What are the best alternatives to Scale AI in 2026?

Answer in brief: The right alternative depends on which part of Scale's offering you want to replace. For frontier post-training data, look at Surge AI, Mercor, micro1, Turing or Snorkel AI. For platform plus managed data, Labelbox. For computer vision, LiDAR and medical annotation, iMerit and Sama. For self-serve human evaluation with public prices, Prolific. For agent environments, Toloka. For licensed off-the-shelf data, Appen or the Defined.ai marketplace. If you can replace human labeling entirely, synthetic data from NVIDIA (which acquired Gretel) or Parallel Domain is worth a look. Buyers are comparing more vendors since Meta took a 49% minority stake in Scale in 2025, and this directory groups them by category.

Top pick: Labelbox, the closest all-round alternative to Scale AI. Labelbox combines tooling, a 2.6M+ contributor expert network, RL environments (Horizon) and robotics data (Terra), and it says it was profitable in 2026 with 400+ customers. Visit Labelbox →

This page is independent research based on company websites and current public reporting, checked November 9, 2026. We did not test these services hands-on, and company figures are self-reported. This site earns revenue from vendor sponsorships, which are labelled where they appear.

Why buyers look beyond Scale

Scale AI is still the broadest vendor: generation, RLHF, red teaming, evaluation and annotation across text, image, video and LiDAR. But in June 2025 Meta invested $14.3 billion for a 49% stake, according to AP, and Reuters reported that Google planned to move key contracts elsewhere. Scale says it stays operationally independent and keeps customer data separate. Many labs now spread work across several vendors to avoid depending on one, and Scale has had a new CEO, Francis deSouza, since August 2026.

Alternatives at a glance

Company	Category	Replaces this part of Scale	Pricing
Labelbox	Tooling + human data	Managed data, RL environments, robotics data	Custom
Surge AI	Expert network	RLHF, SFT, frontier evals	Custom; pay-if-it-improves OTS for eligible labs
Mercor	Expert network	Professional-domain data and evals	Custom
micro1	Expert network	RL environments, agent evaluation	Custom
Turing	Expert network	Coding and reasoning data, RL environments	Custom
Snorkel AI	Expert data development	Specialized datasets and benchmarks	Custom; samples on request
Toloka	Human data (agents)	Agent environments, evals, red teaming	Custom; self-service terms
iMerit	Managed annotation	LiDAR, medical, sensor fusion	Custom
Sama	Managed annotation	Production computer vision	Custom
Prolific	Self-serve panel	Human evaluation, preference data	Public: reward + platform fee
Appen	Licensed datasets + collection	Off-the-shelf and custom collection	Quote
Defined.ai	Data marketplace	Ready-made speech, text, image, video data	Quote; free samples
NVIDIA (Gretel)	Synthetic data	Generated text and structured data	See NVIDIA

Expert networks: the post-training heavyweights

Surge AI offers expert RLHF, SFT, rubrics, verifiers and RL environments, plus off-the-shelf data that eligible labs can train on first and pay for only if it helps. Forbes reports $1.2B in 2024 revenue. Visit Surge AI →

Mercor says it has 5M+ experts, licenses 50K+ off-the-shelf tasks, and builds APEX benchmarks from real professional work. Visit Mercor →

micro1 pairs Realm RL environments with Cortex agent evaluation and says it passed a $1B annual run rate in October 2026. Visit micro1 →

Turing sells coding traces, SWE-bench trajectories and containerized RL environments (it claims 1,000+ across 25 domains), backed by a network it puts at 4M+ researchers and engineers. Visit Turing →

Snorkel AI, founded out of the Stanford AI Lab, builds expert-authored datasets and environments for 1,000+ expert domains and runs benchmarks such as Terminal-Bench. Visit Snorkel AI →

Platform and agent-environment specialists

Labelbox is our top pick above. Visit Labelbox → Toloka builds simulated environments, specialized agent datasets, evaluation and red teaming, and runs the public Toloka Arena. Experts join through Mindrift. Visit Toloka →

Computer vision and sensor annotation

iMerit, now part of EXL, combines its Ango Hub platform with iMerit Scholars (25,000+ experts in 60+ countries) for LiDAR, medical imaging and reasoning data. Visit iMerit → Sama reports a 99% first-batch acceptance rate and an average customer relationship of 8 years for vision, multimodal and sensor annotation. Visit Sama →

Self-serve and licensed data

Prolific gives you 300,000+ verified participants with no contract: you pay the reward you set plus a platform fee, usually 42.8% for corporate customers. Visit Prolific → Appen licenses 646 documented datasets across nine categories under perpetual, non-exclusive commercial terms. Visit Appen → Defined.ai runs a marketplace for audio, image, video, text and multimodal datasets, with a 1.6M+ global crowd for custom work. Visit Defined.ai →

Synthetic data instead of human labels

NVIDIA acquired Gretel in 2025 and now offers NeMo Data Designer and NeMo Safe Synthesizer for generated and privacy-safe data. Visit NVIDIA → For autonomy and robotics simulation, Parallel Domain turns real-world captures into labeled simulation environments with PD Replica. Visit Parallel Domain → Robotics-specific vendors are covered at roboticsdatacompanies.com, and off-the-shelf dataset catalogs at bestaidatasets.com.

FAQ

What is the closest alternative to Scale AI?

Labelbox comes closest overall, with tooling, expert data, RL environments and robotics data. For LiDAR and sensor work specifically, look at iMerit or Sama.

Is there a Scale AI alternative with public pricing?

Yes. Prolific publishes its model: the participant reward you set plus a platform fee, usually 42.8% for corporate customers and 33.3% for academic or non-profit customers.

Why are labs diversifying away from Scale?

After Meta's 2025 investment for a 49% stake, Reuters reported that Google planned to move key contracts. Scale says it remains independent and keeps customer data separated.

Keep exploring the directory

Back to the full directory of training data companies · Scale AI review · Labelbox review · Surge AI review · Mercor review · micro1 review · Turing review · Snorkel AI review · Toloka review · iMerit review · Sama review · Prolific review · Appen review · Scale AI vs Labelbox