Overview

CVAT is a platform for labeling image, video, 3D, and audio data for AI workflows. It is best suited to teams that need varied annotation and review workflows alongside a choice of cloud or self-hosted deployment. Its breadth is a strength, but Community lacks several capabilities that may push larger teams toward Enterprise.

Key features

CVAT covers boxes, masks, polygons, polylines, points, ellipses, cuboids, skeletons, tags, and object tracks. That range is useful for projects combining detection, segmentation, and tracking rather than teams tied to one annotation type. Teams can move jobs through validation and acceptance stages, then assess quality with ground truth, honeypots, and consensus workflows. This supports collaborative review, though automated quality assurance is not included in Community.

Storage options span Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud Storage, S3-compatible buckets, and self-hosted storage. CVAT names SAM 2, SAM 3, Ultralytics, Hugging Face models, and custom models as ways to accelerate labeling, but Community lacks SAM integration and built-in AI agent integrations. Exports cover more than 20 formats, including COCO, YOLO, KITTI, Cityscapes, and Pascal VOC; API, SDK, and CLI support give teams several routes to automate dataset workflows.

Deployment can be managed in the cloud or self-hosted, including on-premises and air-gapped installations. Security controls include encryption in transit and at rest, role-based access, SSO, access logging, and audit trails. CVAT does not hold ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certifications, a material constraint for organizations whose procurement requires either certification.

Pricing

Community is free under an MIT license and targets personal use and small teams. It trades away automated quality assurance, SSO, SAM integration, built-in AI agent integrations, and advanced reporting, so it is a better fit for teams that can work without those controls than for organizations needing them.

CVAT Online Free is also free, but is capped at 1 member, 1 project, 3 tasks, and 1 GB of internal storage. It is suitable for a small evaluation or tightly bounded personal workflow, not ongoing team production.

CVAT Online Solo Yearly costs $23 per month, billed annually, with a 30% saving, and provides an unlimited personal workspace. Solo Monthly costs $33 per month and is also an unlimited personal workspace, but is pay-as-you-go rather than annual. For teams, CVAT Online Team Yearly costs $23 per user per month, billed at $46 per month for 2 seats, with a 30% saving and support for 2–50 seats. Team Monthly costs $33 per user per month, billed at $66 per month for 2 seats, for 2–50 seats on a pay-as-you-go basis. The annual option is cheaper per user, while monthly billing avoids an annual commitment.

Enterprise Basic costs $12,000 per year for a single-instance deployment and essential support for critical issues. It includes 24-hour email support with a 24-hour response SLA and a private helpdesk channel for urgent critical issues. Enterprise Premium has custom pricing and adds advanced deployment, customization, priority expert support, up to 3 instances, and 100 developer hours. These plans are aimed at organizations that need enterprise deployment or support rather than a low-cost personal workspace.

Platforms

CVAT supports API, web, and self-hosted access. The ability to run on-premises or in air-gapped environments makes it relevant to teams with strict hosting requirements, while the managed cloud option avoids requiring self-hosting.

Who it's for

CVAT fits teams building image, video, 3D, or audio datasets that need a broad set of annotation types, structured review, and connections to their own storage or automation tooling. It is less suitable for buyers who require ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certification, or for Community users who depend on SSO, automated quality assurance, or integrated AI assistance.

Pros and cons

Pros: Broad annotation coverage supports detection, segmentation, and tracking workflows in one platform.
Pros: Validation, acceptance, and quality-assessment workflows help teams review collaborative labeling work.
Pros: Cloud, self-hosted, on-premises, and air-gapped deployment options accommodate different hosting constraints.
Cons: Community omits automated quality assurance, SSO, SAM integration, built-in AI agent integrations, and advanced reporting.
Cons: Lack of ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certifications can rule it out for organizations with those requirements.
Cons: The free online plan's one-member, one-project, three-task, and 1 GB limits make it only a narrow starting point.

Alternatives

Label Studio is another freemium option with a free plan, free trial, and API, Linux, macOS, self-hosted, web, and Windows platforms; consider it when those platform options matter to your stack.

Labellerr offers a free Researcher Plan with 2,500 data credits, 1 seat, 1 workspace, and up to 10 projects, making it a relevant option for students and researchers with a small project footprint.

Roboflow has a free tier with 10 monthly credits, described as enough for about 30 model trainings or 80,000 inferences; consider it when that free allowance suits the workload.

Supervisely offers a free Community plan with 5 GB storage, 10,000 files, 2 members, and unlimited projects and annotations, a possible fit for teams whose needs align with those caps.

Ultralytics Platform offers a free plan with 100 GB storage, 10 GB per upload, 100 models, and three concurrent cloud training jobs; consider it when those stated free resources match the project.

Labelbox is a freemium alternative with a free plan and API and web platforms.

Pixano is a free alternative with API, desktop, web, and self-hosted platform support.

BasicAI offers private-cloud deployment from $6,600 per year, with customizable payment cycle, seats, storage, model calls, and on-premise deployment options.

Browse more options in Image Annotation Software, Video Annotation Software, AI Image Annotation Tools, Data Labeling Software, and AI Data Labeling Tools.

Verdict

Choose CVAT if your team needs diverse annotation, review workflows, and flexible deployment in one labeling platform. Its strongest case is the combination of data-type breadth and hosting choice; look elsewhere if formal ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certification is mandatory, or if Community's missing quality and AI features are essential.

	CVAT	ELAN
Free plan	Yes	No
Free trial	No	No
Paid from	$1.92/mo	—
Open source	No	No
Platforms	api, self-hosted, Web	Linux, macOS, Windows
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Paid from	23 /user/mo	—
Frame-accurate marking	—	Yes
Drawing annotations	—	No
Custom labels or fields	—	Yes
Review workflow	—	No
Dataset export	—	Yes

CVAT vs ELAN

CVAT

ELAN