CVAT vs Prodigy

These two annotation tools answer different questions. CVAT is aimed at image, video, 3D and audio work, offers a hosted cloud with a free tier, and keeps a self-hosted edition for teams that want to leave the cloud later. Prodigy is a scriptable tool that you buy once, install with Python and run entirely on your own machine, so no data leaves it. One is a subscription with seats and limits, the other a lifetime licence with a year of upgrades. Your annotators, your data type and your budget rhythm decide the pick.

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Both are reviewed in full in our data labeling software ranking: CVAT and Prodigy.

1. 01

   A lifetime licence against a seat subscription

   Prodigy's buy page lists a personal licence at 390 USD and a company licence at 490 USD per seat in packs of five, excluding tax, with twelve months of upgrades included. CVAT's Team plan is $33 per user per month, or $23 per user per month yearly, for two to 50 seats. A long project with a stable team costs less on Prodigy over time, while CVAT lets a team pay only for the months in which it labels, and add or remove seats freely.

   Edge: Prodigy

2. 02

   How far the free CVAT plan goes

   CVAT lists a Free plan with no credit card: one project, three tasks, 1 GB of storage, one cloud storage connection, 100 SAM segmentation calls a month and annotation-only export. The Solo plan lifts that to 10 projects, 250 tasks, 25 GB of storage and 10,000 SAM calls a month. Prodigy lists no free plan or trial on its buy page or home page, only a linked live demo and a free interim licence that researchers at degree-granting institutions can request by email.

   Edge: CVAT

3. 03

   Image and video against text and audio

   CVAT's pricing page names image, video, 3D and audio as supported data types, says nothing about text labeling, and offers model-assisted labeling with SAM 2, SAM 3, Ultralytics and Hugging Face models plus export in more than 20 formats including COCO and YOLO. Prodigy lists 23 annotation interfaces covering text, images, audio, video and relations, plus recipes for entity recognition and text classification. For text work Prodigy is the clearer fit, for video and 3D CVAT is.

   Depends on the buyer

4. 04

   Where your annotation data physically sits

   Prodigy's docs say it runs locally, never phones home, and that no data ever leaves your machine. They describe no hosted option at all, and the docs say Prodigy is not software as a service. CVAT offers three routes: CVAT Online as a managed cloud, CVAT Enterprise self-hosted or air-gapped, and the open-source Community edition, which the repository licenses under MIT and installs with Docker. CVAT gives more choices, while Prodigy gives a single, simple guarantee about where your data lives.

   Depends on the buyer

5. 05

   Who can start annotating on day one

   Prodigy installs through Python 3.8 or newer on macOS, Linux or Windows, and recipes are Python scripts, so annotators cannot simply sign up and begin. That suits developers who want custom workflows and active learning that picks which examples to label next. CVAT Online is a web service where a Team plan adds seats and role-based access, and SSO is listed only for yearly plans. Non-developers reach CVAT faster, and developers reach Prodigy's scripting faster.

   Edge: CVAT

6. 06

   The companies and where they are based

   Prodigy is operated by ExplosionAI GmbH, with an imprint address in Berlin, Germany and a Charlottenburg court registry entry. CVAT is sold by CVAT.ai Corporation, whose about page lists a US office in Wilmington, Delaware and an EU office in Paphos, Cyprus, and says the tool began inside Intel in 2017. Neither vendor names a parent company or an acquisition in the sources we checked. For a strictly German operator, Prodigy is the match, while CVAT gives a US and EU presence.

   Edge: Prodigy

Can a three-person team label for free on CVAT?

The Free plan covers one to two members, one project and three tasks with 1 GB of storage.

A third person or a larger dataset pushes you to the Solo or Team plan. The Community edition is the free route without those limits, but you host it yourself.

What happens to Prodigy after the first year?

The licence is yours to keep and use, since the page says pay once and use forever. The twelve months cover free upgrades, and no price for renewing them appears on the buy page. Plan for that line if you want newer releases.

Does either tool need an internet connection to label?

Prodigy works offline on your own hardware, and its docs say nothing has to be uploaded to the cloud. CVAT Online is a managed cloud service, so it needs a connection.

The Enterprise edition is described as on-premises and air-gapped, which is the CVAT route for isolated networks.

• CVAT pricing page: Team seat price, Free plan caps on tasks and storage, Solo limits, yearly-only SSO.
• CVAT home page: managed, self-hosted and open-source editions, SAM model assist, 20+ export formats.
• CVAT about page: Intel origin in 2017, Delaware and Cyprus offices.
• CVAT GitHub repository: MIT licence on Community, Docker as install prerequisite.
• Prodigy buy page: licence prices, upgrade period, Python 3.8 requirement, 23 interfaces.
• Prodigy documentation: runs locally, no data leaves the machine, recipes as Python scripts, active learning.
• Prodigy home page: no free trial, academic interim licence by email, pay-once wording.
• Explosion legal page: ExplosionAI GmbH imprint in Berlin and court registry entry.