Labelbox pricing in 2026 with LBU rates and real image labeling costs
Labelbox pricing in October 2026 has three plans. Free gives you 500 Labelbox Units (LBUs) a month, Starter charges a fixed 0.10 USD per LBU, and Enterprise is quoted by sales. Labeling an image uses 1 LBU, keeping 60 images in Catalog uses 1 LBU every month, and 5 model predictions use 1 LBU. A team that labels 3,000 images a month and stores 30,000 lands near 410 USD a month at the Starter rate. The numbers come from the Labelbox limits and billing documentation, because labelbox.com/pricing returned a 404 when we checked.
If you label only images and want one fixed number for the year, compare these costs with a flat priced Labelbox alternative for image annotation before you sign.
Labelbox plans and prices at a glance
| Plan | Price | Limits | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 0 USD | 500 LBUs a month, up to 30 users, 50 projects, 25 ontologies | Pilots and small research projects |
| Starter | 0.10 USD per LBU, fixed rate | No user, project or LBU limit | Teams that want to pay as they go without a contract |
| Enterprise | Custom quote | No limits, volume discounts | Companies that need SSO, HIPAA, labeling services or a negotiated rate |
Some extras are billed outside the LBU meter: Foundry model inference, labeling services, SSO and HIPAA compliance. Labelbox says these may need a credit card on file, and Enterprise customers settle them with their account manager.
How Labelbox units are charged per product
Every part of the platform draws from the same LBU balance, but at different rates. These are the documented rates for images, the data type most computer vision teams care about.
| Product | What it charges for | Rate for images | Billed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Catalog | Storing data rows | 1 LBU per 60 images | Every month |
| Annotate | Labeling a data row | 1 LBU per image, skipped images count | Once per image |
| Model | Predictions and model runs | 1 LBU per 5 images | Once per image |
Other data types cost more. Geospatial and medical tiled imagery uses 1 LBU per 6 rows in Catalog, 4 LBUs per labeled row and 1 LBU per row on Model. Live multimodal and LLM work costs 20 LBUs per labeled row. Documents are charged per page and video per frame.
Two details catch teams out. Storage is charged every month, so the Catalog line grows with your dataset even in months when nobody labels. And skipped rows count as labeled, so a labeler who skips bad images still spends the budget. Labelbox does give a seven day grace period after the first upload, in which you can delete unused rows without paying for them.
How much does Labelbox cost for an image labeling team
Here are three image projects priced at the documented Starter rate of 0.10 USD per LBU. Each assumes model pre-labels on every new image.
| Scenario | Labeled per month | Stored | LBUs per month | Cost at 0.10 USD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pilot | 400 | 2,000 | About 513 | About 51 USD, just over the free 500 |
| Growing vision team | 3,000 | 30,000 | About 4,100 | About 410 USD |
| Production program | 10,000 | 200,000 | About 15,333 | About 1,533 USD |
The middle row breaks down as 3,000 LBUs for labeling, 500 for storage and 600 for predictions. Now let that team keep every image for a year. By month twelve it stores 63,000 images, the storage line alone is 1,050 LBUs, and the monthly bill is near 465 USD with the same labeling work. These are estimates from public rates, not a Labelbox quote, and Enterprise contracts are negotiated, often with volume discounts.
What you get on the Labelbox free plan
The free plan is a real working tier, not a timed trial. You get 500 LBUs each month, up to 30 users, 50 projects and 25 ontologies, and up to 10 million imported data rows. When the 500 LBUs run out, you can still open and export your data, but you cannot add data rows, labels or predictions until the next billing period.
The catch for image teams is storage. With 6,000 images in Catalog, 100 of your 500 LBUs go to storage before anyone draws a box. A dataset of 30,000 images uses the whole free allowance on storage alone.
Is Labelbox worth the price for your team
Labelbox earns its price when you use the breadth. One contract covers images, video, documents, geospatial tiles, LLM evaluation and preference data, plus a managed expert workforce. If your company labels several data types and wants one vendor, the LBU meter is a fair way to share one budget across them.
The math changes when images are the only thing you label. You pay storage on every image every month, model runs come from the same meter, and SSO is an Enterprise add on. A flat plan is easier to forecast. ImageLabeling, for example, includes 3,500 AI pre-labeled images, 100,000 stored images and 10 seats on the Team plan at 149 USD a month, or 74 USD billed yearly. The production program in the table above, at about 1,533 USD a month on Labelbox Starter, fits the Business plan at 499 USD a month with 12,000 AI pre-labeled images and one million stored images.
Finance teams that already track cloud and SaaS bills in one place can add the LBU invoice to their cloud cost management dashboard, so the storage line is visible before it surprises anyone. To see what the AI pre-labels look like on your own data, the AI data labeling page walks through how pre-labels are reviewed and approved.
How much does Labelbox cost?
Labelbox has a free plan with 500 LBUs a month, a Starter plan at a fixed 0.10 USD per LBU, and custom Enterprise pricing, as of October 2026. For images, labeling costs 1 LBU per image, storage 1 LBU per 60 images each month and predictions 1 LBU per 5 images. SSO, HIPAA and labeling services are billed separately.
What is an LBU in Labelbox?
An LBU, or Labelbox Unit, is the usage credit behind all Labelbox billing. Catalog storage, Annotate labeling and Model predictions each consume LBUs at their own rate. On the Starter plan one LBU costs 0.10 USD, and on the free plan you get 500 LBUs a month at no charge.
Is Labelbox free?
Labelbox has a free plan with 500 LBUs a month, up to 30 users and 50 projects. It is enough for a pilot of a few hundred images. Once the LBUs are used, you can view and export data but cannot add rows, labels or predictions until the next month.
Does Labelbox charge per user?
No. Labelbox does not charge per seat. The free plan allows up to 30 users, and Starter and Enterprise have no user limit. Cost depends on how many data rows you store, label and run through models, measured in LBUs.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Labelbox for image labeling?
For image only work, a flat priced tool is usually cheaper and easier to budget. ImageLabeling plans start at 24 USD a month billed yearly, include stored images and AI pre-labels in the price, and export COCO, YOLO and Pascal VOC. See the full Labelbox alternative comparison.