TL;DR: For a vetted AI freelancer this week, Toptal matches in under 24 hours on average, and Arc.dev lists about 2,700 AI developers with nothing to pay until you hire. For a full-time AI engineer, Second Talent places AI-native seniors from Asia at $3,500 to $8,500 a month, and Andela embeds engineers from its quarterly-trained cohorts. Upwork and Fiverr cost less but leave the screening to you.
A mid-level freelance machine learning engineer in the US bills $119 to $185 an hour on our ML engineer rate index, and a senior one $155 to $235.
The platforms selling that talent charge in three different ways for a full-time hire: a flat $20,000 at Lemon.io, 15% of salary under Braintrust’s published terms, and 20% at Arc.dev and Gun.io.
- 1Hired, which older lists still recommend, is now part of Adecco’s LHH, and hired.com redirects there.
- 2Turing no longer sells developer hiring. It now builds AI training data and agentic systems for frontier labs.
- 3Wellfound carried 4,746 open AI engineer jobs in September 2026, so candidates on job boards have plenty of choice.
- 4Braintrust’s published client fee terms were last updated in July 2023, so ask for current pricing before you sign.
The 10 AI Engineer Hiring Platforms Compared
| Platform | Model | What you pay | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Toptal | Vetted freelancers | Unpublished hourly rate, plus $79 a month | Match in under 24 hours |
| Arc.dev | Vetted freelance or full-time | $15 to $110+ an hour, or 20% of salary | 72 hours freelance, 14 days full-time |
| Second Talent | Full-time AI engineers, Asia | $3,500 to $8,500 a month | 6 to 8 profiles in 24 hours |
| Andela | Embedded AI engineers | Quoted after a discovery call | Not published |
| Lemon.io | Vetted contractors | Hourly rate, or $20,000 flat to hire | 2 or 3 candidates in 24 to 48 hours |
| Braintrust | Vetted marketplace | 15% platform fee (2023 terms) | First matches in under 48 hours |
| Gun.io | Vetted senior engineers | Rate on each profile, or 20% of salary | 13 days to hire, on average |
| Upwork | Open marketplace | Freelancer’s rate plus up to 7.99% | You screen |
| Fiverr | Fixed-price gigs | Gig price plus 5.5% | You screen |
| Wellfound | Startup job board | Free posts; recruiter $500 a month plus 10% | Candidates apply |
The 10 Platforms, One by One
1. Toptal
Toptal is for teams that need a senior AI freelancer within days and will pay for someone else’s screening.
Its AI developer page pitches machine learning models, neural networks, natural language processing and computer vision, and clients rate its AI developers 4.9 out of 5 across 14,780 reviews.
Screening includes a test project that takes one to three weeks. Toptal puts the average time to match at under 24 hours, starts every engagement with a trial of up to two weeks, and says 98% of clients go on to hire after that trial.
It publishes no hourly rates, only a sales call, and its FAQ adds a flat $79 monthly subscription once you proceed with matching. In May 2026 it acquired Adeva, another vetted developer network.
Our Toptal alternatives compare it with other networks.
- Best for: senior freelancers for model, NLP or computer vision work, needed this week.
- Watch out: you only learn the price after a sales call.
- What you pay: the engineer’s hourly rate plus $79 a month, invoiced twice a month on Net 10 terms.
2. Arc.dev
Arc.dev suits startups that want a freelancer or an employee from one shortlist.
Its AI developer page listed about 2,700 remote AI developers in September 2026, its machine learning page another 3,282 ML engineers, and it charges nothing until you hire.
Vetting is a profile screen, a behavioural interview, and a technical interview or pair-programming session.
Arc quotes 72 hours to a freelance hire and 14 days to a full-time one, and its HireAI search shows matching profiles as soon as you describe the role.
Its pricing page lists freelancers at $15 to $110 or more an hour, with a risk-free trial of up to two weeks, and a full-time hire costs 20% of the annual salary.
Converting a freelancer to full-time adds a contract-to-hire fee that Arc does not publish. See our Arc.dev alternatives for similar networks.
- Best for: startups still deciding between an AI contractor and an employee.
- Watch out: ask for the contract-to-hire fee before a trial turns into a job offer.
- What you pay: nothing until you hire, then the hourly rate or 20% of first-year salary.
