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13 Best Image
Annotation Tools of
2023 [Reviewed]
Discover 13 most popular image annotation tools of 2023.
Compare their features and pricing, and choose the best data
annotation tool for your needs.
8 min read · February 2, 2023

Alberto Rizzoli
V7

V7 Let’s face it—

GUIDE
Labelbox
It's easy to get confused when choosing the best image annotation tool for your specific use
Scale AI
Building AI-Powered
case.
Products: The Enterprise
SuperAnnotate
Even more so, with a new data training platform entering the market every couple of months
Guide
Dataloop
and promising innovative features, faster labeling, or higher accuracy. Building AI products? This guide breaks

Playment down the A to Z of delivering an AI

success story.
But optimizing your data annotation process is crucial to ensure your model's high
Supervise.ly
performance and reliability. So, picking the right tool for your computer vision projects should
Your email Download
Hive Data
not be taken lightly.
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policy and to receive other content from V7.
To help you out, we put together a list of the most popular image annotation tools out there,

🍪
LabelMe
along
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LabeIimg
Here’s what we’ll cover:
VoTT

Img Lab
V7
How to choose the best
Labelbox
image annotation tool
Scale AI
Text Link
SuperAnnotate
Dataloop
Playment
Supervise.ly
Hive Data
CVAT
LabelMe
LabeIimg
VoTT
Img Lab
How to choose the best image annotation tool

Note: Positions 1 through 8 are paid platforms, while 9 through 13 are free image annotation
tools.

Speed up labeling data 10x. Use V7 to develop AI faster.

Try V7 Now

Don't start empty-handed. Explore our repository of 500+ open datasets and test-drive V7's
tools.

Feeling short on time or too busy to go through all of the options?

No worries!

We get it :)

That's why we've prepared this handy graphic with Essential Features, Supported Formats,
and Security Certificates that allows you to skip the nitty-gritty parts, and easily compare all
the tools in seconds.

OK—

Let's explore each of these more in-depth. First, we’ll have a look at paid image annotations
tools.

V7
Let me start by saying that we won’t be outright telling you that V7 is the best image
annotation tool out there.

We won’t be promoting ourselves as the “top training data platform” or brag about people
naming V7 the most versatile and advanced tool for image and video annotation.

Nope.

None of that.

Our own article isn’t the right place to make such bold statements.

Instead—

We’d like to encourage you to try out V7 for yourself and see whether we deserve all the
positive reviews we’ve got ;-)

V7 is an automated annotation platform combining dataset management, image annotation,

Video annotation, and autoML model training to automatically complete labeling tasks.

V7 enables teams to store, manage, annotate, and automate their data annotation workflows
in:

- Images

- Video

- DICOM medical data

- Microscopy images

- PDF and document processing

- 3D volumetric data

Key features include:

Automated annotation features without prior training needed

Composable workflows allowing multiple models and human in the loop stages
Dataset management that stays robust at large scale
Integrated data labeling services
Real-time collaboration and fluid UX
Frame-perfect Video annotation tool

Price: From USD 0 (Education Plan), more details on the V7 pricing page

💡 Read more: 9 Essential Features for a Bounding Box Annotation Tool.

Advantages:

Automation features can be used by non-technical users

Composable workflows allow solving complex, multi-stage tasks
Suited for medical image annotations (FDA, CE Compliant, and HIPAA compliant)
Supports most unique file types (ultra-high-resolution, multi-spectral, microscopy
formats, PDF)

Labelbox
Labelbox is a training data platform built from three core layers that facilitate the entire
process from labeling and collaboration to iteration. It was created in 2018 and has quickly
become one of the most popular data labeling tools.

Labelbox offers AI-enabled labeling tools, labeling automation, human workforce, data
management, a powerful API for integration, and a Python SDK for extensibility.

It enables annotations with polygons, bounding boxes, lines, as well as more advanced
labeling tools.

Key features:

AI-assisted labeling (BYO models)

Integrated data labeling services
QA/QC tooling and label review workflows
Strong labeler performance analytics
Customizable interface to simplify tasks

Price: Free 5000 images/Custom Pro and Enterprise plans.

