Data Entry & Annotation Companies in United States
US-based data entry and annotation runs $40 to 80/hr, justified only when HIPAA/SOC 2 residency or native-English RLHF judgment is the actual requirement.
Data Entry & Annotation providers in United States
24 providersAI-powered BPO and remote staffing solutions offering virtual assistants, AI agents, and full-time outsourcing services for business growth.
View profile →360 Bookkeeping LLC is a Tampa-based remote bookkeeping firm offering cleanup, reconciliations, payroll, and financial statements for small businesses.
View profile →360 Transcription provides human-delivered medical and medico-legal transcription services for US healthcare practices and legal clients, with HIPAA compliance and next-day turnaround.
904 Bookkeeping is a Jacksonville-based QuickBooks bookkeeping and payroll practice serving small to mid-sized Florida businesses.
View profile →ACS Contact is a Troy, MI call center and marketing services company offering inbound/outbound calls, lead generation, fulfillment, and extended service plan programs.
View profile →Cognizant is a large-scale IT outsourcing and business process services firm serving enterprise clients across healthcare, financial services, and manufacturing.
Rely Services is a trusted BPO company with 25+ years of experience delivering data entry, finance & accounting, and industry-specific back-office solutions to 1,000+ clients worldwide.
Medical billing and revenue cycle management provider serving healthcare practices since 2008, from solo practitioners to large facilities.
Access Healthcare provides end-to-end revenue cycle management and healthcare BPO services, including RCM automation via its Echo platform, for US healthcare providers and payers.
HTC Global Services delivers IT outsourcing, digital transformation, cloud, data and AI, and business process services to mid-market and enterprise clients across multiple industries.
View profile →AltiSales is a B2B SDR outsourcing and GTM acceleration firm helping SaaS companies build scalable, predictable outbound revenue machines.
View profile →Professional bookkeeping and accounting services for businesses and individuals across the US, headquartered in Denver, Colorado.
View profile →AFS Business Solutions is a USA-based answering service and call center offering 24/7 inbound support, virtual receptionist, and order processing for real estate, healthcare, and utilities clients.
Boutique paralegal firm specializing in estate planning document drafting and trust administration outsourcing for attorneys and law firms across the United States.
View profile →Auxis provides nearshore outsourcing and business transformation services from delivery centers in Costa Rica and Colombia, covering finance, IT, and BPO.
View profile →Award-winning inbound and outbound call center outsourcing provider with 8 global locations, 5,500+ employees, and AI-powered CX solutions for businesses of all sizes.
Specialized B2B appointment setting, lead generation, and telemarketing services helping companies book high-quality sales meetings with decision-makers.
View profile →LeadGen Compass, part of GoLeads, offers B2B lead generation and digital marketing services, SEO, email, paid search, and database marketing, for small and mid-size businesses.
View profile →Superhuman Prospecting is a US-based B2B sales agency offering cold calling, appointment setting, lead generation, and list building services for outbound sales campaigns.
View profile →United-BIM Inc. provides BIM modeling, MEP coordination, and Revit services for AEC professionals across the USA and internationally.
US-based BPO provider specialising in data entry, data processing, back-office outsourcing, and finance services across diverse industries.
Healthcare-focused back office outsourcing provider staffed by registered clinicians and qualified professionals serving home health, rehab, and outpatient sectors.
View profile →Scalable bulk photo editing and retouching services for eCommerce brands, photographers, and creative agencies, with 12–24 hour turnaround times.
View profile →Outsource & Save offers call operator, scheduling, telemarketing, data entry, and social media services with bilingual English/Spanish support for SMBs.
View profile →Showing top 24 of 113 providers. Use the filters above to narrow results.
What does data entry and annotation cost when delivered from the United States
A realistic blended rate for US-delivered data entry and annotation work is $40 to 80 a hour, the highest tier in the market and roughly three to five times an offshore rate for comparable structured work. That premium buys you US-based labor law compliance, easier data residency arguments, and annotators who understand American cultural and linguistic context without a translation layer. It does not automatically buy you better quality, faster turnaround, or a more mature QA process.
