Label Your Data vs Kili Technology: Which Labeling Approach Fits Your ML Workflow?

The Annotation Vendor Decision ML Teams Get Wrong

Your machine learning algorithm accuracy plateaus. Your team burns the budget on data annotation that doesn’t improve performance. You’re evaluating vendors, but feature lists don’t tell you which operating model actually fits your workflow.

The mistake most ML teams make: choosing annotation vendors based on capabilities rather than operational fit. One vendor operates as a managed service that handles your annotation workforce. The other provides platform infrastructure for teams building their own annotation operations. 

Both serve enterprise clients with strong compliance, but they solve fundamentally different problems.

This comparison examines Label Your Data vs Kili Technology across service delivery, platform capabilities, automation, quality control, integration, and pricing to help you determine which approach matches your machine learning workflow.

Label Your Data vs Kili Technology: Service-First vs Platform-First Models

Label Your Data — managed annotation with platform solution

Label Your Data is the industry-leading data annotation services provider. Founded in 2020, the company maintains 1,000+ trained annotation experts across 25 countries supporting 55 languages.

The vendor emphasizes human expertise:

• Clients describe requirements and receive dedicated account managers
• Labeled data delivered on regular schedules
• Data annotation platform primarily for computer vision self-serve
• NLP, audio, and complex annotation handled through managed services

This is tool-agnostic outsourcing. Label Your Data works within your existing infrastructure rather than forcing you to commit to their platform.

Kili Technology — platform for teams managing their own workforce

Kili Technology takes the opposite approach. Platform-first company with optional managed services. Founded in 2018, they built comprehensive labeling infrastructure for data science teams wanting direct control.

The platform supports:

• Teams scaling from individual contributors to 1,000+ annotators
• Project management dashboards and workforce analytics
• Self-serve operations with deep technical integration
• Managed annotation as add-on

This is infrastructure for teams who want control over their annotation operations and plan to build internal capability.

The architectural difference shapes everything else. Teams without annotation infrastructure get operational complexity handled by Label Your Data. Teams building annotation capability get superior tooling and control from Kili.

Platform Capabilities: Label Your Data vs Kili Technology

Data type coverage

Label Your Data’s strength: 3D and spatial data

Competitive advantage in point cloud, aka LiDAR annotation:

• PCD formats with JSON calibration files
• Sensor fusion combining LiDAR with RGB camera data
• Multi-frame sequential annotation for autonomous systems

Computer vision tasks: bounding boxes, polygons, polylines, keypoints, semantic segmentation, instance segmentation, panoptic segmentation, image recognition, 3D point clouds and cuboids.

Video versatility: frame-by-frame annotation with multiple types (not just bounding boxes).

Kili Technology’s strength: Document intelligence and LLM workflows

Platform optimized for text and document processing:

• Native PDF annotation (multipage documents, invoices, contracts)
• Named entity recognition and entity relation extraction
• LLM fine tuning: RLHF ranking tasks, supervised fine-tuning for dialogue systems
• Geospatial tools with EPSG coordinate reference systems

Notable limitation: video annotation currently supports bounding boxes only. Teams needing polygon tracking or segmentation on video hit platform constraints.

Data type capabilities compared

Automation and ML assistance

Kili’s platform-native automation

Built-in ML features for annotation efficiency:

• Foundation models: SAM, SAM 2, ChatGPT for pre-annotation (claims 10x faster)
• Active learning: uncertainty-based prioritization focuses effort on high-impact data
• LLM co-pilot: one-click pre-annotation for text
• Model-in-the-loop workflows integrated into platform

Label Your Data’s tool-agnostic approach

Automated annotation through flexibility, not built-in features:

• API access for programmatic workflows
• Works with CVAT, Label Studio, custom data annotation tools
• Customizable exports for any ML framework
• Less platform automation, but more freedom to use existing ML-assisted approaches

Teams with existing ML tooling preserve investments with the tool-agnostic approach. Teams building from scratch get faster paths with platform automation.

