# Alion Salary Benchmark

> Alion Salary Benchmark is a paid API for AI agents from alion.io, paid per call via x402, $0.05/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-10-31).

Returns salary percentile benchmarks (p25/p50/p75) for a given role, country, city, seniority level, and work mode, based on recent job postings.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://alion.io/mcp/rest/salary_benchmark?utm_source=zero.xyz
- Price: $0.05/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-10-31
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/alion-salary-benchmark-ebd08145
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_z6Iqe0xYwprFSXURnk0eI

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability alion-salary-benchmark-ebd08145
```

Example prompt: What's the market salary benchmark for a senior backend engineer in Germany working on-site — give me the p25, p50, and p75 annual figures in USD.

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need structured, percentile-based salary benchmarks grounded in recent job postings (rolling 90-day window) for a specific role, country, city, seniority, or work mode. Prefer it over generic LLM knowledge for compensation because it returns live, source-attributed market data with sample sizes and transparency rates. It is particularly strong for European and US tech roles.

## Known failure modes

- Low n (sample size) for rare role/country combos — response still returned but with warnings
- Unrecognized role string — role may be matched to a broader family or return no results
- Missing required parameters — 400 error
- Payment failure or missing auth — 402 Payment Required with offer details in header
- Rate limit or credit exhaustion — 402 or 429 depending on auth method

## How this service works

Plain-HTTP twin of the Alion MCP server. Every tool is also a GET/POST endpoint. Send "Authorization: Bearer <key>" (a key from https://alion.io/developers/keys); calls are paid from the account's credits. Or pay a paid tool per call in USDC with x402 (https://x402.org), no account: call it without a key, sign one of the offers in the PAYMENT-REQUIRED header of its 402 and repeat the call with the PAYMENT-SIGNATURE header; or with MPP (https://paymentauth.org): answer a WWW-Authenticate: Payment challenge with Authorization: Payment <credential> (USDC on Base or Solana, a transfer you sign or have sent). Docs: https://alion.io/developers

## Output

A JSON object containing salary percentiles (p25, p50, p75) for both stated (from job postings) and estimated figures, the currency, number of data points (n), a transparency rate showing what fraction of postings disclosed salary, time-to-fill percentiles in days, the filters actually applied (role family matched, country ISO, date window), and any warnings about data quality or low sample sizes.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "required": [
  "input"
 ],
 "properties": {
  "input": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type",
    "method"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string",
     "const": "http"
    },
    "method": {
     "enum": [
      "GET"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    },
    "queryParams": {
     "type": "object",
     "properties": {
      "city": {
       "type": "string"
      },
      "role": {
       "type": "string"
      },
      "country": {
       "type": "string"
      },
      "seniority": {
       "enum": [
        "intern",
        "junior",
        "middle",
        "senior",
        "staff",
        "lead",
        "head"
       ],
       "type": "string"
      },
      "work_mode": {
       "enum": [
        "on_site",
        "hybrid",
        "remote"
       ],
       "type": "string"
      }
     },
     "additionalProperties": false
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "example": {
     "type": "object"
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "json",
 "example": {
  "as_of": "2026-10-20T01:46:36Z",
  "salary": {
   "period": "year",
   "stated": {
    "n": 281,
    "p25": 75319,
    "p50": 88957,
    "p75": 112422
   },
   "currency": "USD",
   "estimated": {
    "n": 2161,
    "p25": 92000,
    "p50": 96000,
    "p75": 105000
   },
   "transparency_rate": 0.098
  },
  "warnings": [],
  "filters_applied": {
   "role": {
    "input": "Backend",
    "names": [
     "Backend"
    ],
    "matched": "family"
   },
   "country": {
    "iso": "DE",
    "name": "Germany"
   },
   "window_days": 90
  },
  "time_to_fill_days": {
   "n": 848,
   "p25": 8,
   "p50": 22,
   "p75": 39
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/alion-salary-benchmark-ebd08145/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from alion.io](https://www.zero.xyz/host/alion.io/llms.txt)