Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Roboflow Universe VS ML5.js

Compare Roboflow Universe VS ML5.js and see what are their differences

Roboflow Universe logo Roboflow Universe

You no longer need to collect and label images or train a ML model to add computer vision to your project.

ML5.js logo ML5.js

Friendly machine learning for the web
  • Roboflow Universe Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-12-11
  • ML5.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-12

Roboflow Universe features and specs

  • Wide Range of Datasets
    Roboflow Universe offers a diverse collection of public datasets for computer vision tasks, providing pre-labeled data that is useful for training machine learning models.
  • Community Contribution
    The platform allows users to contribute their datasets, fostering a collaborative environment where developers can share resources and enhance the available data pool.
  • Easy Integration
    Roboflow Universe provides tools and integrations that make it convenient to import datasets into various machine learning frameworks, streamlining the start of model training.
  • Comprehensive Metadata
    Datasets come with detailed metadata, including annotations and label formats, which can help in understanding the dataset and ensuring it meets project requirements.
  • Free Tier Accessibility
    The platform offers a free tier that makes it accessible to individual developers and small teams, allowing them to leverage computer vision datasets without cost barriers.

Possible disadvantages of Roboflow Universe

  • Quality Variability
    Since datasets are community-contributed, there may be variability in the quality of the data and annotations, posing potential challenges in ensuring the consistency required for certain projects.
  • Limited Dataset Sizes
    Some datasets may be smaller than needed for high-performance model training, necessitating the need for additional data collection or synthesis efforts.
  • Dependency on Internet Connectivity
    Accessing and using datasets on Roboflow Universe requires a reliable internet connection, which might be a limitation in bandwidth-constrained environments.
  • Licensing and Usage Restrictions
    Certain datasets might have usage restrictions based on their licenses, which could limit their application in commercial projects or require careful consideration of legal terms.
  • Data Security Concerns
    Sharing datasets on a public platform could raise concerns about data security and confidentiality, especially for sensitive or proprietary data.

ML5.js features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    ml5.js is designed with simplicity in mind, making machine learning accessible to artists, creative coders, and students, even those without a robust background in AI or machine learning.
  • Browser-based
    Operates directly in the browser, eliminating the need for any additional setup or dependencies, which makes it highly compatible with web projects.
  • Pre-trained Models
    Includes a variety of pre-trained models for quick implementation of complex machine learning tasks like image classification, pose detection, and text generation.
  • Community and Documentation
    Strong community support and well-documented guides and examples help new users get started quickly and find solutions to common issues.
  • Integration with p5.js
    Integrates seamlessly with p5.js, a popular JavaScript library for creative coding, facilitating the development of interactive and visually engaging applications.

Possible disadvantages of ML5.js

  • Performance Limitations
    Since it runs in the browser, it may not be suitable for performance-intensive applications or those requiring real-time processing of large datasets.
  • Limited Customization
    While it offers pre-trained models, there is limited functionality for training new models from scratch compared to more comprehensive libraries like TensorFlow.js.
  • Dependency on Web Standards
    Depends on the performance and capabilities of the client's browser, which can vary significantly between different users and devices.
  • Size of Models
    Some pre-trained models can be quite large, which may affect loading times and performance on slower network connections or less powerful devices.
  • Scope
    Focused on high-level tasks and applications, which might not be sufficient for advanced machine learning requirements or niche functionalities outside its provided models.

Roboflow Universe videos

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ML5.js videos

ml5.js: Train Your Own Neural Network

More videos:

  • Review - ml5.js: Image Classification with MobileNet
  • Review - Image classification to gif with ML5.js | Vue.js Virtual Meetup

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Roboflow Universe and ML5.js)
Developer Tools
35 35%
65% 65
AI
32 32%
68% 68
APIs
100 100%
0% 0
Data Science And Machine Learning

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Roboflow Universe should be more popular than ML5.js. It has been mentiond 19 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Roboflow Universe mentions (19)

  • Show HN: I am using AI to drop hats outside my window onto New Yorkers
    FWIW you can use roboflow models on-device as well. detect.roboflow.com is just a hosted version of our inference server (if you run the docker somewhere you can swap out that URL for localhost or wherever your self-hosted one is running). Behind the scenes it’s an http interface for our inference[1] Python package which you can run natively if your app is in Python as well. Pi inference is pretty slow (probably... - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • Show HN: Pip install inference, open source computer vision deployment
    It’s an easy to use inference server for computer vision models. The end result is a Docker container that serves a standardized API as a microservice that your application uses to get predictions from computer vision models (though there is also a native Python interface). It’s backed by a bunch of component pieces: * a server (so you don’t have to reimplement things like image processing & prediction... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Open discussion and useful links people trying to do Object Detection
    * Most of the time I find Roboflow extremely handy, I used it to merge datasets, augmentate, read tutorials and that kind of thing. Basically you just create your dataset with roboflow and focus on other aspects. Source: about 2 years ago
  • TensorFlow Datasets (TFDS): a collection of ready-to-use datasets
    For computer vision, there are 100k+ open source classification, object detection, and segmentation datasets available on Roboflow Universe: https://universe.roboflow.com. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2022)
    Roboflow | Multiple Roles | Full-time (Remote) | https://roboflow.com/careers?ref=whoishiring1222 Roboflow is the fastest way to use computer vision in production. We help developers give their software the sense of sight. Our end-to-end platform[1] provides tooling for image collection, annotation, dataset exploration and curation, training, and deployment. Over 100k engineers (including engineers from 2/3... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
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ML5.js mentions (10)

  • How AI is Transforming Front-End Development in 2025!
    Ml5.js: Built on top of TensorFlow.js, it provides a user-friendly interface for implementing machine learning in web applications.​. - Source: dev.to / 13 days ago
  • Riffr - Create Photo Montages in the Browser with some ML Magic✨
    Important APIs - ml5 for in-browser detection, face-api that uses tensorflow-node to accelerate on-server detection. VueUse for a bunch of useful component tools like the QR Code generator. Yahoo's Gifshot for creating gif files in-browser etc. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Brain.js: GPU Accelerated Neural Networks in JavaScript
    See also: https://ml5js.org/ "The library provides access to machine learning algorithms and models in the browser, building on top of TensorFlow.js with no other external dependencies.". - Source: Hacker News / almost 3 years ago
  • [Showoff Saturday] I made a captcha prototype that requires a banana
    I used ml5js.org , p5js.org and https://teachablemachine.withgoogle.com to train the Banana images. When you create a new image project on Teachable Machine, you can output the p5js and basically use it right out of the box - I customized js, css, and html from there. Source: about 3 years ago
  • My First 30 Days of 100 Days of Code.
    Going forward: I'll be 100% into JavaScript. You can use JavaScript in so many fields nowadays. Websites React, Mobile Apps React Native, Machine Learning TensorFlow & ML5, Desktop Applications Electron, and of course the backend Node as well. It's kind of a no-brainer. Of course, they all have specific languages that are better, but for now, JavaScript is a bit of a catch-all. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Roboflow Universe and ML5.js, you can also consider the following products

TensorFlow Lite - Low-latency inference of on-device ML models

Amazon Machine Learning - Machine learning made easy for developers of any skill level

Apple Core ML - Integrate a broad variety of ML model types into your app

Machine Learning Playground - Breathtaking visuals for learning ML techniques.

Monitor ML - Real-time production monitoring of ML models, made simple.

Evidently AI - Open-source monitoring for machine learning models