What it does
To teach an AI to recognise things, people first have to mark examples, for instance drawing boxes around every car in thousands of photos. CVAT (Computer Vision Annotation Tool) is a platform for doing that work.
It handles images, video, audio and 3D data, and teams can share tasks, assign work and review each other's labels. You can connect your own AI models to suggest labels and speed things up.
This is the free, self-hosted community edition. The makers also offer an online version with a free plan, plus paid enterprise and labelling services.
Who it's for
AI teams, researchers and companies preparing labelled training data.
Can I use it without coding?
With some setup. Self-hosting uses Docker; there is also an online version you can use in a browser. New to this? Start here.
Can I run it?
- Cost
- Free, with optional paid extrasThe open-source version is free; the makers also sell a hosted or pro version.
- Runs on
- Web browser, Server, Cloud
- Privacy
- Your choice: run it on your device or use an online service
- API key
- Not needed
Try it
- Try the free plan of CVAT Online in your browser, or install Docker to run CVAT yourself.
- If self-hosting, create an admin account and sign in using Chrome or Edge.
- Create a project, upload images or videos, and define labels to start annotating.
Using Claude Code, Cursor or another AI coding assistant? Paste the prompt and it will walk you through the setup.New to this?
Before you install
- Only download from the official GitHub page. Copies with similar names exist for many popular projects.
- License (MIT): Very permissive: free to use, change and share, including for business.
- More on staying safe