Toloka: Data Buyer Profile, Program Terms, Payouts and Reputation

Toloka is an Amsterdam-based human-data company, legal name Toloka AI BV, that runs the Mindrift expert platform and, through its Physical AI Data Partner Program, acquires first-person video, multi-camera capture and teleoperation data from companies and capture teams. Toloka publishes no price for that footage: it stated on its program page, checked 2026-11-09, that compensation depends on data type, volume and quality and is set in a statement of work (SOW), and that faces, palms, fingerprints and tattoos are blurred and voices removed before delivery. No breach, regulator action or lawsuit involving Toloka is on record as of 2026-11-09.

Every term on this page is Toloka's or Mindrift's own statement with its check date. DataPacts is an independent reference on AI training data licensing that is not a broker, takes no cut of any sale, has joined no referral program yet, and covers Toloka like every other buyer.

Each figure below carries its source and check date, and how DataPacts sources and dates every figure is set out in the methodology.

What Toloka Acquires From Companies: Physical AI Data

Toloka acquires recorded physical-world data from companies and capture teams: egocentric (first-person) video, UMI three-camera capture and teleoperation recordings. These are the three data types its Physical AI Data Partner Program named, checked 2026-11-09:

• Egocentric video: footage filmed from the viewpoint of the person doing a task.
• UMI three-camera capture: recordings of a task from three synchronized cameras.
• Teleoperation: recordings of a person steering a robot through a task.

Who may apply? Toloka's program accepts companies and capture teams, and it sends individuals who want to record to Mindrift instead. A company therefore needs either footage it already holds or staff who can record to Toloka's specification under a written agreement.

The program is a second business next to Toloka's expert work. Toloka states on its experts page that it has 6,000+ active expert contributors, checked 2026-11-09, and that network supplies human data rather than recorded footage. For a company with cameras, workshops or robots, Toloka is one answer to who buys AI training data recorded in the physical world, next to frontier labs, data vendors and other capture programs. Toloka's program page names no AI developer that receives the footage.

Toloka Company Identity

Toloka's legal entity is Toloka AI BV, which Toloka's about page places in Amsterdam and dates to 2014, and which the footer of mindrift.ai also names. The table lists each attribute with its source, as of 2026-11-09.

Toloka's public pages give no Netherlands registry number, so none is stated here. Beyond Toloka's statement on Nebius, its shareholders are not on record.

Toloka Program Terms, Dated

Toloka publishes no price for partner data; the table lists every term Toloka states for its Physical AI Data Partner Program, each checked 2026-11-09. Each value is what Toloka stated on its program page on that date.

The program page leaves out the terms that decide what a company gives up. Price, payment timing, exclusivity, license term, deletion of footage after use and the AI developers that receive the data are not stated on the pages checked. Toloka puts confidentiality and IP terms into the partner agreement, so the scope of the license appears only in the document Toloka sends, and program terms can change, so a seller rereads the page before signing.

Toloka's terms are mostly process terms, while other programs publish payout ranges or estimators. Its stated terms fit into one row of the program terms compared table, which sets them beside the dated claims of other buyers with company data programs.

How a Toloka Physical AI Data Deal Works: Form, Call, Sample, Agreement

Toloka describes five steps: a company submits a form, Toloka replies within 3 working days, the two hold an intro call, the company provides a sample, and both sign a partner agreement before recording starts. The steps, as Toloka stated them on its program page (checked 2026-11-09), run in this order:

1. Form: the company or capture team applies through the program page.
2. Reply: Toloka states that it replies within 3 working days.
3. Intro call: both sides discuss the data type, setting and volume.
4. Sample: the company provides sample footage for review.
5. Partner agreement: both sides sign before recording begins, with compensation set in the SOW.

The order puts the sample before the agreement. Footage leaves the company while no signed contract governs it yet, so the terms of the sample itself matter: who may view it, whether Toloka may keep it, and whether it may be used for anything beyond evaluation. A seller settles those points in writing, for example under a short non-disclosure agreement, before the sample is sent.

The partner agreement is the license. It carries the confidentiality and IP terms Toloka names, and the SOW fixes the amount, so both documents decide scope, exclusivity, term, deletion and payment. A seller reads them against the clause list of an AI data licensing agreement and keeps control of what it records, where, and with whose consent.