Advantages:

Superpixel coloring option for or semantic segmentation

UX friendly interface
Advanced Performance and quality control monitoring
Enterprise-friendly plans and SOC2 compliance

💡 Pro tip: Check out Labelbox vs. V7 to learn more.

Scale AI
Scale is a data platform that enables annotations of large volumes of 3D sensor, image, and
video data.

Scale offers ML-powered pre-labeling, an automated quality assurance system, dataset

management, document processing, and AI-assisted data annotation eschewed towards
data processing for autonomous driving.

This data annotation tool can be used for a variety of computer vision tasks, including object
detection, classification, and text recognition and it supports multiple data formats.

Key Features:

ML-powered pre-labeling
Nucleus dataset management
Automated QA system with gold sets
Document processing features
Model-in-the-loop data curation

Here you can learn more about Scale AI alternatives.

Price: From $50,000.

Advantages:

Synthetic data generation

Super-pixel segmentation
Strong for autonomous driving use cases involving LIDAR and mapping

💡 Pro tip: Check out Scale vs. V7 to learn more.

SuperAnnotate
Superannotate is an end-to-end image and Video annotation platform that streamlines and
automates computer vision workflows.

SuperAnnotate allows you to create high-quality training datasets for various computer vision
tasks, including object detection, instance, and semantic segmentation, keypoint annotation,
cuboid annotation, and video tracking.

Available tools include vector annotations (boxes, polygons, lines, ellipses, keypoints, and
cuboids) and pixel-wise annotation using a brush.

Key features:

AI-assisted labeling (BYO Models)

Superpixels for semantic segmentation
Advanced quality control systems
Supports various formats through image conversion

Price: Free 14-day trial / Custom Starter, Pro, Enterprise plans

Advantages

Offers free web-based tool created in cooperation with Open CV

Advanced project management features (analytics, filtering etc.)

💡 Pro tip: Check out SuperAnnotate vs. V7 to learn more.

Dataloop
The all-in-one cloud-based annotation platform with embedded tools and automation for
producing high-quality datasets.

Dataloop accommodates the whole AI lifecycle including annotation, model evaluation, and
model improvement by utilizing the human feedback in the loop.

It offers tools for basic computer vision tasks like detection, classification, key points, and
segmentation. Dataloop supports both image and video data.

Key features:

Model-assisted labeling
Multiple data type support
Advanced team workflows with streamlined data indexing and querying system
Video support

Price: Free trial / Custom Enterprise plans

Advantages:

Automation & production pipeline using Python SDK and Rest API

💡 Pro tip: Check out Dataloop vs. V7 to learn more.

Playment
Playment is a fully managed data labeling platform generating training data for computer
vision models founded in 2015.

Playment supports image and video data, and offers a wide range of basic annotation tools
including bounding boxes, cuboids, polygons or landmarks.

It works on the principle of microwork, breaking down large problems into micro-tasks and
distributing them among its large community of trained annotators.

Features:

Fully managed—it only requires that businesses share data and label guidelines
Allows for attributes extraction
Document management (human-assisted OCR)

Advantages:

Product comparison and competitor analysis features

Build-in advanced quality control tools
Strong for autonomous driving teams

Supervise.ly
Supervise.ly is a web-based image and Video annotation platform where individual
researchers and large teams can annotate and experiment with datasets and neural
networks.

Apart from basic annotation tools such as boxes, lines, dots, polygons, or bitmap brush,
Supervise.ly offers a Data Transformation Language tool and enables 3D Point Cloud.

Key Features:

AI-assisted labeling
Multi-format data annotation & management
Option do develop and import plugins for custom data formats
3D Point Cloud
Options for project management on different levels for teams, workspaces, and
datasets.

Price: Free 100 images in community edition.

Advantages:

Comes with Supervisely Agent—a simple open-source task manager available as a

Docker image.
Option to draw holes within the polygons
Data Transformation Language tools

💡 Pro tip: Check out Supervisely vs. V7 to learn more.

Hive Data
Hive Data is a fully managed data annotation solution to source and label training data for AI /
ML Models.

Hive Data supports image, video, text, 3D Point Cloud annotation and data sourcing. Apart
from basic annotation types, Hive Data offers multi-frame object tracking, contours, and 3D
panoptic segmentation.

