Get started with Ellf

Ellf’s modules cover all aspects of the NLP development process, including project planning and advice, data preparation and annotation, machine learning and rule-based logic, and model training and evaluation. In combination with your AI coding assistant like Claude Code or Codex, it can build end-to-end NLP pipelines for you, evaluate and optimize your existing applications, and develop standalone AI systems that are accurate, fast and run entirely under your control.

The Ellf platform lets you run and monitor annotation tasks, processes like training and evaluation, and fully automated agents, powered by your own data-private cluster running locally or in the cloud. Data annotation workflows use our popular annotation tool Prodigy and cover all common NLP tasks like named entity recognition, span categorization, text classification and relation extraction, as well as workflows using PDFs, images, audio or video.

Ellf lets you plug in your own data-private cluster hosted locally or on your cloud infrastructure and under your control. The cluster provides all data, models and custom code you use and create, serves the annotation application and performs actions like model training or data analysis.

This means that no sensitive data ever leaves your servers or has to pass through our servers in the process. Whenever data from the cluster is used or shown in the web app or CLI, Ellf makes two separate requests: one to our server and one to your cluster.

The cluster can be set up in your cloud account (e.g. AWS, Google Cloud or Azure) or on a local workstation in a few simple steps, without requiring specific DevOps or infrastructure expertise. If you’ve connected Ellf to your coding assistant like Claude Code, it can also set up and launch your cluster for you.

Yes! The Solo plan is free for one person, with no time limit. Your cluster runs on your own machine or a machine on your home network, and you use Ellf from your devices on that network. You can choose Solo when you sign up, or switch to it from the subscription settings at any time.

To invite your team for collaboration and run your cluster in the cloud, you can subscribe to the Starter or Professional plan or start a free trial. For more details and feature comparison, see the plans overview.

Ellf only charges you for the seats you actually use. At the end of the month, you will be billed a pro-rated amount of the monthly developer seat price, based on the number of days the seat was occupied. This means you never end up paying for unused seats.

In the subscription settings, you can set a maximum number of developer seats that can be allocated. Admins in the org can then flexibly invite others until the limit is reached. You can also pre-pay for a number of seats to add credits to your account and lock in the current monthly rate.

For example: Alex of ACME Inc. signs up for the Professional plan on June 1, and invites 2 developers, who join immediately. On June 16, another developer, Charlie, joins. At the end of the month, they’re billed 3 × $250, plus $125 for Charlie’s seat that was only used for half a month. Alex then sets the seat limit to 4, so no more developers can be invited. Annotators can still be invited at no cost, since the Professional plan includes unlimited free annotator accounts.

Ellf’s team plans are priced per developer. Developers (and admins) are users that can operate the platform and start jobs, publish code and data to the cluster, and manage annotation and agents. Each developer or admin uses one seat.

The Professional plan also includes unlimited free annotator accounts. These are users who can be invited to your organization and assigned to tasks, and who are only able to access the annotator dashboard and annotation UI. In the Starter plan, there are no annotator accounts so every member is an admin or developer and uses a paid seat. The free Solo plan is for one person, with one cluster on their own machine or home network, so it has no seats and can’t invite other users.

For more details and feature comparison, see the plans overview.

Absolutely! In addition to the detailed onboarding documentation, we also provide custom migration support. This includes setting up your organization and users in the platform, launching and connecting your data-private cluster and setting up workflows like annotation tasks, training scripts and auto-annotation agents for you.

We can also port over your existing scripts and services, and optionally help you develop fully custom recipes to integrate your existing workflows and stack. If you can do it in Python, you’ll be able to use it with Ellf.

If you need more hands-on support, we can also take over more complex development tasks, like building an end-to-end NLP pipeline or designing a data development strategy for you on a deliverables basis. To discuss more details, just get in touch!

Ellf is designed for both beginners and experienced NLP developers. If you’re just getting started, Ellf will guide you through the end-to-end process, answer any questions that come up and help you set up your project from scratch or by adapting one of the available templates. More experienced developers can use Ellf to get feedback on their solution, automate tasks and iterate faster. Ellf integrates seamlessly into your workflow, wherever you are in the development lifecycle.

And if you ever feel stuck or need a second opinion, send us your logs straight from your coding assistant and have them reviewed by one of our NLP experts.

Sure! We support purchases via purchase order and you’ll then receive an invoice that you can pay via credit card, PayPal or bank transfer. Instead of sending a formal purchase order, you can also request an invoice via email. We’re also already set up with most of the popular software resellers. Just email us at contact@explosion.ai.

Yes, we’re already set up and regularly work with many popular international software resellers, including SHI, SoftwareOne, QBS Software and more. Even if we haven’t worked with your reseller before, it’s usually no problem for us to register with them. Simply ask them to reach out to us at contact@explosion.ai.

We’re always happy to support research projects and can put together a custom tailored plan for a site-wide or group license for Ellf that fits within your requirements and budget. Feel free to get in touch with us to discuss more details.