Technologies such as natural language processing (NLP), computer vision (CV), or generative AI, are all fueled on data. Businesses are increasingly relying on AI data collection services to obtain this data.
Innodata Inc. is an AI data service provider that claims to help companies fulfill their AI data needs. However, our analysis has highlighted certain limitations in working with Innodata Inc.
Readers interested in Innodata fall under 2 categories; select yours to see information that is relevant to you:
If you are considering Innodata, this article offers an in-depth review of the company and offers 3 alternatives.
Top 3 Innodata alternatives (for workers)
This section compares the alternatives based on criteria that are useful for potential or current workers of Innodata.
Table 1. Innodata alternatives comparison (for workers)
* The data for worker ratings is gathered from Trustpilot, where most reviewers are workers rather than buyers.
** Data gathered from analyzing worker reviews.
Top 3 Innodata alternatives (for customers)
This section compares the alternatives based on criteria that are useful for potential buyers or customers of Innodata’s services.
Table 2. Innodata alternatives comparison (for customers)
| Companies | User ratings out of 5 (Avg)* |
Number of Reviews* |
Mobile Application |
ISO 27001 Certification |
Code of Conduct |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clickworker | 4.1 | 68 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Appen | 4.2 | 54 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Amazon Mechanical Turk | 4 | 28 | ✖ | N/A | ✖ |
| Innodata Inc | N/A | N/A | ✖ | ✅ | ✖ |
* Data was gathered from B2B review platforms such as G2, TrustRadius, and Capterra.
Notes for the tables
- The comparison is based on publicly available and verifiable data
- The companies are ranked based on the number of reviews.
Innodata Inc review
Founded in 1988 and based in New Jersey, USA, Innodata offers different solutions for AI development. Innodata Inc. was formerly known as Innodata Isogen, Inc. The company claims to manage over 4,000 experts (SMEs) globally who have expertise in multiple industries, including healthcare, legal, and finance. With its workforce, it claims to offer the following services:
- Data collection: It offers customized natural and synthetic data collection services for AI model training. This includes sourcing a range of data types to suit different AI and machine learning needs.
- Data annotation: Innodata also offers data annotation or labeling services, focusing on complex and sensitive data.
- Applied AI services: This service is aimed to make regular, complex business tasks more efficient by using expert help.
- Generative AI: The company also claims to offer datasets for generative AI development.
Innodata review (for customers)
This section discusses some of the pros and cons of purchasing Innodata’s services based on our analysis of the company and its alternatives.
1. Additional services
Innodata offers data annotation with its data collection service, which is a plus point since they are both complementary services for preparing datasets for machine learning models. Some companies do not offer data annotation along with their other data services; you need to use your own tool, which can be inefficient.
2. Lack of reviews
Customer or user reviews on B2B review platforms, such as G2, TrustRadius or Capterra, help potential buyers look at the company from its customer/user’s viewpoint.
Our analysis did not find any reviews for Innodata, indicating that the company may not have a large customer base. This can make it difficult for potential customers to understand how well the company meets up to its claims and what issues its customers face.
3. Smaller crowd size
The level of diversity and the preparation speed of a human-generated dataset depends on how many people work on that dataset. As compared to its alternatives like Clickworker or Appen, Innodata has a significantly smaller pool of workers (around 4000) who work on its data services. This means Innodata will be able to provide datasets in fewer languages and domains. This also indicates that Innodata might have issues preparing large-scale datasets in shorter periods of time.
Here is a comparison of the crowd sizes of all the Innodata and its alternatives:
Figure 1. Crowd size comparison
Detailed review of alternatives
This section reviews all the 3 alternatives mentioned in this article.
1. Clickworker
Clickworker is a good alternative to Innodata since it offers various AI services and data solutions through its crowdsourcing platform. The company leverages its global network of over 6 million workers to complete AI data projects.
Here is a list of Clickworker’s data solutions:
- Datasets collected and generated by humans
- Data types include text, audio, speech, image, and video
- Data annotation services
- Research/survey data
- Reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF).
Pros and cons of working with Clickworker:
- A customer review regarding Clickworker’s AI services and its ‘reliable’ crowd.1
- While some customers find Clickworker’s prices high, they also find its annotation services efficient.2
2. Appen
Appen is another alternative to Innodata and a popular name in the AI data space. Its offerings include:
- Data collection & generation
- Data types include image, video, text, audio, speech
- Data annotation
- Data validation
Pros and cons of working with Appen:
- Despite its popularity, recent news has highlighted that Appen’s performance is in decline as the company loses customers and goes through financial losses.3
- A customer review regarding Appen’s customer support, pricing, data quality, and platform.4
3. Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk)
Amazon Mechanical Turk, or MTurk, is also a popular alternative for Innodata, offering AI services through a crowdsourcing model and a marketplace.
Here is a list of their offerings:
- AI data collection and generation of different data types
- Data annotation
- Market research & surveys
- Academic research
- Other data services
Pros and cons of working with Amazon Mechanical Turk
- Customers identified that most workers on MTurk’s platform are not fluent English speakers. This can cause issues for clients who require human-generated data in English.5
- A customer found its data collection service to be efficient. However, various customers found the quality of the work done by the workers to be low.6.
Learn about Amazon Mechanical Turk alternatives here.
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Further reading
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External resources
- Clickworker customer review on reliability and easy-to-use platform. G2. Accessed: 06/December/2023.
- Customer review regarding Clickworker’s data annotation services. G2. Accessed: 06/December/2023.
- Hayden Field, (2023). Inside the turmoil at Appen, the former AI darling that’s reeling from executive exits, big losses. CNBC. Accessed: 06/December/2023.
- Appen’s customer review with positive and negative comments. G2. Accessed: 06/December/2023.
- A negative review about MTurk workers’ language ability. G2. Accessed: 08/December/2023.
- Mturk customer review data collection. G2. Accessed: 08/December/2023