3. Second Talent
Second Talent is for companies that want an AI engineer on the team full-time, not a contractor billing hours.
We place AI-native senior engineers from nine Asian markets at $3,500 to $8,500 a month, and our employer of record service handles employment, payroll and compliance so you do not need a local entity.
We screen on a live Claude Code pull request in a real codebase rather than a whiteboard, send six to eight matched profiles within 24 hours, and replace an engineer inside 14 days if sprint velocity drops below your baseline.
The bench covers LangChain, LlamaIndex, Hugging Face, PyTorch, vector databases and agent frameworks such as LangGraph and CrewAI.
Location sets most of the price. On our rate index, a mid-level ML engineer costs $119 to $185 an hour in the US and $53 to $81 in Southeast Asia:
Our engineers keep four to six hours of overlap with the US working day. For model and retrieval work, see our LLM engineers.
- Best for: LLM, retrieval and agent work by a full-time engineer, without opening a foreign entity.
- Watch out: the talent pool is in Asia only, so plan around a partial overlap with the Americas.
- What you pay: one monthly rate per engineer, from $3,500 to $8,500.
4. Andela
Andela is for enterprises that want AI engineers embedded in their own teams and are comfortable buying through a sales process.
It has rebuilt its hiring offer around AI: its engineers come from cohorts trained and assessed each quarter to build, deploy and run production AI systems.
It sorts them into three archetypes. Builders ship LLM, retrieval and agent features, Integrators wire models into enterprise systems, and Scalers run AI in production.
Andela says it has trained 200,000 technologists since 2014, has talent in more than 135 countries and has served over 650 clients, per its about page.
OpenAI named it a Select Partner on September 9, 2026. Andela publishes no prices or timelines, and every engagement starts with a discovery call. Our Andela alternatives cover networks with published rates.
- Best for: enterprise teams putting AI into production that want trained engineers embedded.
- Watch out: no public pricing or speed commitment, so budget time for the sales cycle.
- What you pay: a quote after the discovery call.
5. Lemon.io
Lemon.io is for startups that want a vetted ML contractor from Europe or the Americas within two days.
Its machine learning page promises two or three matched candidates within 24 to 48 hours of a 30-minute call, after a four-step vetting process, and the company gives an acceptance rate of 1.2%.
Contract clients pay an hourly rate, prepay and keep at least one week’s balance on account.
Full-time hiring runs through LemonHire: under its terms of use, you trial the engineer for up to four weeks and 160 hours with a $2,000 management fee, then pay a flat $20,000 placement fee minus that $2,000, with a 60-day replacement guarantee.
At AI salaries, the flat fee is the smallest here:
Hiring a Lemon.io engineer off the platform without LemonHire costs $14,000 under the same terms.
- Best for: contract ML work in European or American working hours, with an option to convert.
- Watch out: the $2,000 trial fee is only credited if you go on to hire.
- What you pay: an hourly rate for contracts, or $20,000 flat to hire full-time.
6. Braintrust
Braintrust suits companies that want contract AI talent matched by software.
Its talent marketplace claims more than 2 million vetted professionals, the top 2% after identity verification, AI video assessments and fraud checks, and first matched candidates in under 48 hours.
Talent pays nothing, so the client carries the fee.
Braintrust’s site service fee terms set a 15% platform fee on top of what you pay the freelancer, a 15% conversion fee if you hire them full-time within six months, and a 15% direct-hire fee.
Those terms were last updated on July 19, 2023, and its pricing page now says to talk to sales.
The company has grown beyond the marketplace. Founded in 2018, it launched Braintrust AIR, its AI interview software, as a standalone product in 2024 and Braintrust Nexus, workflow automation, in 2025, per its about page.
- Best for: contract AI specialists found through AI matching and AI-led screening.
- Watch out: confirm the fee in writing, since the published terms date from 2023.
- What you pay: a 15% platform fee on top under the 2023 terms.
7. Gun.io
Gun.io suits companies hiring senior engineers for high-stakes systems, including the AI features inside them.
It bills itself as the technical standard for high-stakes engineering, and senior developers rather than recruiters run its vetting and matching.
Screening combines algorithmic checks, a background check and a live technical interview, and about 100 of every 1,000 applicants get through, according to its hiring page.
Clients receive a shortlist in three to five business days and hire in 13 days on average.
