talent network that matches professionals with contract and full-time roles. Braintrust AI jobs are a separate strand, which it describes as paid gigs where domain experts rate, label, evaluate and create data to improve AI models. It lists six task types: RLHF rating, data labelling, expert evaluation, prompt and content creation, red teaming, and code review and generation, each with its own published rate band. It says no AI background is needed and that domain expertise is the qualification, and that rates are shown before you accept a task.

Getting in is the same for every kind of work. Braintrust sets out five steps: build a profile (it estimates about 20 minutes), take a conversational AI skills interview, get certified with an ID-verified, skills-validated badge, get matched by its AI to relevant roles, and start earning. For AI training specifically, you then browse and accept gig tasks from your dashboard.

Braintrust states that it charges talent nothing: no fees and no markups on what you earn. It also runs a crypto token, BTRST, and its support centre has guides to earning and withdrawing it; you do not need it to take on work.

Worth knowing

Good:

• No fees taken from your earnings, which Braintrust states outright
• The rate bands are published per task type, so you can see which kinds of AI work pay more before applying. The top of the range belongs to code review; our software and IT listings cover similar coding work elsewhere
• The skills interview and certification apply across the network, so one onboarding covers AI gigs and ordinary contract roles

Less good:

• Payment timing is inconsistent across Braintrust's own pages. The AI training page says payments are processed weekly, but its support centre says talent is paid 30 days after submitting each invoice, or sooner if the client pays early. Check which applies to the gig you accept
• Reviews on Trustpilot are very negative (1.7 out of 5 across 20 reviews when we checked, 95% of them one-star). Reviewers complain about a mandatory video step that comes only after a long application, and one describes an opportunity advertised at $20 an hour turning into a $7.50 offer after onboarding
• The same reviewers describe a site that crashes, a heavy volume of daily emails, and promotion of referrals and the BTRST token
• Braintrust names no AI lab clients on its AI training page, so you learn who the work is for only once you are matched

About this page

Facts above come from Braintrust's AI training jobs page and its For Talent page at usebraintrust.com, plus its support centre, last checked 29 September 2026. The typical-pay range is the overall band Braintrust publishes for AI training gigs; individual task types sit inside it, and it does not describe Braintrust's non-AI contract work. Braintrust publishes no payment-method list or country list, so those fields are empty. Worker reports come from Trustpilot and are attributed in the sentence that makes the claim. For other platforms that publish rates up front, see Outlier and Handshake AI.