Text and archives · Forum and community archives · Updated 30 Oct 2026

Can a forum or online community license its posts to AI companies, and what are they worth?

AIData.Broker represents the companies and people that hold forum archives when they sell to AI labs: we value what they hold against public prices, describe it without their name to every buyer that takes it at the same time and help negotiate the terms. Our fee is 12% of the first $250,000 a sale pays, and nothing if no sale closes.

Years of threads, questions and answers written by members, with the replies in order, votes and accepted answers. Models learn from them how people ask, disagree and settle a question, often in subjects the open web covers thinly.

Value your forum archivesSelling Books to AI Companies: Prices, Deals and Who Gets Paid
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Prices on record
6

sales that happened, asking prices off the shelf

Who holds it
Forum and community site owners, Q&A and advice sites, Hobby, trade and professional communities
Who has paid, offered or listed
Reddit, OpenAI, Google, Bright Data

The short answer · figures from the market's records, last reviewed 30 Oct 2026

Can a forum or online community license its posts to AI companies, and what are they worth?

Yes, as far as its terms of service let it license what members post. Reddit licensed its posts to Google for a reported $60 million a year and to OpenAI for a reported $70 million a year, and its other revenue, mostly data licensing, was $48.0 million in the third quarter of 2026. Posts anyone can crawl sell for little: Webz.io sells crawled discussion posts at $0.005 a post. What a smaller community has to sell is what crawlers never read, years of threads behind a login with their votes and accepted answers, and its terms decide whether it may.

What buyers have paid, offered or asked for forum archives

The whole price board

Every price in the market's records about forum archives, each with its source and the day it was read. Open a row for the source's own words.

Kind of data

6 public prices across all kinds of data

  • Reddit other revenue (mostly data licensing, plus products sold directly to users), third quarter of 2026, all licensees

    Aggregate, not one deal: the 10-Q says substantially all of Reddit's licensing contract value comes from two unnamed partners whose agreements 'are approaching the end of their respective current terms'. $47,961 thousand of $894,957 thousand total revenue is about 5% (arithmetic on the 10-Q's figures). Contracted licensing revenue still to be recognised fell to $62.4 million, of which $30.5 million falls in 2027.

    Text and archivesSales that happenedOct 2026The payer's own page

    Reddit, Inc., SEC Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 September 2026

    $48M

    per quarter (all licensees)

  • Reddit's user posts licensed to OpenAI for training and display (2024 deal)

    A reported figure the parties have not confirmed; the deal also covers real-time display in ChatGPT, so not all of it pays for training.

    Text and archivesSales that happenedMay 2024Press report

    LLM Pulse, AI content licensing deals 2023 to 2026

    About $70M

    per year

  • Reddit's user posts licensed to Google for AI training and access (2024 deal)

    A reported figure the parties have not confirmed. Reddit's own IPO filing disclosed $203.0 million of aggregate contract value across its January 2024 data licences, over two to three years.

    Text and archivesSales that happenedFeb 2024Press report

    LLM Pulse, AI content licensing deals 2023 to 2026

    $60M

    per year

  • Reddit's data licences signed in January 2024 (access to search and analyse Reddit data), aggregate of several contracts

    The seller's own filing, the firmest figure behind the reported Google and OpenAI deals. It sums several contracts; Reddit expected at least $66.4 million of it as revenue in 2024.

    Text and archivesSales that happenedJan 2024The payer's own page

    Reddit, Form S-1 registration statement (SEC)

    $203M

    aggregate contract value of several licences, two to three years each

  • Webz.io Open Web Data Feeds: crawled news, blog, discussion and review posts, pay-as-you-go Scale plan

    Scraped web text sold non-exclusively, by the post, plus $0.01 a call; the same page charges $0.0005 a post through its Search API. Enterprise packages add up to 10 years of archive and bulk volume discounts.

    Data productsAsking prices off the shelfOct 2026A catalogue or marketplace listing

    Webz.io pricing, endpoint pricing on the Scale plan

    $0.005

    per post

  • Quora questions and answers dataset (10.2M+ records, 21 fields) scraped and sold by Bright Data

    Scraped forum text; the buyer carries the rights question, which is why it prices like a collection fee rather than a licence.

    Text and archivesAsking prices off the shelfOct 2026A catalogue or marketplace listing

    Bright Data, Quora datasets

    $0.0025

    per record

Where this data comes from, and who lists it

The whole supply map

  • $62.4 million contracted (30 Sep 2026); $30.5 million of it in 2027

    Reddit's contracted revenue still to be recognised on contracts longer than one year, mainly content licensing, was $62.4 million at 30 September 2026, down from $92.1 million at 30 June 2026. $31.9 million falls in the rest of 2026 and $30.5 million in 2027. The same 10-Q says substantially all of the licensing contract value comes from two partners whose agreements are approaching the end of their current terms.

    Reaches buyers: Direct licence deals (two partners hold substantially all the contract value)

    Reddit, Inc., SEC Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 September 2026, 30 Oct 2026

  • 24,134,193 questions

    Stack Overflow's public API reports 24,134,193 questions on the site in total.

    Reaches buyers: Direct API licence (OverflowAPI) to labs, plus open data dumps

    Stack Exchange API 2.3, questions on stackoverflow, total filter, 11 Oct 2026

  • 986 questions in September 2026

    Stack Overflow's own API counts 986 questions asked in September 2026 and still on the site, against 24,732 for September 2024 and 119,730 for September 2021 on the same query.

