Anthropic vs OpenAI salary
The median posted base pay for tech jobs is $400K a year at Anthropic and $351K a year at OpenAI. The median at Anthropic is 14% above the median at OpenAI. The numbers come from 283 open jobs at Anthropic and 378 open jobs at OpenAI with posted pay.
Anthropic and OpenAI: all tech jobs
Anthropic: The middle half of the jobs is from $328K to $445K. OpenAI: The middle half of the jobs is from $292K to $396K.
| Measure | Anthropic | OpenAI |
|---|---|---|
| Median posted base pay | $400K | $351K |
| Middle half of the jobs | $328K to $445K | $292K to $396K |
| Median posted range | $320K to $435K | $266K to $414K |
| 10th to 90th percentile | $295K to $563K | $246K to $440K |
| Open jobs with posted pay | 283 | 378 |
Anthropic vs OpenAI pay by job type
The median for each job type that has 3 or more jobs with posted pay at both companies. The difference compares Anthropic with OpenAI. One job can have more than one job type.
| Job type | Median at Anthropic | Median at OpenAI | Difference | Jobs at Anthropic | Jobs at OpenAI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ML / AI engineering | $403K | $366K | +10% | 143 | 104 |
| Software engineering | $403K | $356K | +13% | 76 | 138 |
| Inference & ML systems | $438K | $358K | +22% | 79 | 74 |
| Infra, platform & SRE | $403K | $356K | +13% | 32 | 62 |
| Research | $600K | $440K | +36% | 44 | 35 |
| Product management | $345K | $317K | +9% | 34 | 30 |
| Security engineering | $363K | $356K | +2% | 32 | 28 |
| Solutions engineering | $295K | $248K | +19% | 15 | 13 |
| Hardware and robotics | $403K | $358K | +13% | 5 | 16 |
| Design | $345K | $278K | +24% | 6 | 9 |
| Data science | $333K | $381K | −13% | 5 | 8 |
| Data engineering | $363K | $356K | +2% | 7 | 3 |
Anthropic vs OpenAI pay by level
The median for each level in the job title that has 3 or more jobs with posted pay at both companies.
| Level | Median at Anthropic | Median at OpenAI | Difference | Jobs at Anthropic | Jobs at OpenAI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level not stated | $353K | $351K | +1% | 183 | 352 |
| Senior | $328K | $285K | +15% | 11 | 14 |
| Staff | $424K | $356K | +19% | 84 | 6 |
Open jobs with the highest posted pay
The five open jobs with the highest posted pay at each company. Each range is the base pay that the company posted.
Anthropic
- Engineering Manager, GPU (ML Accelerator)$500K to $850K
- Pre-training Data Infrastructure Engineer$500K to $850K
- Research Engineer / Performance Engineer, RL Distributed Systems$500K to $850K
- Research Engineer / Research Scientist, RL Frontiers$500K to $850K
- Research Engineer / Scientist, Pre-training$500K to $850K
OpenAI
- Research Scientist / Research Engineer - Foundations, Search$380K to $850K
- Research Scientist / Research Engineer - Web Understanding and Structured Retrieval, Search$380K to $850K
- Research Scientist / Research Engineer, Safety + Alignment, Search$380K to $850K
- Researcher, Training$300K to $600K
- Engineering Manager, MLE$500K to $555K
More about Anthropic and OpenAI
- More pay pages:
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Questions
Which company pays more, Anthropic or OpenAI?
Anthropic has the higher median posted base pay: $400K a year, against $351K at OpenAI. The median at Anthropic is 14% above the median at OpenAI.
What do ML / AI engineering jobs pay at Anthropic and OpenAI?
The median posted base pay for ML / AI engineering jobs is $403K at Anthropic (143 jobs) and $366K at OpenAI (104 jobs).
Does this pay include stock or a bonus?
No. The numbers are the base pay ranges that the companies posted in their open jobs. Stock, a bonus and benefits are not in the numbers. Total pay at these companies can be much higher than base pay.
Where does the data come from?
We read each open job from the job board of Anthropic and of OpenAI, and we check each job every day. We use only jobs that state a yearly pay range in US dollars.
How we compute these numbers
We read each job from the job board of the company and check it every day. We use only open jobs that state a yearly pay range in US dollars. One job counts with the middle point of its posted range. The median is the middle value of these amounts: half of the jobs are above it and half are below it.
We do not use a range with a bottom below $15,000, a top above $1,000,000, or a top that is more than four times the bottom. A company needs 20 or more open jobs with posted pay to be in a comparison. A job type or a level needs 3 or more jobs at both companies to be a row. Jobs under the same company name count as one company.
The numbers are base pay as the company posted it. They are not the pay of a person, and they do not include stock, a bonus or benefits. For the stock and the bonus that people reported, see Reported pay.