Key features:

Multiple data type support

Available data sourcing
Fully managed, end-to-end data labeling services

Advantages:

Offers pre-trained models

Advanced project management workflows

Now, let’s have a look at several open-source, free image and video annotation tools that you
can use for your computer vision and data science projects.

CVAT
CVAT (Computer Vision Annotation Tool) is an open-source, web-based image and video
annotation tool for labeling data for computer vision, supported and maintained by Intel.

CVAT supports the primary tasks of supervised machine learning: object detection, image
classification, and image segmentation. It offers four basic types of annotation: boxes,
polygons, polylines, and points.

Key features:

Semi-automatic annotation
Interpolation of shapes between keyframes
Dashboard with a list of annotation projects and tasks
LDAP
Supports a large number of automation instruments including automatic annotation
using the TensorFlow* Object Detection API or video interpolation.

Price: Free

Advantages:

Web-based and collaborative.

Easy to deploy—CVAT can be installed in the local network using Docker, but must be
maintained as it scales.
Semi-automatic annotation.

💡 Pro tip: Check out The Complete Guide to CVAT—Pros & Cons

LabelMe
LabelMe is an online annotation tool created by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory. It provides a dataset of digital images with annotations.

The dataset is free and open to external contributions.

💡 Pro tip: Check out Labeling with LabelMe: Step-by-step Guide [Alternatives +
Datasets]

Labelme supports six different annotation types such as polygon, rectangle, circle, line, point,
and line strip. One of the limitations is that files can only be saved and exported in JSON
format.

Key features:

Control points modification

Segments and polygons removal
Six types of annotations
File List

Price: Free

LabeIimg
A graphical image annotation tool to label objects using bounding boxes in images. It is
written in Python. You can export your annotations as XML files in PASCAL VOC format.

In its default version, Labelimg only offers one annotation type—a bounding box or rectangle
shape. However, one can also add another shape with a code using a GitHub page.

Key features:

Annotations are saved as XML files in PASCAL VOC

Needs to be installed locally
Only image annotation

Price: Free

VoTT
VoTT (Visual Object Tagging Tool) is a free and open-source image annotation and labeling
tool developed by Microsoft.

VoTT provides end-to-end support for generating datasets and validating object detection
models from video and image assets.

Key features:

Option to tag and annotate Image Directories or Stand alone videos

Tags and assets export to CNTK, Tensorflow (PascalVOC), or YOLO format
Offers an extensible model for importing/exporting data from local and cloud storage
providers
Enables running and validating a trained CNTK object detection model on new videos to
generate stronger models

Price: Free

Img Lab
ImgLab is an open-source and web-based image annotation tool.

ImgLab provides multiple label types such as points, circles, boundary boxes, polygons. It
also supports various formats including dlib, XML, Pascal VOC and COCO.

Key features:

Web-based and local versions

Basic IDE features
Supports multiple label types and file formats

Price: Free

How to choose the best image annotation tool

There you have it—the list of 13 best free and paid image Annotation Tools.

Whether you are labeling small sets of data or building complex AI models, picking the right
tool for your specific use case will directly impact both—the annotation process and your
results.

Make sure to carefully consider all of your options to avoid wasting your time and money on a
tool that doesn’t cater to all of your needs.

Finally, here's a visual comparison of all paid tools we've reviewed in this article.

And if you still cannot decide on the best image annotation solution—send us an email or
book a call with our sales team to discuss your options.

💡 Read more:

Annotating With Bounding Boxes: Quality Best Practices

YOLO: Real-Time Object Detection Explained

7 Life-Saving AI Use Cases in Healthcare

6 AI Applications Shaping the Future of Retail

7 Game-Changing AI Applications in the Sports Industry

6 Viable AI Use Cases in Insurance

8 Practical Applications of AI In Agriculture

6 Innovative Artificial Intelligence Applications in Dentistry

7 Job-ready AI Applications in Construction

7 Out-of-the-Box Applications of AI in Manufacturing

Train ML models 10x

faster
Turn labeled data into models. Develop
production-ready AI in hours with just a
few clicks.

Learn more

Alberto Rizzoli
V7

Previously CEO at Aipoly - First smartphone engine for convolutional neural networks.
Management & Stats grad at Cass Business School and Singularity University. Never had a
real job.

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