Faces, Palms and Voices: What Toloka Removes and What Stays With the Seller

Toloka states that faces, palms, fingerprints and tattoos are blurred and voices removed from footage delivered under its program, checked 2026-11-09. This list covers the features that most often identify a person in first-person and hand-focused video: the face, the skin of the hands and marks on the body, plus the voice track.

Blurring addresses what is visible or audible in the frame, but it leaves the legal relationship with the people filmed untouched. The company still answers for the consent of everyone recorded, for notice to its own staff and for the recording rules of each place where it films. Footage also carries identifying context that blurring does not remove, such as screens, documents, badges, workplace layouts and location cues.

Toloka's program page does not state who performs the blurring, at which point in the chain it happens, or whether the sample is processed the same way. A seller therefore asks before sending the sample whether unblurred footage reaches Toloka, who sees it, and how long it is kept. Blurring by the acquirer is one step of de-identification before licensing data, and a seller that removes identifiers before the footage leaves its own systems keeps that step under its own control.

Toloka Payouts: Compensation Set in the SOW, Not Published

Toloka states that partner compensation depends on data type, volume and quality and is set in the statement of work, so no amount appears on its program page (checked 2026-11-09). No referral program for the partner program is on record, and payment timing is not stated.

The only Toloka-group figures in public are Mindrift's pay to individuals. In a blog post dated 2026-09-17, checked 2026-11-09, Mindrift states that its first-person video projects pay between USD 6 and 15 per hour, and it gives a market range of USD 3 to 9+ per hour of accepted footage. These are contributor wages for people recording themselves, not a license price for footage a company holds or produces. They are not a benchmark for a company deal, because a company license adds rights, volume, staff time and exclusivity questions that an hourly wage does not price.

Without a published price, the number in the SOW comes from negotiation, and quality is judged by the acquirer. A company enters that negotiation with its own estimate of what company data is worth, built from its footage, rights and alternative buyers rather than from a contributor rate.

Toloka and Mindrift: Two Brands of One Legal Entity

Mindrift is the expert-contributor platform that Toloka built, and its site names the same legal entity, Toloka AI BV. Mindrift states that it was "built by" Toloka, and the footer of mindrift.ai names Toloka AI BV, checked 2026-11-09. A contract with either brand therefore leads to the same company.

For a seller the split matters. Companies and capture teams apply to Toloka's program and sign a partner agreement with compensation set in a SOW. Individuals are sent to Mindrift, where they work on projects with "no employment contract and no fixed hours", in Mindrift's words. A company whose employees record through Mindrift on their own account is not licensing company footage; the employees are contributors, and the company gets no agreement, no SOW and no say over the terms.

Toloka Reputation: What the Public Record Shows

No data breach, regulator action or lawsuit involving Toloka is on record in the primary sources DataPacts checked as of 2026-11-09. No court case names Toloka or Mindrift in the case records DataPacts tracks, and no incident is recorded for the Physical AI Data Partner Program.

Toloka's ownership is documented only in part. Toloka's own blog states that "Nebius no longer has controlling voting power", and the pages checked publish no Netherlands registry number. Both points rest on Toloka's own pages, not on a filing.

Mindrift's own site disagrees with itself on scale. Its stats block reads 20K AI trainers, while its page meta reads 10,000+, both checked 2026-11-09. DataPacts shows both figures and chooses neither.

Absence of a record is not a clean bill. Forum threads, app ratings and review sites are not used as sources here, and complaints that never reach a court, a regulator or a published notice do not appear in primary records. New entries for any buyer appear in the register of data buyer incidents, dated and sourced.

Is Toloka Legitimate as a Buyer of Company Data?

Toloka is an identifiable company: Toloka AI BV publishes its legal name, Amsterdam location and founding year, and runs a named data partner program with stated steps. Its program page names the data types, the five steps and the reply time, and Mindrift's site names the same legal entity, all checked 2026-11-09.

What stays open is the part a seller signs. The AI developers that receive the footage, payment timing, exclusivity, license term and deletion are not published, and no registry number appears on the pages checked. Those points become known only from the partner agreement and the SOW.

