Licensed vs. scraped training data

Scraped data is cheap up front and expensive later: it carries unknown rights, is often already in every competitor’s model, and turns into a liability the moment a buyer runs diligence or a court rules. Licensed data costs more per hour but arrives with a chain of title you can defend and material that is not already in the public crawl. For anything you intend to ship, the licensed path is the one that survives diligence.