COCO Annotator vs VGG Image Annotator
COCO Annotator
github.comVGG Image Annotator
robots.ox.ac.ukSide by side
| Figure | COCO Annotator | VGG Image Annotator |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 2 |
| Spec score · AI Image Annotation Tools | 9.0 (#2) | 8.2 (#7) |
| Annotation features | It supports object segmentation, keypoints, disconnected objects as one instance, multiple labels per image segment, and custom metadata. | The user guide describes drawing regions such as rectangles, circles and points, and importing or exporting annotations as CSV or JSON. |
| COCO interoperability | Datasets can be imported from COCO and completed annotations exported directly as COCO data. | Official scripts convert or export VIA annotations to COCO and other formats. |
| License | The repository is distributed under the MIT License, including commercial use rights with attribution. | VIA is released under the permissive two-clause BSD license for academic and commercial use. |
| Release status | The releases page marks version 0.11.1 as the latest release and lists fixes covering environment booleans, keypoint edges, brush performance, thumbnails, file watching, Celery URLs, and exports. | The latest listed VIA3 release is version 3.0.13 from 2 July 2024, described as bug fixes and video-frame annotation improvements. |
| Security posture | GitHub reports that the repository has no SECURITY.md policy and no published security advisories. | Because local files are processed in the browser, a tutorial notes that images do not leave the user's machine. |
| Support | The project invites users to join its Discord community of machine-learning practitioners. | The makers direct users to an in-app basic guide, a FAQ and email contacts for queries or feedback. |
| What it does | COCO Annotator is a web application for creating image-training annotations for object detection and localization. | VIA is a manual annotation suite for images, audio and video. |
Plans
In their own words
COCO Annotator
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.
VGG Image Annotator
VGG Image Annotator (VIA) is a suite of lightweight browser tools for manually annotating images, audio, and video. The applications are distributed as single HTML files, allowing offline use without installation or setup. VIA3 handles images, video, audio, and shared or collaborative projects. VIA2 works with image files, does not support shared projects, and remains maintained. Annotation shapes include rectangles, circles, ellipses, points, polygons, and polylines. Projects can import or export annotations as CSV or JSON, while scripts support COCO and Web Annotation formats; a Python package converts VIA projects to COCO. Shared work can use a free public Version File Store maintained by the Visual Geometry Group, or a user-run VFS. VIA is built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript without external libraries and released under the two-clause BSD license for academic and commercial use. Downloads include ZIP archives and standalone HTML files for versions 2 and 3. The makers provide a guide, FAQ, and email contacts.