COCO Annotator vs Prodigy

COCO Annotator is a web-based tool for creating image annotations used in training data for localization and object detection. It supports bounding boxes, polygons, segmentation masks, keypoints, and points, along with disconnected shapes treated as one instance, multiple labels on an image segment, and custom metadata. Users can import existing COCO datasets and export annotations in COCO format. Assisted options include DEXTR, MaskRCNN, Magic Wand, semi-trained model annotation, and Google Images dataset generation. The software includes user authentication and a REST API, with a Swagger interface at localhost:5000/api. It is self-hosted on Linux or Windows, and Docker with docker-compose is required because Docker is the only supported installation method. Documentation covers development and production builds, centralized datasets, and external access. The server uses Flask, Eventlet, and Gunicorn, while long-running requests go to RabbitMQ workers. The project recommends HTTPS to encrypt browser-to-site communication and invites users to its Discord community. It is listed as free under an MIT-licensed plan.

Prodigy is a downloadable developer tool and Python library for creating training and evaluation data for machine-learning models. Its built-in recipes cover named entity recognition, text classification, computer vision, audio and video annotation, transcription, and model training and evaluation. A customizable web application offers 23 interfaces for work with text, images, audio, video, relations, multiple choice, HTML and conflict resolution. Users can define workflows with Python recipes and create interfaces using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Prodigy supports spaCy, plugins for Hugging Face models and integrations with major LLM API providers. Data can be stored in SQLite, MySQL or PostgreSQL and exported to JSON. It runs on the user's own machines without connecting to the maker's or third-party servers, including on air-gapped machines. The standard Python web server and app can be deployed in the cloud or on-premise. Personal licensing costs $390, paid once, excluding tax; Company licensing costs $490, paid once per seat in packs of five, excluding tax.