LightlyStudio

Spec sheet

What it does

LightlyStudio combines computer-vision dataset curation, annotation, quality assurance, model evaluation and export in one application.Read 14 Oct 2026 · lightly.ai

Product

LightlyStudio combines computer vision data curation, annotation, quality assurance, evaluation, and dataset management in one app.Read 29 Sep 2026 · lightly.ai

Deployment

LightlyStudio Enterprise is offered as a Lightly-hosted service or as an on-premise deployment; the on-premise option can run fully offline and air-gapped.Read 29 Sep 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

Integrations

It reads images and videos from Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, and Azure Blob Storage, and supports common annotation formats including COCO, YOLO, Pascal VOC, and YouTube-VIS.Read 29 Sep 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

Security

Lightly states that it is ISO 27001 certified and GDPR compliant, and that raw images and videos are never stored on its servers.Read 29 Sep 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

Privacy

In the open-source version, images and videos stay in the user's storage, while anonymous usage analytics can be disabled with an environment variable.Read 29 Sep 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

Support

The Open Source plan lists no customer support; the on-premise offering includes dedicated engineering support.Read 29 Sep 2026 · lightly.ai

Headquarters

Zurich, SwitzerlandRead 28 Sep 2026 · lightly.ai

Founded

2019Read 28 Sep 2026 · lightly.ai

Annotation

The product supports classification, object-detection and segmentation annotations that can be edited in the GUI or through Python.Read 14 Oct 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

Annotation and evaluation

It supports image and video annotation, model-assisted labeling plugins, and model evaluation with a confusion matrix and per-sample metrics.Read 29 Sep 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

API and SDK

The Python API can index datasets, query and slice samples, manipulate annotations and tags, run sampling, export data and start the GUI.Read 14 Oct 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

CLI

The command-line package provides quickstart and gui subcommands.Read 14 Oct 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

Cloud integrations

The software can read media from AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage and Azure Blob Storage through optional cloud-storage dependencies.Read 14 Oct 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

Cloud limitation

Cloud storage currently supports raw media folders and COCO imports; other importers still require local files.Read 14 Oct 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

Collaboration

Enterprise collaboration provides Viewer, Labeler, Editor and Admin roles plus centrally managed cloud credentials.Read 14 Oct 2026 · lightly.ai

Company founding

Lightly says it was founded in 2019 from ETH Zurich research.Read 14 Oct 2026 · lightly.ai

Company headquarters

LinkedIn lists Zurich as headquarters and gives a primary Zurich address at Schützengasse 23, 8006 Switzerland.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkedin.com

Company size

LinkedIn lists Lightly as a privately held software-development company with 11–50 employees.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkedin.com

Compliance claim

Lightly's LinkedIn profile states that the company is ISO 27001 certified and GDPR compliant.Read 14 Oct 2026 · linkedin.com

Curation

It automatically creates embeddings and supports metadata filtering, text or image similarity search, deduplication, outlier detection, diversity sampling and class balancing.Read 14 Oct 2026 · lightly.ai

Documentation depth

The documentation includes quickstarts, dataset setup, workflows, tutorials, API references, glossary pages and enterprise deployment guidance.Read 14 Oct 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

Export

Users can export full datasets or filtered subsets to COCO, YOLO, Pascal VOC, YouTube-VIS, or CSV.Read 29 Sep 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

Export formats

Exports include CSV, COCO detection and segmentation, YOLO, Pascal VOC, COCO captions and YouTube-VIS video segmentation.Read 14 Oct 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

Funding

Lightly's About page states that the company has raised $10 million.Read 14 Oct 2026 · lightly.ai

Hosted data handling

Hosted Enterprise reads media from cloud storage and stores metadata in PostgreSQL on Lightly infrastructure.Read 14 Oct 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

Independent feature summary

SourceForge describes active-learning and self-supervised algorithms that combine predictions, embeddings and metadata for data selection, with API automation and cloud-bucket connectivity.Read 14 Oct 2026 · sourceforge.net

Limit: documentation and UI

A G2 reviewer asked for more detail in complex-use-case documentation and a more intuitive, polished interface.Read 14 Oct 2026 · g2.com

Limit: labeling flexibility

A G2 reviewer reported that some labeling tools feel rigid for finely differentiated datasets.Read 14 Oct 2026 · g2.com

Limit: learning curve

G2 and SourceForge reviewers say advanced capabilities can take time to learn and would benefit from more visual tutorials.Read 14 Oct 2026 · sourceforge.net

Limit: pricing

A G2 reviewer considered pricing potentially high for smaller teams and requested more flexible options.Read 14 Oct 2026 · g2.com

Local data handling

The open-source edition keeps media in its original local or remote storage and stores metadata, annotations and embeddings in a local DuckDB file.Read 14 Oct 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

Model evaluation

Evaluation compares prediction annotations with ground truth and provides confusion matrices and per-sample metrics, including false-positive, false-negative and mIoU sorting.Read 14 Oct 2026 · lightly.ai

Notable news

Lightly's About page lists appearances at CVPR 2026 and ICRA 2026 in May 2026.Read 14 Oct 2026 · lightly.ai

Open source

The open-source version is free and distributed under the Apache License 2.0.Read 29 Sep 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

Open-source licence

The public LightlyStudio repository is licensed under Apache License 2.0.Read 14 Oct 2026 · github.com

Plugins

Ready-made plugins include SAM3 segmentation, LightlyTrain auto-labeling and video bounding-box propagation, while custom Python plugins can be registered.Read 14 Oct 2026 · lightly.ai

Praise: data selection

G2 reviewers repeatedly praise active-learning and curation workflows for reducing the amount of data that must be labeled and improving model-training efficiency.Read 14 Oct 2026 · g2.com

Praise: scale and setup

G2 reviewers describe handling millions of images or thousands of videos, straightforward integration and fast implementation as strengths.Read 14 Oct 2026 · g2.com

Python API

The Python API can index datasets, query and slice samples, add annotations and tags, run sampling, and start the GUI.Read 29 Sep 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

Rating on G2

4.4 out of 5 from 14 reviewsRead 14 Oct 2026 · g2.com

Scale

Lightly reports that LightlyStudio handled more than two million images with embeddings on a MacBook M1 with 16 GB of memory.Read 29 Sep 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

Scale claim

Lightly says a single 16GB MacBook Pro with an M1 processor can handle ImageNet-scale work and datasets exceeding two million images.Read 14 Oct 2026 · lightly.ai

Security certification

LightlyStudio is presented as covered by Lightly's ISO 27001 certification.Read 14 Oct 2026 · lightly.ai

Support model

The open-source plan states that it has no customer support, while on-premise Enterprise includes dedicated engineering support.Read 14 Oct 2026 · lightly.ai

Supported systems

The local application runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS and supports x86 and ARM processors with Python 3.9 or later.Read 29 Sep 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

System requirements

LightlyStudio supports Python 3.9 through 3.14 on Windows, Linux and macOS, with Python 3.10 recommended for plugin compatibility.Read 14 Oct 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

Team features

LightlyStudio Enterprise adds multi-user collaboration, role-based permissions, and centrally managed cloud credentials.Read 29 Sep 2026 · docs.lightly.ai

Plans and prices

Every LightlyStudio plan and price →

Where Specifiction places it

• Active Learning Tools#1 of 168.5
• Data Labeling Software#4 of 248.5