Data annotation quality

Label Your Data: relationship-driven QA

Three-tier pipeline with human oversight:

• Annotator self-review, peer review, expert validation
• 98%+ accuracy benchmark
• Cross-reference consensus for subjective tasks
• Milestone checkpoints for large machine learning datasets
• Account managers surface issues through communication, not just dashboards

Kili Technology: metrics-driven quality tools

Programmatic quality monitoring:

• Consensus scoring (inter-annotator agreement measurement)
• Honeypot testing against golden standards
• Automated error detection
• Workforce performance dashboards
• 95%+ accuracy guarantee

Both approaches deliver. The question is whether you prefer human project management or programmatic monitoring.

Technical integration approaches compared

Kili’s deep technical integration

Platform designed for ML workflow embedding:

• Open-source Python SDK (GitHub/PyPI)
• GraphQL API for flexible querying
• Native exports: YOLO V4/V5/V7/V8, PASCAL VOC, COCO, TensorFlow Record
• Cloud storage: AWS S3, GCS, Azure (data stays in your infrastructure)
• Webhooks for training automation
• Deployment: on-premise, customer cloud, or managed

Label Your Data’s platform-agnostic integration

Label Your Data integrates with your existing annotation tools rather than requiring platform adoption:

• REST API for upload/download automation
• Customizable exports adaptable to any framework
• Compatible with CVAT, Label Studio, custom interfaces
• Trade-off: no SDK or pre-built integrations, but no platform lock-in

Teams standardized on specific frameworks get smoother data flow with Kili’s SDK. Teams using varied tooling get more freedom with Label Your Data’s tool-agnostic approach to high-quality data annotation.

When labeling guidelines get complicated, Label Your Data delivers better accuracy. For high-volume work where accuracy is critical, a managed service like Label Your Data is worth it.

Bell Chen Founder and CEO, Superpencil (Enlighten Animation Labs)

Data Annotation Pricing, Compliance, and Operational Realities

Label Your Data: transparent per-unit pricing

Published rates (no quotes required):

• $0.02 per bounding box
• $0.015 per keypoint
• $0.02 per NLP entity
• $6 per annotator hour (complex work)
• No minimum orders
• Free pilot project
• $100 minimum platform balance after pilot
• Typical projects: $3,000–$10,000+

Use our data annotation pricing calculator to estimate costs instantly. Select your application field (computer vision, NLP, or other), choose annotation method, specify volume, and get real-time pricing before commitment.

Kili Technology: tiered platform model

Tiered pricing structure:

• Free tier: 5,000 annotations, 5 collaborators, 500MB storage
• Paid tiers: usage-based (requires quotes)
• Managed services: $6–$60/hour add-on
• 20% discount on annual billing

Teams needing budget approval simplify planning with Label Your Data’s cost calculator and free pilot with no forced commitment. Those wanting extended platform testing can evaluate Kili’s free tier (5,000 annotations).

Compliance credentials and security

Both maintain enterprise-grade compliance for regulated industries.

Certifications:

• Label Your Data: PCI DSS Level 1, ISO 27001:2013, GDPR/CCPA/HIPAA
• Kili Technology: SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001:2013, HIPAA

Security approaches:

• Label Your Data: background checks, NDAs, secure workspaces, video surveillance, in-house servers
• Kili Technology: validated by defense contractors (Thales, Safran), on-premise deployment options

Label Your Data’s PCI DSS Level 1 particularly suits payment processing. Both handle healthcare, defense, financial services.

The key difference comes down to control versus speed. Kili shines when you want full ownership of the workflow. Label Your Data is ideal when speed, security, and simplicity matter most — you hand off the workload and get high-quality annotations back quickly.

Ali Yilmaz Co-founder&CEO, Aitherapy

Client work and proven use cases

Label Your Data serves academic institutions (Yale, Princeton, KAUST, George Washington University, Technological University Dublin) and enterprise clients across vision AI (Nexvision for defense/aerospace embedded systems), AI safety (Guardrails AI for LLM compliance filters), autonomous vehicles (Nodar for 3D perception), and AI-powered software (Skylum photo editing). 

Additional case studies include military drone navigation and NATO-compliant defense annotation.

Kili Technology focuses primarily on European enterprises: financial services (LCL Bank, Crédit Agricole), manufacturing (Airbus, Renault, Stellantis), luxury retail (Louis Vuitton), and insurance (Groupe Covéa). Their case studies show regulatory compliance processing and high-volume document analysis.

Both vendors handle complex, regulated projects. Label Your Data serves sectors from research to enterprise with diverse computer vision, NLP, and AI safety needs. Kili concentrates on platform deployments for large organizations with document-heavy workflows.

Making the Vendor Decision: Label Your Data or Kili Technology?

Where each vendor genuinely excels

Label Your Data’s core strengths:

• Turnkey managed services (no infrastructure required)
• Tool-agnostic flexibility (preserves existing investments)
• 3D point cloud/LiDAR specialization
• No minimum orders (accessible entry)
• Video annotation beyond bounding boxes
• Published transparent pricing
• 24/7 availability including weekends
• Dedicated account management

Kili Technology’s core strengths:

• ML automation (SAM, active learning, LLM co-pilots)
• Deep technical integration (SDK, GraphQL, native exports)
• Self-serve scalability (1–1,000+ annotators)
• Native PDF/document annotation
• LLM fine-tuning workflows
• Free tier for evaluation
• Workforce analytics dashboards
• Platform for building annotation capability

For deeper analysis of Kili Technology’s capabilities, read our Kili Technology company review. We’ve also compared Kili against other vendors in Kili Technology vs. iMerit and Kili Technology vs. CloudFactory in-depth guides.

Pick your operating model

The vendor choice hinges on the operational model. Outsourcing annotation work? Label Your Data provides managed services with tool-agnostic flexibility and transparent pricing. Building internal capability? Kili Technology provides platform infrastructure with ML automation and deep integration. 

Both maintain enterprise compliance and quality delivery (Label Your Data: 4.9/5 on G2, 5.0/5 on Clutch; Kili: 4.7/5 on G2). 

You’ve likely experienced the frustration of choosing vendors based on feature lists only to discover operational misalignment months later. This comparison cuts through that: Label Your Data operates as a managed service provider with tool-agnostic flexibility. Kili Technology operates as an annotation platform for teams building internal capability. 

The decision comes down to where annotation sits in your workflow. If you’re building annotation operations as core capability, platform infrastructure provides the control you need. If you’re outsourcing to focus on model development, managed services deliver without forcing infrastructure changes while preserving your existing ML tooling.

About Label Your Data

If you choose managed annotation services, run a free data pilot with Label Your Data. Our outsourcing strategy has helped many companies scale their ML projects. Here’s why:

No Commitment

Check our performance based on a free trial

Flexible Pricing

Pay per labeled object or per annotation hour

Tool-Agnostic

Working with every annotation tool, even your custom tools

Data Compliance

Work with a data-certified vendor: PCI DSS Level 1, ISO:2700, GDPR, CCPA

FAQ

Can Label Your Data integrate with our existing ML pipeline without switching platforms?

Yes. Label Your Data works tool-agnostically with CVAT, Label Studio, or custom annotation interfaces. No platform migration required. You get managed annotation services while preserving your ML infrastructure investments. Kili requires adopting their platform architecture.

Which vendor is better for autonomous vehicle projects requiring LiDAR annotation?

Label Your Data specializes in 3D point cloud and LiDAR annotation with sensor fusion capabilities (combining LiDAR with RGB camera data). Their case studies include military drones and autonomous vehicles. Kili Technology doesn’t explicitly document LiDAR capabilities, and their video annotation is limited to bounding boxes only.

What’s the actual cost difference between Label Your Data and Kili Technology?

Label Your Data has transparent per-unit pricing: $0.02/bounding box, $0.015/keypoint, $6/hour for complex work. No minimums. Free pilot project to test service quality before committing. 

Kili’s paid tiers require quotes but offer a free tier (5,000 annotations) for evaluation. For budget predictability and smaller projects, Label Your Data’s pricing plus free pilot simplifies planning and procurement.

Do I need in-house annotation expertise to use either annotation solution?

No for Label Your Data because they handle recruiting, training, managing, and QA through dedicated annotation experts and account managers. Yes for Kili Technology: their platform assumes you’re managing your own annotation workforce (1-1,000+ annotators). Choose based on whether you’re building internal annotation capability or outsourcing it.

Can either vendor handle our compliance requirements?

Both maintain enterprise-grade compliance. Label Your Data is data-compliant: PCI DSS Level 1, ISO 27001, GDPR/CCPA/HIPAA. Kili Technology: SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, HIPAA. Label Your Data’s PCI DSS Level 1 particularly suits payment processing. Both serve defense, healthcare, and financial services clients.