Usage and accounts

Labelbox uses Labelbox Units (LBUs) to track customer usage. This page contains information about how LBUs are structured and how Labelbox uses them to measure your account usage.

Labelbox Units (LBUs)

A Labelbox Unit (LBU) is a normalized unit of data in the Labelbox platform. An LBU is equivalent to one data row (for most data types) in each Labelbox product: Catalog, Annotate, and Model.

• One image data row in Catalog is equal to 1 LBU
• One image data row labeled in Annotate is equal to 1 LBU – no matter how many labels or annotations are created, deleted, or re-labeled on that one data row
• One image data row in Model is equal to 1 LBU – no matter how many model runs that data row is involved with

While one data row typically equals 1 LBU, more complex data row types can vary in LBU consumption. Please refer to the table below to understand how LBU consumption can vary based on data row type.

How can I view my usage?

You can easily track how many LBUs you’ve used across Catalog, Annotate, and Model.

If you are an account admin, you can navigate to the Usage tab within Workspace Settings to view your current month’s LBU usage. We also provide analytics on historical LBU consumption over time.

How does Labelbox calculate LBUs?

You are charged based on the number of LBUs your team accrues monthly. As your LBU count increases, the monthly cost per LBU decreases. The more you use Labelbox and derive value across Catalog, Annotate, and Model, the less you pay per additional LBU. Please refer to our pricing calculator to estimate your monthly cost.

LBU FAQs

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LBU consumption can vary by data type

The following FAQs assume that each data row accrues 1 LBU.

Please refer to the table above to understand how LBU consumption can vary based on data row type.

If I upload a data row in Catalog and label it in Annotate, how many LBU will I accrue?
You will accrue 2 LBUs – 1 LBU in Catalog and 1 LBU in Annotate (regardless of the number of annotations or labels).

If I upload a data row in Catalog, am I charged additionally for querying or conducting a similarity search?
Once you upload a data row to Catalog, you’ll be charged 1 LBU. There is no additional charge or limit to how many queries, slices, embeddings, or any Catalog feature that the data row is used in once it is in Catalog.

If I create multiple annotations on a data row, am I charged for the number of annotations or just 1 LBU?
Regardless of the number of annotations imported or created, you’ll only be charged 1 LBU per data row. This gives you the flexibility to create and edit as many annotations on a single data row for the cost of 1 LBU.

If I use the same data row (with the same data row ID) in two different Model Runs, but within the same model, am I charged 1 LBU or 2 LBUs?
You will be charged 1 LBU for that data row in Model, regardless of the number of model runs that data row is used in.

You can even use that data row across different models, and you will only be charged 1 LBU in our Model product.

Labelbox Boost rate

With Labelbox Boost, we offer premium labeling services with different ways to pay depending on your platform tier. All labeling services start at $8/hour.

For Enterprise users we offer expert guidance every step of the way. Rather than paying for labeling work on a fixed label-cost model (i.e annotations sold at a fixed cost), you only pay for the time when labeling occurs, which is measured by a labeler’s screen activity time.

Fo users on Starter and Standard tiers we offer the ability to prepay for a dedicated team of labelers by credit card. Receipts are sent via Stripe to the email used at check out. You can learn more about Boost Express and how to check out here.

While many of our competitors offer labeling services to train their own proprietary models and drive down their costs, we believe in a software-first approach. Our suite of labeling tools is designed to reduce the time it takes to label each asset, so our labelers are focused on completing tasks faster and on increasing the value of each label. Our goal is to offer the tools and automation techniques to help ML teams keep human labeling costs at a minimum.

Account FAQs

What is the difference between Standard and Enterprise?

A unique aspect of our pricing is that you only pay for what you need. We offer unlimited querying, searching, and annotations for both tiers.

Instead, pricing is determined by how much data you anticipate you’ll want to store or annotate, and ultimately how fast you want to develop your model. We recommend our Enterprise tier for teams who want to scale faster with greater security & compliance measures, more collaborative features, custom MSA, and best-in-class support. Contact sales to learn more.

How secure is my data with Labelbox?

We believe that your data should stay your data. We don’t use customer data in any tier, so you never have to worry about us using your data to further our own business agenda or proprietary models. We go even further by allowing everyone to integrate their cloud buckets via IAM Delegated Access to keep your raw data in your own cloud storage service.

If you’re interested in additional security measures, we offer Enterprise-grade security for our Enterprise tier, including SSO, and HIPAA. Learn more about security at Labelbox.

Easily upgrade your plan at any time

When should I upgrade my plan?

You can easily upgrade your plan from the Free tier to our Starter and Standard plans. We recommend upgrading your plan to avoid service disruptions as you continue to add more data. You will not be charged for any additional LBUs until you have hit your Free tier limit of 10k LBUs.

What happens if I hit my Free tier limit?

The current Free tier limit is 10k LBUs. If you hit your free tier limit but want to continue using Labelbox for your current projects, you can upgrade to a Starter or Standard Labelbox plan.

How do I upgrade my plan?

To upgrade to a Starter or Standard Labelbox plan, navigate to the Billing tab under Workspace Settings. Here, you can click "Switch to plan," enter payment details, and upgrade your account.

To upgrade to an annual Standard plan or Enterprise plan, please contact sales.

Can I cancel my self-serve paid plan?

After upgrading, you can cancel your plan at any time. Self-serve plan cancelations take into effect at the end of the current month. After downgrading, your account will be converted back to the Free tier with a limit of 10k LBUs.

How do I cancel my self-serve paid plan?

To cancel a self-serve Labelbox plan, navigate to the Billing tab under Workspace Settings and click Manage under the "Manage billing" section.

Billing FAQs

As a self-serve customer, how often am I billed?

Organizations are charged monthly for the previous month’s LBU usage. Billing will occur on the 1st of every month.

LBUs are recurring and cumulative in cost – this is determined by how many data rows you have across Catalog, Annotate, and Model in the given month. LBU counts can vary from month to month depending on the following:

1. How many data rows you’ve added or deleted from Catalog
2. If new data rows have been used in Annotate or Model

Starter tier customers are billed only for LBU usage.

Self-serve Standard tier customers are billed for monthly LBU usage and a monthly platform fee ($2,000 month). This platform fee is charged on the 1st of every month in advance.

What happens if I accidentally upload data?

We have a 7-day grace period before a data row accrues as an LBU in Catalog, unless it has already been used in Annotate or Model.

If you’re part of our Standard or Enterprise plans, you can contact our support team with any problems related to unintended data uploads.

What happens if I delete data?

If you delete data rows from Catalog, Annotate, or Model, those data rows will be removed from your total LBU count in subsequent months and you won’t be charged for those data rows in next month’s billing cycle.

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Warning

Deleting data rows in Catalog will prevent usage of those data rows in Annotate and Model.