# Valuation method

> How the groundedby evaluator estimates what your agent sessions are worth - session tiers, the prices buyers have paid, and what the range does not mean.

Source: https://groundedby.com/docs/valuation-method (updated 2026-10-29)

The evaluator turns your sessions into a dollar range. This page explains the range so you can judge it yourself.

## The tiers

Each session is put in one tier, or none:

| Tier | Rule | Range per session |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Deep | 50+ turns, 60+ minutes active, at least one tool call | $40 - $200 |
| Working | 15+ turns, 15+ minutes active, at least one tool call | $5 - $40 |
| Not counted | Everything shorter, or sessions with no tool calls | $0 |

Your range is the sum over your sessions.

## Where the numbers come from

**The top of the deep tier, $200,** is the most recent public price for a recorded coding session. In October 2026 Mercor advertised for developers to record their own projects in an agent for about 50 turns and two to three hours. It paid **$500 per accepted session** on October 8 and 9, then cut the rate to **$200**, and closed the posting about a week later.

**The bottom of the deep tier, $40,** is our assumption. Not every session is accepted, and a marketplace that pays a share of each sale, as Sell Traces does at 70% for raw traces, pays out less than a commissioned recording. We set the floor at a fifth of the top.

**The working tier** scales the same reasoning to shorter sessions.

For context, other priced agent work in 2026:

- Snorkel AI contractors were paid **$280 per roughly one-hour task** to compare Claude Code outputs, as reported by Business Insider in June 2026. That is labor, not passive sessions.
- Outlier pays **up to $1,800 per task** for writing hard terminal tasks with automated checks, which takes six to seven hours.

These are higher because the buyer commissions the work and sets the task. Passive sessions from your own history sit below them.

## What the range does not mean

- **It is not an offer.** Nobody has bid on your sessions.
- **Most sessions will never sell.** Buyers ask for specific work - a product, a language, a kind of task - and pay for sessions that match.
- **Sessions you do not own are worth nothing to sell.** Work for an employer usually belongs to the employer.
- **Prices move.** The Mercor rate fell by more than half within a week. We will update this page as prices change.

## Questions

**Is the estimate an offer?**

No. It is a range built from what buyers have publicly paid for similar sessions. No one has offered to buy your sessions at that price.

**Why are short sessions worth nothing?**

Buyers ask for long sessions of real work with tools in the loop. A quick question to an agent shows little about how agents work, so it is left out of the estimate.

## Sources

- [Mercor, "Share Your AI Coding Sessions" posting (archived Oct 8, 2026)](https://web.archive.org/web/20261008012525/https://work.mercor.com/jobs/list_AAABoRiaKGOq5ceLrrpLR6zE/builders-developers-share-your-ai-coding-sessions)
- [Business Insider, Snorkel AI contractors improving Claude Code (June 1, 2026)](https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-improve-claude-code-snorkel-data-training-contractors-2026-6)
- [Outlier, Terminal-Bench expert tasks](https://outlier.ai/experts/terminal-bench)
- [Sell Traces, how sellers are paid](https://selltraces.com)