Of the 62 providers I looked at in this dataset, pricing models split across monthly retainer (9), project-based (8), per-transaction (4), outcome-based (2), per-seat (2), and per-hour (2). Retainer and project-based models dominate because most US buyers in this space are running ongoing annotation pipelines for model training or recurring back-office data entry, not one-off pilots. I would be skeptical of any US vendor quoting a flat per-hour rate with no volume commitment, because at $40+/hr that adds up fast with no ceiling.
Why would anyone pay onshore rates for data entry work that offshore firms do for a third the price
You pay onshore rates when the work itself carries regulatory, legal, or contextual risk that offshore delivery cannot absorb, not because US labor types faster or more accurately. The three legitimate reasons are strict data residency requirements (HIPAA, ITAR, certain government contracts), a compliance posture that demands US-based systems and staff (SOC 2 Type II with domestic infrastructure), and annotation work requiring native US cultural, legal, or linguistic judgment, such as RLHF for consumer-facing US English models or content moderation tuned to US norms.
Outside those three cases, I tell buyers they are usually paying for reassurance, not necessity. Basic structured data entry, form digitization, and catalog cleanup do not need an US-based annotator. If your workload is bounding boxes on stock photos or transcribing generic customer records, an offshore or nearshore team with solid QA will do it at a fraction of the cost. The mistake I see buyers make is defaulting to onshore because it feels safer, without checking whether their actual compliance obligation requires it.
How do I tell a real US-based annotation team from an offshore vendor with an US sales office
You verify an US delivery footprint by asking directly where the annotators physically sit, requesting the facility city and state, and checking whether their claimed certifications apply to the entity actually doing the labeling, not just the sales entity you are contracting with. This is the single most common gap I found scanning US-facing data entry and annotation listings: an US address on the contract, an account manager in New York, and the actual annotation workforce sitting somewhere else entirely.
Among the 62 providers in this set, delivery hubs cluster in New York (2), San Francisco (2), Los Angeles (2), Houston (1), and Jacksonville (1), a small, concentrated footprint relative to the total provider count. That gap between total providers and named hubs tells you something: a lot of listings do not specify a delivery city at all, which is itself a red flag if you need verified domestic delivery for compliance reasons. I would ask for it in writing, not take a homepage claim of 'US-based' at face value.
Things I'd check before signing anything:
- The physical address of the facility doing the actual annotation or entry work, not the registered corporate address
- Whether HIPAA, SOC 2, or ISO 27001 certifications apply to the whole company or just one business unit
- Employment type of the annotators (W-2 staff vs. Contracted gig workers, which changes quality control and confidentiality exposure)
- Whether subcontracting to an offshore team is disclosed anywhere in the MSA
- A sample of QA logs from a comparable project, not just a case study summary
What does the compliance and certification picture actually look like among US providers
Certification coverage among US-delivering data entry and annotation providers is thinner than buyers expect, with HIPAA present in only 10 of 62 providers and SOC 2 in just 4. That is a meaningful signal if you are shopping specifically for compliance-driven onshore delivery: most providers marketing themselves as US-based data entry vendors are not carrying the certifications that would justify the premium for regulated work.
PCI DSS shows up in 2 of 62, ISO 27001 in 2, ISO 9001 in 2, and HITRUST in just 1. If your use case is healthcare records, financial data entry, or any payment-adjacent annotation, that narrows your real shortlist considerably, from 62 down to a handful of providers who can actually back up a compliance claim with a certificate you can request and verify.
| Certification | Providers holding it (of 62) | Typical use case requiring it |
|---|---|---|
| HIPAA | 10 | Healthcare records, patient data annotation |
| SOC 2 | 4 | Enterprise data pipelines, SaaS training data |
| PCI DSS | 2 | Payment card or transaction data entry |
| ISO 27001 | 2 | General information security management |
| ISO 9001 | 2 | Quality management for structured data processes |
| HITRUST | 1 | Healthcare data with improved risk profile |
Onshore vs. Nearshore vs. Offshore for this kind of work, side by side
The right location depends entirely on whether your data entry or annotation work is regulated, judgment-heavy, or purely repetitive, and each tier trades cost for a different kind of risk reduction. Offshore is the default for volume and cost efficiency on documented, repeatable tasks. Nearshore is the middle ground for US buyers who want timezone overlap and bilingual coverage without full onshore pricing. Onshore earns its premium only when residency, regulation, or native contextual judgment is the actual constraint.
