Vertex AI and Roboflow

Vertex AI makes you draw every box, Roboflow auto labels them for you

Vertex AI (now Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform) runs inside Google Cloud, so labeling, training, and deployment come with cloud projects, IAM, buckets, and models you host yourself. Roboflow auto labels your classes and ships the model from one place your team can run without a dedicated ML group, and every plan, including Free, comes with self-hosted inference, model weights download, and a private workspace. Over 2 million engineers build with Roboflow.

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Why are companies choosing Roboflow?

Roboflow is enterprise vision AI infrastructure, used by more than half of the Fortune 100, with SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and air-gapped deployment. From the first labeled image to models on every line, without a dedicated ML platform team.

  • Auto label your own classes

    Describe your classes in plain text and Auto Label does the first pass, so your team reviews labels instead of drawing boxes.

  • No platform to maintain

    No cloud projects, buckets, or IAM to wire up before labeling starts, and no export pipeline to keep running.

  • Scale without adding headcount

    Retrain, redeploy, and roll models out to new cameras and sites from one place, with edge deployment built in.

  • Roboflow Annotate labeling cans with AI box prompting

    Fast data labeling

    Label data quickly with a suite of AI-assisted annotation tools to augment human labeling or fully automate your data labeling pipeline.

  • Workflow blocks for notifications and integrations

    Build vision AI applications with ease

    Use a low-code open source platform to simplify building and deploying vision AI applications.

  • A team reviewing a detected pallet in a warehouse aisle

    Machine learning expertise, always

    Work with account-dedicated AI specialists and Field Engineers to accelerate development and optimize performance.

  • Photos from datasets across industries

    Datasets and models for every industry

    Access thousands of datasets and pre-trained models to kickstart your computer vision projects.

  • Logos of OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta, Anthropic, Google and Qwen

    Flexible model licensing

    Choose from a range of licensing options to fit your needs, whether for commercial use, private deployment, or collaboration across teams.

Want to migrate from Vertex AI Auto Labeling to Roboflow?

  • Import images to Roboflow

    Bring image datasets from Google Cloud Storage to Roboflow for labeling and model training.

  • Deploy with Roboflow

    No matter where you train your model, use Roboflow's trusted deployment solutions.

  • Automate data labeling

    Use AI labeling in Roboflow to automate 90% of human labeling.

OK I’m ready, how do I use Roboflow?

Roboflow makes it easy to build, train, and deploy custom computer vision models, even if you’re not a machine learning expert.

Start a free Roboflow account

Talk to a Vision AI engineer about auto labeling your data

Bring us your Vertex AI dataset and we'll show Auto Label on it on the first call.

Ask us about:

  • A live demo of Auto Label on your own images
  • Import of your existing labels in 40+ formats
  • Training and deployment in the same platform
  • Pricing compared against your current training and hosting hours

Over 80,000 organizations build with Roboflow.

  • Rivian
  • Pella
  • Chobani
  • USG Corporation
  • BNSF Railway
  • American Woodmark
Start where you are

Compare Vertex AI Auto Labeling and Roboflow

Vertex AI, now Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, is Google Cloud's general-purpose ML platform. AutoML can train an image model without code, but everything around it runs on Google Cloud infrastructure your team has to set up and keep running: a project with IAM roles, images staged in Cloud Storage, labels imported as CSV or JSON Lines, boxes drawn by hand in the console since Google's human labeling service shut down in October 2024, and Edge models exported to TF Lite or a container for you to host. Google's Cloud Storage Auto Annotate runs fixed pre-trained models and can't label your own classes. Each new use case or site repeats that setup, which is why vision on Vertex AI tends to need a dedicated ML or cloud engineering team to scale.

Roboflow is built so the team that knows the parts can run vision without that overhead. Describe your classes in plain text and auto label a dataset: teams automate up to 90% of human labeling. Review in Roboflow Annotate, train RF-DETR or YOLO in one click, and deploy to a hosted API, a Jetson on the line, or an air-gapped server from the same place. The next use case, camera, or plant reuses the same project, Workflows, and deployment, so vision scales with your operation instead of your ML headcount.

Vertex AI vs Roboflow: Feature by Feature

FeatureRoboflowVertex AI
Auto labeling for your classesYes, Auto Label labels the classes you describe in plain textNot in the labeling tool; Gemini bounding box detection is a separate Experimental feature not connected to datasets
Manual labeling toolsBoxes, polygons, keypoints, and classification, with Smart Polygon and Label AssistDraw each bounding box by hand in the console, then pick a label
Managed human labelingAvailable as a managed labeling serviceShut down October 3, 2024; Google points to Marketplace partners
Review workflowYes, Admin, Labeler, and Reviewer roles with assignment trackingEdit labels in the console; no reviewer or QA workflow documented
Model trainingYes, RF-DETR, YOLO (v8 / v11 / v26), Detectron2, and moreYes, AutoML image classification and object detection, including Edge models
Export formats40+ formats, including COCO, YOLO, and Pascal VOCDatasets export as JSON Lines; imports CSV or JSON Lines
Edge deploymentYes, NVIDIA Jetson, GPU servers, Raspberry Pi, x86, or Roboflow AI1, online or fully offlineExport only; Edge object detection models export to TF Lite, a container, or TF.js for you to run
Sub-agents for frontier models (MCP)Yes, every trained model is exposed over MCP so frontier models can call it as a specialized vision toolNot documented for AutoML image models
ComplianceSOC 2 Type II, HIPAA with BAAs, PCI DSSCovered by Google Cloud's HIPAA and ISO 27001 programs
SDKs and APIsYes, Python SDK plus REST/HTTP APIsYes, console, REST datasets API, and SDKs
PricingPublished plans; Enterprise adds volume pricing and an uptime SLAAutoML image training $3.465 per node hour (Edge $18 per hour); object detection hosting $2.002 per hour

Best Vertex AI Alternatives

Roboflow is the top Vertex AI alternative for teams that want labeling, training, and deployment in one platform. Teams comparing Vertex AI also look at: