Recogito review
A free research annotation workspace, not a real-time collaborative editor.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
Recogito is a collaborative annotation platform for digital humanities researchers and related projects working with shared source materials. It supports text, images and tabular data, letting users organize documents, mark selected text, add comments and tags, and identify places, people and events. Image annotations can use point, rectangle and tilted-box selections. Place references can be matched to supported gazetteers and mapped. Its focus is organizing and annotating research material rather than drafting documents together.
Recogito’s collaboration model supports concurrent work, but it is not real-time editing: changes made by other collaborators do not appear until the page is refreshed. Documents can be shared with read, write and admin access levels, and annotation provenance is tracked. The home page mentions version history, while the hosted service also lets users export annotation data and download document backups. Those features suit projects that need to review and reuse annotations, though teams expecting live co-editing should choose a different tool.
The hosted service is free, and the software is open source for self-hosting. The web platform is the native app; deployment options include cloud and self-hosted use. Documentation and community are the listed support channels. This makes Recogito a fit for small and mid-market research projects that value control over where the platform runs and need structured annotation across different source types. Choose it for shared research annotation and exportable results; look elsewhere if the central requirement is a live collaborative writing workflow.
Recogito pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Annotate text, images and tables with notes, tags and comments
- Link place references to supported gazetteers and map them
- Share access levels and export annotations or document backups
- Where it doesn't
- Collaborators’ edits do not appear in real time; refresh to see updates
- Designed for annotation, not collaborative document creation
- Self-hosting requires running the open-source software
Recogito fact sheet, pricing and score →
Advertiser disclosure: iTechGuides is reader-supported. Vendors can pay for top positions in our rankings and for a place on other products' pages, and we may earn a commission when you click some links. Bought places stand at the number bought; this page and our disclosure say so. Paying vendors may get a fuller, more detailed review from our editors, and that review can change their score. How we rank.
Last updated · How we research and update