There is no rate card. Each developer’s price shows on their profile, and a full-time salaried placement costs 20% of the negotiated first-year salary, per its FAQ.
Founded in 2013, it draws engineers from the US, South America, Asia and Eastern Europe.
- Best for: senior hires for production systems where a mistake is expensive.
- Watch out: a 13-day average is slower than the networks above.
- What you pay: the developer’s listed rate, or 20% of first-year salary for a full-time placement.
8. Upwork
Upwork is for teams that can judge AI work themselves and want the widest pool at the lowest rate.
It had 763,000 active clients in the second quarter of 2026, and Business Plus, its paid plan for smaller companies, grew gross services volume 174% in a year, according to its results.
On the free Basic plan you pay a Client Marketplace Fee of up to 7.99% on every payment, cut to 3% from a qualifying US bank account, plus $0.99 to $14.99 for each new contract.
Business Plus charges 10%, or 8% by checking account, and unlocks Expert-Vetted freelancers, Upwork’s top 1%, plus Uma Recruiter, which promises a shortlist in under six hours.
The company itself is shrinking: it cut about a quarter of its workforce in May 2026. Our Upwork alternatives cover the vetted options.
- Best for: scoped AI tasks such as a proof of concept, hired by someone who can review the work.
- Watch out: you do the vetting, and the fee sits on top of every payment.
- What you pay: the freelancer’s rate plus up to 7.99%, or 10% on Business Plus.
9. Fiverr
Fiverr is for small, fixed-scope AI jobs you can describe in a sentence: a chatbot, a prompt pipeline, an automation. Its AI engineer gig page listed 807 services in September 2026, each sold as a priced package rather than an hourly rate.
Buyers pay a service fee of 5.5% on each purchase, plus $3.50 on orders under $200. Fiverr Pro adds hand-vetted freelancers: its Essential plan is free, and Advanced costs $129 a month with compliance and team tools.
Check each gig’s scope first: several of the top listings in September sold prompt writing rather than model work.
The marketplace is contracting as it moves upmarket, with annual active buyers down 21.9% to 2.7 million in the year to June 2026, its second-quarter results show.
- Best for: one-off AI automations and chatbots with a fixed price and deadline.
- Watch out: packaged gigs fit badly with production systems your team must maintain.
- What you pay: the gig price plus 5.5%, and $3.50 more on orders under $200.
10. Wellfound
Wellfound, the startup job board formerly called AngelList Talent, is for venture-backed companies hiring a salaried AI engineer who wants equity.
It says every job shows salary and equity up front, and its AI engineer listings showed 4,746 open roles in September 2026, one of them paying $220,000 to $300,000 in San Francisco.
Posting is free and unlimited, per its pricing page, and Job Ads start at $200 for top-of-search placement. Reach, its AI sourcing tool, is free for 20 contact reveals a month and costs $135 or $199 a seat a month for more.
Autopilot assigns a recruiter who delivers five to ten candidates a week for $500 a month per open role, plus a 10% placement fee on a hire. More than 10 million candidates have opted in since it spun out of AngelList in November 2022.
- Best for: startups hiring full-time AI engineers who value equity and a founder conversation.
- Watch out: free posts come with no vetting, and you compete with thousands of other AI roles.
- What you pay: nothing to post, or $500 a month per role plus 10% when a recruiter runs it.
Hire AI Engineers Through Second Talent
We match companies with pre-vetted AI engineers across nine Asian markets, with first profiles in 24 hours. Tell us the role and we will send vetted candidates.
FAQs
What happened to Hired?
Adecco folded Hired into its LHH business, and hired.com now redirects to LHH’s site.
What happened to Turing?
Turing stopped selling developer hiring to companies. Its site now sells AI training data, reinforcement learning environments and forward-deployed engineers to frontier labs.
How much does an AI engineer cost in 2026?
In the US, a freelance ML engineer costs $95 to $142 an hour at junior level and $155 to $235 at senior level, on our rate index. Hiring from Asia full-time through Second Talent costs $3,500 to $8,500 a month.
![Is Micro1 Legit?. Is Micro1 Legit? Pay, Reviews and How It Works [2026], by Second Talent.](https://www.secondtalent.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/is-micro1-legit-featured-v2-768x403.jpg)