    Reaches buyers: Direct API licence (OverflowAPI) to labs; the flow of new public text behind it is collapsing

    Stack Exchange API 2.3, questions on stackoverflow created 1 to 30 September 2026, total filter, Sep 2026

  • 140,026 (in thousands)

    Reddit's other revenue, which is mostly content licensing, was $140.0 million in 2025, up from $114.7 million in 2024 and $15.2 million in 2023. In Q2 2026 it was $43.3 million.

    Reaches buyers: Direct licence deal

    SEC EDGAR, Reddit Inc. Form 10-K FY2025, 6 Feb 2026

Raises the price
  • Years of threads with the replies kept in order
  • Votes, accepted answers and moderation labels
  • Posts behind a login that crawlers never read
  • Trade or expert communities in subjects the open web covers thinly
The rights question

Members own what they post, and the site may license it only as far as its terms of service allow, so the terms in force when the posts were written decide. Private messages and members' personal details stay out.

Who has bought, offered or listed forum archives

Buyers that take text, and what each publishes

Kind of data
Kind of buyer

7 buyers taking text and archives, largest published figure first

More about text
All text: rates, buyers and rightsTranslation memories and parallel textScholarly journal archives

Hold forum archives? A valuation takes about two minutes: it says what buyers pay and whether we would run the sale. Prices last read 30 Oct 2026.

Value your forum archivesHow a sale works

In this topic

What sells

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  6. GuideSelling your company's Slack data for AI training: what the export allows and who buys itYes, a company can license its Slack history to AI buyers. What Slack's export and API terms allow on each plan, whose messages are inside, what buyers pay and the steps.
  7. GuideSelling company documents and shared drives for AI trainingYes, a company can license its documents, wikis and shared drives to AI buyers. Which documents they pay for, what Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Confluence and Notion let you export, who owns the files, and the steps.
  8. GuideSelling customer support tickets and chats for AI trainingOften yes, after three checks: your customer contracts and privacy notice, your help desk's export terms, and removing personal data. What buyers want in a ticket, what records with tickets fetch, and the steps.
  9. GuideSelling a company's email archive for AI training: exports, consent and priceYes, a company can license its own email to AI buyers. How Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 let you export a whole organisation's mail, the deadlines when a subscription lapses, the law on staff and customer messages, and what buyers pay.
  10. GuideSelling CRM data for AI training: Salesforce and HubSpot records, consent and priceA company can license its CRM history to AI buyers, but CRM records are customer data first. What buyers value in Salesforce and HubSpot, how each lets you export, why the contact list usually stays out, and what CRM history fetches.
  11. GuideSelling meeting recordings and transcripts for AI trainingCan a company license its Zoom, Google Meet or Teams recordings and notetaker transcripts to AI buyers? Recording consent state by state, what Zoom's terms allow, what meeting audio and transcripts fetch, and the steps.
  12. GuideSelling accounting and finance records for AI training: QuickBooks, Xero and NetSuiteA company can license its accounting history to AI buyers, but finance records carry customers', suppliers' and lenders' confidential terms and staff payroll. What buyers value in QuickBooks, Xero and NetSuite books, how each lets you export, what has to come out, and what finance records fetch.
  13. GuideSelling Jira and Linear issue history for AI trainingYes, a company can license its Jira or Linear issue history to AI buyers. It is valued when each issue links to the code that closed it. What each export keeps, what buyers ask for, and what it fetches.
  14. GuideSelling design files and product history for AI training: Figma and beyondYes, a company can license its Figma files and design history to AI buyers. What buyers value, what Figma lets you export, client work, fonts and other assets that are not yours, who owns the designs, and the steps.
  15. GuideSelling IT service desk records for AI training: ServiceNow tickets, runbooks and incidentsOften yes. IT tickets, incidents and runbooks teach agents to resolve real problems, once credentials, hostnames and people are removed. What ServiceNow and Jira Service Management let you export, what buyers ask for, and what the records fetch.
  16. GuideSelling Books to AI Companies: Prices, Deals and Who Gets PaidAI companies license books by the title, mostly from publishers' backlists. What deals paid per book, how much reaches the author, and how to sell a catalogue.
  17. GuideSelling Game Code and Game Data to AI CompaniesAI companies license game studios' code with its history and gameplay recorded with the player's inputs. Who buys, what studios are offered, and what you may not sell.
  18. GuideSelling a company's paper archive for AI trainingYes, a paper archive can be licensed to AI buyers once it is scanned into searchable text. What scanning costs, what text fetches, who owns old records, and the steps.
  19. GuideSelling robot and first-person video data for AI trainingRobotics companies pay for first-person video and teleoperation data, mostly recorded to their spec. What each kind pays, why bulk footage collapsed, consent, and the steps.
  20. GuideSelling sales call recordings and sales emails for AI trainingYes, if each call was lawfully recorded and the prospects come out. Who buys sales calls and sales emails, what they fetch, and the consent and AI-agent rules.
  21. GuideSelling CAD files and engineering drawings for AI trainingYes, if the company owns the designs and export rules allow it. Who buys CAD files and drawings for AI training, what they pay, and what to check first.
  22. GuideCan You Sell AI-Generated or AI-Assisted Data for AI Training?Rarely if a model made it: buyers screen generated data out. Work people made with AI tools still sells when you can show which parts a model wrote.
  23. GuideAI Content Licensing: How Publishers Get Paid, and How MuchAI companies license content to train models or to ground answers. What publishers have been paid, which platforms pay per use, and how to choose a route.
  24. PageWhere data comes fromWho holds each kind of data, how much exists and how it reaches buyers.
  25. RegisterCompanies closingCompanies closing, sold or gone dark, and the records they leave.