BRAT

Web · Mac · Linux · Self-hosted

Freedom report

Three barsScore 6.5

Free tierA free tier is on its own pricing page
Open codeNo open-source code on record
Runs widely3 of 6 device platforms
DocumentedPlans, terms and facts published

BRAT is ranked #4 of 21 in AI data labeling tools on Freedom251. It runs on Linux, macOS, Self-hosted, Web. There is a free plan.

BRAT plans and pricing

All plans

brat v1.3 (Crunchy Frog) Free Open source · MIT License · Self-hosted installation brat.nlplab.org · 2 Oct 2026

Compared on AI data labeling tools

Supported modalities: text
Model-assisted labeling: Yes
Human review workflows: Yes
Custom ontologies: Yes
Deployment options: self hosted
API access: Yes

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The record

Purpose: brat is a web-based tool for structured text annotation, where annotations have fixed forms that computers can process.
Annotation types: It supports text spans, binary relations, n-ary associations, attributes, normalization annotations, and freeform notes.
Configurable: Annotation categories, types, and constraints are configurable for different text annotation tasks.
Collaboration: Multiple annotators can work simultaneously on the same collection or document and see each other’s edits nearly as they are made.
External resources: Normalization can associate annotations with external resources such as Freebase, Wikipedia, and Open Biomedical Ontologies.
Automatic annotation: The tool can integrate output from automatic text annotation services accessible as web services.
Languages: The server and client support Unicode, including nearly 100 different scripts.
Exports: Annotations can be exported in brat stand-off format, and visualizations in SVG, PNG, PDF, or EPS.
Validation and search: brat validates annotations against configured constraints after edits and supports searches across documents or collections, including key-word-in-context concordancing.
Hosting requirements: A new server installation assumes a UNIX-like environment; the installation guide says Windows users can run it in a virtual machine with a UNIX-like operating system.
Security limitation: The experimental standalone server is not security-hardened and is not recommended for sensitive data or systems accessible from the internet; the guide recommends a full web server for production.
Support: The project directs usage questions to its mailing list and bug reports or feature requests to its GitHub issue tracker.
Project origin: The project says it was developed collaboratively by researchers from several groups interested in text annotation.
Price from: Free

Where it ranks on Freedom251

Best AI Data Labeling Tools in 2026#4 of 21

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Sources

brat.nlplab.org/introduction.html· checked 2 Oct 2026
brat.nlplab.org/features.html· checked 2 Oct 2026
brat.nlplab.org/installation.html· checked 2 Oct 2026
brat.nlplab.org/contact.html· checked 2 Oct 2026
brat.nlplab.org/about.html· checked 2 Oct 2026
brat.nlplab.org· checked 2 Oct 2026