| Delivery model | Indicative rate | Best fit for this service |
|---|---|---|
| Offshore (India, Philippines) | $6 to 16/hr | High-volume structured data entry, bounding box annotation, transcription with clear guidelines |
| Nearshore (Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica) | $10 to 22/hr | Bilingual annotation, same-timezone iteration on labeling guidelines, mid-sensitivity data |
| Onshore (United States) | $40 to 80/hr | HIPAA/ITAR-restricted data, native US English RLHF, brand-sensitive content moderation |
Where does native-language RLHF and LLM alignment work actually need US delivery
Native-language RLHF and LLM alignment work needs US delivery when the model's target output is American English with US cultural, legal, or idiomatic nuance that a non-native annotator would systematically misjudge. This is the fastest-growing reason I see US buyers cite for choosing onshore annotation over offshore, more than traditional data entry or back-office work.
The catch is that not every LLM alignment task needs this. Ranking response helpfulness on factual, technical, or code-related prompts does not require an US-based annotator, native English speakers in the Philippines or India with strong English proficiency handle that well and cheaply. Where US-based annotators earn their premium is on tasks involving US legal nuance, regional slang, political sensitivity, or safety judgments calibrated to US cultural norms, where a mismatch in lived context produces subtly wrong labels that are expensive to catch downstream. I would ask any vendor pitching RLHF services specifically what fraction of their labeling force is US-based versus routed through an offshore layer, because a lot of
Frequently asked questions
- How much does data entry and annotation cost in the United States compared to offshore?
- US-delivered data entry and annotation runs roughly $40 to 80 a hour blended, compared to $6 to 16 a hour offshore in India or the Philippines and $10 to 22 nearshore in Latin America. The gap is not really about typing speed, it reflects US labor costs, compliance overhead, and the fact that onshore vendors carry facility and staffing costs offshore competitors don't.
- Do I actually need an US-based provider for data annotation or is that overkill?
- You need an US-based provider only if your data is subject to strict residency rules like HIPAA, ITAR, or certain government contract terms, or if the annotation task requires native US cultural or linguistic judgment such as RLHF calibrated to American English. For generic structured data entry, catalog cleanup, or objective image labeling, offshore or nearshore delivery with strong QA is usually the better cost-to-quality tradeoff.
- How many US data entry and annotation providers actually have HIPAA or SOC 2 certification?
- Among 62 US-delivering data entry and annotation providers reviewed, 10 hold HIPAA certification and only 4 hold SOC 2, meaning most providers marketing themselves as onshore do not carry the compliance credentials that justify a regulated-industry premium. If your project touches healthcare or financial data, ask for the actual certificate and confirm it covers the entity performing the work, not just the parent company.
- How do I check if a 'US-based' annotation vendor actually does the work in the US?
- Ask directly for the physical city and state where the labeling or entry work happens, and request this in the contract, not just on the marketing page. In this provider set, named delivery hubs cluster narrowly in cities like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, and Jacksonville, and any vendor unable or unwilling to name a specific facility location is a signal to dig further before assuming genuine onshore delivery.
- What pricing model should I use for US-based data entry and annotation work?
- Monthly retainer and project-based pricing are the most common models among US providers, together covering more than a quarter of the providers in this dataset, because most US buyers run ongoing annotation pipelines rather than one-off jobs. Per-hour pricing works for short pilots but I'd avoid it for sustained volume at onshore rates without a cap, since $40 to 80/hr with no ceiling can outpace a fixed retainer quickly.
- Is US-based data entry and annotation worth it for LLM training data and RLHF work?
- It's worth it specifically for RLHF tasks requiring native US cultural, legal, or idiomatic judgment, such as safety calibration or political sensitivity labeling, where a non-native annotator's context gaps produce subtly wrong labels. For objective or technical labeling tasks like code correctness or factual accuracy ranking, strong offshore English-speaking annotators perform comparably at a much lower rate.
- What's the biggest risk when hiring an US data entry or annotation provider?
- The biggest risk is paying onshore rates for a vendor that actually routes work through an undisclosed offshore subcontractor, undermining the compliance or quality rationale you paid the premium for. Always ask about employment type of the workforce (W-2 staff versus gig contractors), request QA sample logs from a similar project, and confirm any subcontracting arrangements are disclosed in the master service agreement.