Labelbox redefines the Annotate LBU as a one-time per-data-row charge
Labelbox's billing docs restate Annotate metering: an LBU is now charged once per data row on first submission, and reusing that row in other projects is free.
In Annotate, you consume LBUs when you submit labels to a project - billing docs also pointed readers to an LBU estimate calculator.
In Annotate, you consume LBUs when a data row is first submitted to a project and labeled. This is a one-time charge per data row; submitting the same data row to additional projects does not consume additional LBUs. The calculator pointer is replaced by a pointer to the Limits page.
Proof of change
Labelbox's pricing pages, as we captured them on two dates.
Showing the whole page as captured — scroll either panel, or open it at full size.
- These captures are 88 days apart, so anything that changed and reverted in between would not appear here.
- 3 pages had no counterpart in the earlier capture and are not shown.
Both images are our own captures, taken on the dates shown. The pixels are unmodified — nothing is retouched, and where a region is highlighted the marker is drawn over the image, not into it. Open either capture to see it at full resolution.
Labelbox has restated what triggers an Annotate charge, and the restatement changes the billable unit rather than the price. The billing docs now read: “In Annotate, you consume LBUs when a data row is first submitted to a project and labeled. This is a one-time charge per data row; submitting the same data row to additional projects does not consume additional LBUs.”
The old wording metered the act of submitting labels to a project. The new wording meters the data row, once, for its whole life on the platform. For any team that runs the same corpus through more than one project - a second pass, a different ontology, a re-label for a new task, a consensus round - that is a direct reduction in what they are billed. Video already worked this way and still does: the entire video is charged once regardless of how many frames you label, and going back to label more frames later costs nothing extra. Skipped data rows still count as labeled.
Two smaller edits landed alongside it. The billing page’s closing pointer to an LBU estimate calculator is gone, replaced by “See our Limits page to learn more about the platform limitations per tier” - consistent with the LBU pricing calculator itself now returning 404. And the Limits page it points to publishes a four-column tier table (Free, Starter, Enterprise, Education) that carries the only surviving first-party statement of the rate: a fixed $0.10 per LBU on Starter, against 500 LBU free each month on Free.
labelbox.com/pricing and the LBU pricing calculator now return 404. The homepage repositions Labelbox as 'the RL data engine for AI teams' around Horizon, Terra, Recursion and Alignerr, with Contact us / Start for free as the only paths. The $0.10 per LBU Starter rate survives only on the docs Limits page, alongside a 500 LBU/month free allowance, and Annotate metering is restated as a one-time per-data-row charge.