LabelU vs VGG Image Annotator
LabelU
opendatalab.github.ioVGG Image Annotator
robots.ox.ac.ukSide by side
| Figure | LabelU | VGG Image Annotator |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 2 |
| Spec score · Data Labeling Software | 7.2 (#21) | 8.2 (#9) |
| Audio annotation | Audio tools support segmentation, classification, and information extraction. | VIA3 includes an audio annotator for marking speech or other time ranges. |
| Image annotation | Image tools include 2D bounding boxes, semantic segmentation, polylines, and keypoints. | VIA supports manual annotation of still images for tasks such as object detection and segmentation. |
| License | The repository states that LabelU is released under the Apache 2.0 license. | VIA is released under the permissive two-clause BSD license for academic and commercial use. |
| Maker | The LabelU repository is published under the OpenDataLab GitHub organization. | VIA is developed by the Visual Geometry Group in Oxford University's Department of Engineering Science. |
| Self-hosting | The README gives local installation steps using Python 3.11, pip, and a local server at localhost:8000, with Windows Anaconda Prompt instructions and a macOS Intel note. | Users can download ZIP archives or standalone HTML files and run them locally or from their own web infrastructure. |
| Video annotation | Video features include segmentation, classification, and information extraction. | VIA3 adds temporal-segment and spatial-region annotation for video. |
Plans
In their own words
LabelU
LabelU has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
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.