When building assessments in Canvas, faculty often wonder which tool would best fit their assessment needs. We have gathered below a comparison of grading features and tool options in order to better inform users as they make their decisions.

Feature/Function	Hypothesis	Perusall
> What can be annotated (click to collapse/expand group)
Optical Character Recognition PDFs	✔	✔
Word documents	✘	✔
Google Documents	✔ (may not work in restricted countries)	✘
Website pages	✔ (w/ more access to deeper pages in domain)	✔ (will take a snapshot of a page)
Textbooks / paywalled articles	✘ (on the roadmap)	✔ (free for faculty; may require paid access for students: https://app.perusall.com/catalog)
Student created content	✔ (w/ the help of the instructor)	✔ (w/ the help of the instructor)
Audio files	✘	✔
Video	✘	✔
> Annotation options (click to collapse/expand group)
Inline annotation	✔	✔
Document notes	✔	✔
Commenting on peer annotations	✔	✔
Can download document (w/o annotations)	✔	✘
Can disable downloading	✘	✔
TA role can set assignments	✔	need to grant TA privilege in Settings
Instructor/TA can post questions on doc for students to answer	✔	✔
Annotations can be private	✔	✘
One-to-one annotations between instructor and student	in assignments with SpeedGrader	✘
Annotations can be anonymous	✔	✘
Instructor can delete student comments	✘	✘
Students can export annotations	✘ (on the roadmap)	✘
Students can print files	✔ (using Adobe Reader)	✘
Synchronous annotations (like Google Docs)	✘	✘
Sortable annotations	✔ (for students)	✘
Tagging	✔	✔
Controlled tags	✘	✔

> LMS (click to collapse/expand group)
Supports multiple user roles through Canvas	✔	✔
Supports Canvas groups	✔	✔ (w/ a manual sync)
Requires separate account/login	✘	✔ (must register at company site)
Allows files to be stored in Canvas	✔	✘
Ungraded External Tool activities in Modules	✔	✔
> Integration with Canvas Gradebook (click to collapse/expand group)
Graded External Tool Assignment	✔	✔
Autograding	✘	✔
Instructor/TA can comment on annotations	✔	✔
Instructor/TA can comment privately on annotations	✔ (via SpeedGrader)	✘

Comparison of annotation tools.