REDCap is available at no licence cost to non-profit consortium members, which is why it is everywhere in academia. A licence is not a study, though. Here is the worksheet that adds up hosting, staff time, validation and support so the comparison with a hosted EDC is fair.
Free sandbox · No credit card · 21 CFR Part 11 aligned
| Cost line | Self-hosted or institution-run | Hosted EDC | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licence | Often none for members | In the quote | |
| Servers and backups | Your institution | Vendor | |
| Upgrades and patches | Your IT team | Vendor | |
| Form building | Your staff | Your staff or vendor | |
| Part 11 validation | Your team | Shared | |
| Support | Local helpdesk | Vendor email |
The honest summary
The premise
Nobody is wrong to call REDCap free. For consortium members the licence costs nothing, and many institutions run it as a shared service for hundreds of projects. If your institution already has that service and a team that supports it, the marginal cost of one more project can be small.
The difficulty comes when a single study sits on its own. A principal investigator at a small institution, a start-up or an investigator-initiated trial often has to find a host, someone to administer it, and a way to show that the configuration is validated. Those costs are real even when no invoice says licence. The same logic applies to any self-managed software, which is why our free EDC software page separates licence cost from total cost.
The goal of this page is not to argue REDCap is expensive. It is to give you a worksheet so that whichever way the comparison lands, the numbers on both sides are complete.
The worksheet
Enter your own figures. The right-hand columns are deliberately blank; the point is the lines, not the numbers.
| Cost line | What it includes | REDCap or institution-run | Hosted EDC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licence or subscription | Software rights for the study | [ enter ] | [ enter from quote ] |
| Hosting and backups | Servers, storage, disaster recovery, regions | [ enter ] | [ enter ] |
| Administration | Accounts, projects, upgrades, patching | [ staff hours x rate ] | [ enter ] |
| Study build | Forms, logic, visit schedule, testing | [ staff hours x rate ] | [ staff hours or quote ] |
| Validation and documentation | Part 11 evidence, UAT, change control | [ staff hours x rate ] | [ enter ] |
| Training and support | Site training, helpdesk, vendor support | [ enter ] | [ enter ] |
| Amendments | Changes after go-live | [ staff hours x rate ] | [ enter ] |
| Close-out | Export, lock, archive | [ enter ] | [ enter ] |
| Total | Sum of the above | [ total ] | [ total ] |
All cells are intentionally blank placeholders. Capture has no setup fee, no per-site fee and no per-seat licences; live-study pricing is not published on this site.
What changes
Build one of your instruments in the free sandbox and time it. No credit card, no time limit.
Fairness
REDCap is often the right call. If your institution runs it as a managed service, your study is a non-regulated survey or registry, your team already knows it and you do not need Part 11 controls, the all-in cost can be lower than any hosted subscription. A hosted EDC does not have to beat that, and we would rather you chose well than switched without a reason.
It tends to stop being the cheaper answer in four situations: when there is no central support team, when the study is regulated and validation falls on your group, when you need consent, diaries and randomization in the same system rather than add-ons, or when several sites need separate access with an audit trail you can show an inspector. Our REDCap alternatives page covers the decision, and Capture vs REDCap is the full head-to-head.
Decide
Name the team, and whether their time is charged to your project.
Decide who writes and owns the Part 11 evidence for your study.
Count hours for the build and for every amendment.
Per-site training, access setup and support effort.
Confirm you keep a complete export with the audit trail.
If you switch
If the worksheet points toward a hosted EDC, move at a natural boundary: a new study, a new cohort or the next protocol. Direct project import is not supported. The practical path is to export your data dictionary, let AI draft the new forms from it, rebuild branching in the visual builder and merge historical CSV exports at analysis. The full steps are in how to migrate from REDCap.
REDCap is available at no licence cost to non-profit consortium members under a licence agreement. Hosting, administration, form building, validation and support still have to be provided by your institution or paid for.
It is the sum of staff time to build and administer projects, hosting and security, validation for regulated use, training and support, and amendments. The worksheet on this page has blank inputs for each so you can calculate it for your own study.
Sometimes. If your institution already runs it as a managed service and the study does not need Part 11 controls, it can be cheaper. If you have to host, validate and support it yourself, the gap narrows or reverses.
No. Capture has no setup fee, no per-site fee and no per-seat licences. You build and test free in the sandbox and pay only once the study is live with real participants.
There is no direct project import. Export your data dictionary, use AI to draft the new forms from it, rebuild branching, and merge historical CSV data at analysis. Switching mid-study is not recommended.
It adds the effort to document access control, audit trail, signatures and change control for your configuration. Compliance is a shared responsibility between the software and your own validated use, so budget staff time for it with any tool.
Keep exploring
Build a study in the free sandbox with every feature. No credit card, and you pay only once you go live.