AI training data providers compared: where to buy the data your model needs.

What kinds of AI training data providers are there?

Providers differ less in the data they hold than in how they get it to you. There are four models, and most companies combine two of them.

• Marketplaces list datasets that sellers have already prepared. You browse, sample and buy.
• Licensing platforms sign data holders and license their data to model builders.
• Labeling and collection services annotate data you send them, or pay contributors to create it.
• Sourcing services take a description of the data you need, find the companies that hold it, license it and deliver one dataset.

We are Indri Labs, the last of these, so read this page knowing that. Everything said here about other providers comes from their own websites and press coverage, listed under sources, as of October 2026.

How do the main providers compare?

The table summarises each provider's model, what it is strongest at and the data types it lists. None of these companies, Indri Labs included, publishes a standard price list, so prices are left out.

What do Protege, Defined.ai and Datarade offer?

Protege describes itself as a two-sided data platform: AI builders license datasets, and data holders are paid under structured agreements. Its site groups data by use (pre-training, post-training, evaluation) and by domain, including healthcare, video, audio and speech, and spatial data. In January 2026 it raised a $30M Series A1 led by Andreessen Horowitz, bringing total funding to about $65M. Its earlier acquisition of Calliope Networks, announced in December 2024, added TV, film, news and sports content for a media offering. It suits labs that want licensed real-world data, especially clinical and media data.

Defined.ai runs a marketplace it describes as the largest selection of ready-to-use training datasets across speech, text, image, video and multimodal data, with more than 700 datasets, filters by language and domain, free samples and API delivery. It also offers custom collection, labeling and evaluation through a crowd it puts at 1.6M+ contributors across 150+ markets, covering 500+ languages, dialects and locales. It suits teams that want a dataset this week and can accept one that already exists.

Datarade is a data marketplace that lists 2,700+ data providers, with AI training data as one category. It connects buyers with vendors rather than selling its own data, which makes it a good place to compare many commercial sources at once.

Human Native, a UK marketplace for licensed creator content, was acquired by Cloudflare in January 2026. Cloudflare says it will use the team to help AI developers find licensed content while owners decide how it is used.

What do Scale AI, Appen and Shaip offer?

Scale AI describes its Data Engine as a way to collect, curate and annotate data, with labels from domain experts and RLHF that applies human preferences to model outputs. It supports text, image, video and 3D sensor fusion (LiDAR), and runs private benchmarks and evaluations. In June 2025 Meta took a reported 49% stake for about $14.3 billion; Scale says it remains independent. It suits large labeling, RLHF and evaluation programmes.

Appen provides human-curated training and evaluation data, annotation on its own AI Data Platform, an off-the-shelf dataset catalog and speech data covering 500+ locales. It suits multilingual speech and text work that needs a large contributor base.

Shaip collects, annotates, licenses and evaluates multimodal data, sourcing from more than 60 countries, and lists a healthcare catalog of patient notes and physician dictation audio. Ubiquity announced it would acquire Shaip in February 2026. It suits healthcare data and collection programmes run to a defined protocol.

How is Indri Labs different?

Indri Labs is a service, not a marketplace. You describe the need: modality, volume, coverage across regions, languages and edge cases, format, rights and deadline. We scope it for free and send a one-page brief that names and prices every source, includes a sample from each, gives the total data cost and shows our fee on its own line. You can walk away owing nothing.

If you approve, you sign one contract and pay one invoice, with us. We negotiate a license with every seller, usually companies that have never sold their data, and record what doesn't exist yet, such as first-person video on smart glasses and head cameras filmed to spec. You receive one merged dataset with duplicates and personal data removed, checked against your spec, with the source and license for every record, in your format.

We source first-person video, operational logs (telemetry, transactions, system records), calls and meetings as audio with transcripts, and documents. Sensor and robotics data and clinical records are coming soon. More on egocentric video data.

How does Indri Labs compare with each provider?

• Indri Labs vs Protege
• Indri Labs vs Defined.ai
• Indri Labs vs Datarade
• Indri Labs vs Troveo
• Indri Labs vs MicroAGI
• Human Native alternatives

When is Indri Labs the right fit, and when is another provider better?

Indri Labs fits when:

• The data you need is held inside companies and not listed on any platform
• You need first-person video recorded to your spec
• You want several sources merged into one dataset under one contract
• You need the source and license for every record

Another provider fits better when:

• You already hold the raw data and need it labeled, ranked or evaluated at volume: Scale AI or Appen
• An off-the-shelf dataset will do and you want it quickly: Defined.ai or a vendor found through Datarade
• You need licensed clinical data or film and TV content today: Protege
• You need a managed collection programme with a large contributor pool: Shaip, Appen or Defined.ai

How should you choose an AI training data provider?

• Existence: check whether the dataset already exists. If it does, a catalog is fastest.
• Rights: ask who owns each record and what the license allows, including training, fine-tuning and redistribution.
• Coverage: confirm the regions, languages and edge cases are in the data, not just in the brochure.
• Samples: get a sample from every source before you commit.
• Personal data: ask how it is removed and who checks it.
• Pricing: ask for the data cost and the provider's fee separately.
• Ownership and independence: note any recent investments or acquisitions and decide if they matter to you.

If the data you need is not in a catalog, send us the need. The brief is free and you can walk away owing nothing. How Indri Labs works.