A seller can check four points before sending any sample: the agreement names Toloka AI BV as counterparty, the outreach comes from a toloka.ai address, the SOW states the amount and payment date, and the agreement defines scope, term and deletion. An approach that claims to come from Toloka is checked against toloka.ai directly, following the general test for whether a data licensing email is legitimate.

Benefits, Risks, Downsides and Alternatives to Licensing Data to Toloka

Licensing footage to Toloka offers a stated process and privacy processing before delivery, but price, payment timing and license scope are not published. The four lists below separate benefits, risks, downsides and alternatives, with Toloka's statements checked 2026-11-09.

Benefits (as Toloka states them):

• A published five-step process with a stated reply within 3 working days.
• Blurring of faces, palms, fingerprints and tattoos and removal of voices before delivery.
• Confidentiality and IP terms in a written agreement signed before recording.
• Access for companies and capture teams, not only for large footage archives.

Risks:

• Payment timing, exclusivity, license term and deletion are not stated.
• The AI developers that receive the footage are not named.
• Consent of the people filmed stays with the seller, whatever Toloka blurs.
• Program terms can change, so the page is rechecked before signing.

Downsides:

• No published price; the amount appears only in the SOW.
• A sample leaves the company before any agreement is signed.
• Recording to Toloka's specification ties up staff time.
• Compensation depends on quality as the acquirer judges it.

Alternatives:

• Other collectors of first-person footage and robot data.
• Company data programs run by other human-data companies.
• Keeping the footage for internal use, or licensing it later.
• Not licensing at all, one of the alternatives to selling data, including keeping it.

The agreement and the SOW decide the outcome more than any stated process, so a seller compares terms before recording anything to order.

Where Toloka Sits Among Company Data Programs

Toloka is one of several companies that pair contributor platforms with a program for companies, and the only one among those below whose program names first-person video, multi-camera capture and teleoperation. Its program sits with the other company data partnership programs: micro1 publishes tiered company payouts, Mercor lists deal ranges per industry, Handshake AI runs a data partnership program for operational records, and Turing Project Lazarus offers revenue share terms. A side-by-side page sets out Toloka vs Scale AI for company and expert data, and Toloka's expert human-data work can be compared with other data labeling companies. Before recording anything for Toloka, a company takes three steps:

1. Check the recording consent rules where it films.
2. Give staff employee notice and consent before capture.
3. Run a rights audit on existing footage before offering it.

More About Toloka

Mindrift Work, Toloker Tasks and Contributor Pay

Toloka's contributor work for individuals runs through Mindrift, which states entry-level rates of USD 15 to 30 per hour and USD 60 to 100+ per hour for domain experts, paid bi-weekly, checked 2026-11-09. Jobs, sign-up and assessments are compared with other platforms under AI training jobs and platforms. Rates by field are dated under pay for AI training work, checks on whether AI training work is legit sit on their own page, and both belong to the wider market for human data for AI.

First-Person Video and Teleoperation Through Toloka

Toloka collects first-person video both ways: from companies under partner agreements and from individuals on Mindrift projects that require a compatible phone, residence in a listed country and no VPN use. Other collectors and the data type in full are covered under egocentric (first-person) video, and teleoperation belongs to robotics data.

Frequently Asked Questions About Toloka

Are Mindrift and Toloka the same company?

Yes in law: Mindrift is a platform built by Toloka, and its site names Toloka AI BV, the same legal entity as Toloka. Toloka runs the company program; Mindrift handles individual contributors, checked 2026-11-09.

What data does Toloka acquire from companies?

Toloka acquires egocentric video, UMI three-camera capture and teleoperation recordings from companies and capture teams. Individuals who want to record are directed to Mindrift, per Toloka's program page checked 2026-11-09.

How much does Toloka pay companies for data?

Toloka publishes no amount; it states compensation depends on data type, volume and quality and is set in the SOW, checked 2026-11-09. Mindrift's hourly contributor rates are wages, not a company license price.

Is Toloka AI legit?

Toloka AI BV is an identifiable company with a named program, and no breach, regulator action or lawsuit involving it is on record as of 2026-11-09. Its license scope, payment timing and data recipients are not public.

Who controls Toloka?

Toloka states in its own blog that Nebius no longer has controlling voting power. Its other shareholdings are not on record here. Investors and valuations across the sector are covered under funding and valuations of AI data companies.