# What does data monetization pricing look like? > Data monetization pricing for company data runs on four models: sale, license, revenue share and royalty. Public prices are few and come from vendors. By Matt Burns, Vaultfish. Canonical: https://vaultfish.com/answers/data-monetization-pricing Published: 2026-08-26 Updated: 2026-10-14 ## The short answer Data monetization runs on four payment models: a one-off transfer, a license, a revenue share on repeat deals, or a royalty per use. Few figures are public. Handshake AI states $100K to $4M+, and micro1's data partnership page lists $100K+ to $1M+ tiers. None sets a per-record rate. Prices for company data come from deals, bids and what buyers say about themselves. Every figure below carries its source and its date. None of them is a rate you can multiply by your headcount, and no public source offers one. ## Which payment models do companies get? Four show up in public sources. **One-off sale.** You hand over a defined set of records and get paid once. [SimpleClosure](/buyers/simpleclosure)'s terms give the buyer all right and title. [micro1](/buyers/micro1)'s CFO described its corpus track this way in an undated recorded forum talk, but micro1's current page says companies keep ownership of their underlying data, so confirm the terms in the proposed agreement. **License.** [Troveo](/buyers/troveo)'s guide puts the contrast in one line: "A sale pays once. A license pays every time the data is used, and you keep ownership" ([Troveo](https://www.troveo.ai/resources/data-monetization-examples)). **Revenue share.** Troveo says it pays owners a share of every sale to buyers and publishes no split. Its page says owners share in the revenue on every later sale of the same data. **Royalty per use.** [EO Magazine](https://www.eomag.io/article/protege-bobby-samuels) described Protege's model as a royalty-based share paid each time data is used. Protege's own [data-provider page](https://withprotege.ai/data-provider/video) describes revenue-share payments when your content enters qualified deals, so go by that. > **A sale pays you once. A license pays you each time the buyer uses the data.** It's like renting out a room you never use. You keep the house, and the rent keeps coming. ## What do the published figures show? - **micro1:** tiers of $100K+, $500K+ and $1M+ on its [data partnerships page](https://www.micro1.ai/data-partnerships), and $100K-$2M+ for approved data packages on its [Enterprise Data Partnership listing](https://www.micro1.ai/company-referral). Its CFO said in an undated recorded forum talk that deals near $2M are real. - **[Handshake AI](/buyers/handshake-ai):** partnerships "from $100K to $4M+" depending on the data shared (its page). - **SimpleClosure:** nearly 100 deals in a year at $10,000 to $100,000 per shut-down startup ([Gizmodo](https://gizmodo.com/failed-companies-are-selling-old-slack-chats-and-email-archives-to-train-ai-2000747916)). - **[Mercor](/buyers/mercor):** offers to shuttered startups reported at up to $300,000 ([BigGo Finance](https://finance.biggo.com/news/d34746c0-e437-4855-93c5-09c6e850550d)). - **Spirit Airlines:** a $10M winning bid from Google, with Mercor at $7.5M and micro1 later at $12.5M. The sale was still before the bankruptcy court ([Time](https://time.com/article/2026/08/25/google-spirit-airlines-ai-data-RL/)). Each of these is a whole archive or a company's published headline. None is a per-record figure. The [deals tracker](/deals) follows each public figure as it changes. ## What do marketplaces charge owners? Marketplaces for data products take a cut or a fee. That is a different price from a sale to a buyer. AWS lists a 3% fee on public offers for AWS Data Exchange products. Private offers cost 3%, 2% or 1.5%, depending on deal size ([AWS](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2024/01/aws-marketplace-simplified-reduced-listing-fees/)). Snowflake deducts a transaction fee and does not publish the percentage. One summary quotes Datarade's commission as 30%. Another quotes it in tiers. Check its current terms. These marketplaces sell data products to enterprises. They don't buy company archives. ## Can a monetization calculator tell me what my data is worth? No. A data company's calculator works from a few inputs and returns that company's own range, not a price for your records. Handshake AI's estimator gives $383,083 to $896,969 for 100 staff and 10 years ([Handshake AI](https://joinhandshake.com/ai/data-partnerships/)). Troveo's slider defaults to $800K on a $0 to $1M scale ([Troveo](https://www.troveo.ai/business-data)). Both come from the companies themselves. The [value guide](/guides/how-much-is-your-business-data-worth-to-ai) goes through what moves the number. Treat a calculator number as the start of a conversation. _Two calculators, two answers. Your own counts beat both._ Then run your [rights check](/rights-check). Talk to a privacy or commercial lawyer in your state before you sign. Figure: range, Corpus deal, per company, $100K to $2M. micro1 states a wide range for approved data packages. Source: micro1's Enterprise Data Partnership listing, self-reported. [Apply to micro1's data partnership (paid link)](https://req.micro1.ai/post/74520e8b-4673-4da5-b855-53609aaf6710?referralCode=f82e519e-5d64-4e0e-9574-760c84371cf2&utm_source=referral&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=data_referral) ยท [micro1's own data-partnerships page](https://www.micro1.ai/data-partnerships) _Paid link: micro1 may pay us a referral fee if a company we introduce goes ahead with it. You pay nothing extra._ _Vaultfish helps you run the process. We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. If you need counsel who knows this area, we can point you to one._ ## Sources - [Troveo](https://www.troveo.ai/resources/data-monetization-examples) - [EO Magazine](https://www.eomag.io/article/protege-bobby-samuels) - [data-provider page](https://withprotege.ai/data-provider/video) - [data partnerships page](https://www.micro1.ai/data-partnerships) - [Enterprise Data Partnership listing](https://www.micro1.ai/company-referral) - [Gizmodo](https://gizmodo.com/failed-companies-are-selling-old-slack-chats-and-email-archives-to-train-ai-2000747916) - [BigGo Finance](https://finance.biggo.com/news/d34746c0-e437-4855-93c5-09c6e850550d) - [Time](https://time.com/article/2026/08/25/google-spirit-airlines-ai-data-RL/) - [AWS](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2024/01/aws-marketplace-simplified-reduced-listing-fees/) - [Handshake AI](https://joinhandshake.com/ai/data-partnerships/) - [Troveo](https://www.troveo.ai/business-data)