Pupil Player vs RealEye

Pupil Player is free, open-source software for viewing, analyzing, and exporting Pupil Capture recordings. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux and uses hardware recordings as input. Playback includes frame stepping, timeline trimming, and five speeds from 0.25x through 4x. A plugin framework adds gaze displays, marker and surface tracking, and data export. Analysis plugins cover post-hoc fixation and blink detection, pupil detection, gaze calibration, mapping, validation, and head-pose tracking. Visualizations can show circles, crosses, polylines, light points, heatmaps, or fixation overlays. Raw Data Exporter writes pupil and gaze data as CSV, while World Video Exporter saves visualized video. An iMotions exporter creates undistorted world video and gaze.tlv data. Exports go into an exports subfolder without removing or overwriting raw captures. Available plugins depend on the recording source, and eye-video overlays require eye video enabled during capture. Runtime-loaded Python plugins can extend the software.

RealEye is a cloud-based webcam eye-tracking research platform for building online studies, tracking participants, and analyzing results. Researchers can use images, videos, or live websites as stimuli, configure display settings, and add instructions and follow-up questions. The dashboard includes heatmaps, gaze and fixation analysis, Areas of Interest statistics, survey answers, and raw or processed data exports. A facial coding feature analyzes neutral, happy, and surprised expressions. External survey connections can redirect participants to services such as Qualtrics, Google Forms, or SurveyMonkey and pass participant identifiers through URL parameters. RealEye says webcam image and sound processing happens in the browser, and that it stores gaze-point predictions rather than webcam images or sound. It states that it is GDPR compliant and runs on AWS data centers in the United States. Participants using a researcher's own link need a laptop or PC with a webcam; smartphone tests are also offered. Basic costs $325 a month billed annually or $390 a month. Standard costs $825 a month billed annually or $990 a month.