Argilla vs Doccano

Argilla is a free collaboration tool for AI engineers and domain experts building datasets with human feedback. It supports NLP, LLM, and multimodal projects, including classification, named entity recognition, retrieval-augmented generation, and preference tuning. Contributors can provide labels, ratings, rankings, and written responses; annotation tools include filters, AI feedback suggestions, and semantic search. The system handles text and images, while custom fields can represent audio, video, or other content rendered as base64 or HTML. It is compatible with Hugging Face and spaCy, and tutorials cover SetFit and LlamaIndex. Deployment options include Hugging Face Spaces or a local machine or server using Docker Compose. A Python SDK connects to an Argilla server with an API URL and key, and the server exposes REST API documentation. Datasets and records can be moved to or from Python, local disk, and the Hugging Face Hub. Argilla supports OAuth2 through Hugging Face, GitHub, and Google by default. It does not train models; on Hugging Face Spaces, data on ephemeral free storage is lost when the Space restarts.

Doccano is a free, open-source data-labeling tool for machine-learning practitioners. Its supported annotation tasks include text classification, sequence labeling, and sequence-to-sequence annotation, with uses such as sentiment analysis, named entity recognition, and text summarization. Users can set up projects, import datasets, add collaborators, annotate examples, and export labeled data. REST APIs let scripts connect to Doccano for model-assisted labeling, and multiple people can work collaboratively. Installation options include pip, Docker, Docker Compose, source, or cloud deployment. The installation guide lists Linux, Windows, and macOS machines running Python 3.8 or later. SQLite 3 is the default database; PostgreSQL configuration is described, and MySQL is mentioned as an option. Imported datasets can be stored using Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage. The project also lists mobile and multi-language support, emoji support, and a dark theme. Integration guidance demonstrates Amazon Comprehend Sentiment Analysis and custom REST APIs for auto-labeling. One upgrade caveat is important: the installation guide warns that an upgrade using SQLite 3 can cause database loss.