If you're Googling “Dedoose pricing”, you're assessing whether this web-based qualitative research tool aligns with your budget and workflow. It stands out for its subscription-based flexibility, but it’s essential to understand the real cost drivers—especially when compared to more automated tools like UserCall.

As a UX researcher, I’ve used Dedoose across academic projects, collaborative evaluations, and client work. While its entry point is appealing, added data fees and manual labor often shift the scale. Let’s walk through what Dedoose really costs in 2025, precisely what each tier includes, and how it stacks up against alternatives like NVivo, MAXQDA, and UserCall.

How Dedoose Pricing Works

Dedoose offers three main subscription tiers, each with different pricing and billing rules

• Individual (Standard): $17.95 per active month—you’re only charged for months you log in. If inactive, no charge is incurred
• Individual (Student): $12.95 per active month, with verification required
• Group Subscriptions:
  • Small Group (2–5 users): $15.95 per user per active month‍
  • Large Group (6+ users): $13.95 per user per month, billed regardless of login activity (though accounts can be disabled to avoid billing)
• Organizational Tiers:
  • Premier: Up to 20 seats, includes SSO, 5 hours of consultation/training, an account manager.
  • Enterprise: Unlimited users, SSO, 6 hours training, train‑the‑trainer, logging/reporting, etc

Bonus storage allowance:

• Each account gets 1 hour of free audio and 30 minutes of free video.
• Additional usage is billed at $0.05 per hour per month for audio, and $0.25 per hour per month for video

Annual or multi-month prepaid subscriptions are available if arranged via invoice or in-app preferences

Add-Ons, Hidden Costs, and Manual Effort

Here are some subtleties that can unexpectedly increase your total cost:

1. Active-month billing: Individual plans charge only when used, but large groups incur a flat monthly fee—even if not all users log in
2. Media storage costs: For studies with extended audio/video, these fees accumulate. For instance, 10 hours of audio adds $0.50/month, while 5 hours of video is another $1.25/month—small but real.
3. Manual coding and analysis: Dedoose has powerful visualization tools and collaboration, but all coding—transcription tagging, theming—is manual. This is a time investment that many research teams underestimate.

Updated Comparison Table: Dedoose vs. Alternatives

Below is a refined comparison, highlighting features and limitations discreetly:

Subtle insights where Dedoose lags behind UserCall:

• Manual vs. automated coding: While Dedoose gives you coding flexibility, UserCall offers AI-generated themes and summarization.
• Per-user billing vs. flat fee: Growing teams pay more with Dedoose; UserCall includes unlimited moderators and participants.
• Media storage: Dedoose charges for media; UserCall typically includes transcripts and recordings in its flat subscription.

Is Dedoose Worth the Price?

For solo researchers or compact teams, Dedoose remains a cost-effective, flexible choice that charges only for active months and supports collaboration on rich data types.

However, in media-heavy or long-term projects, those storage fees and manual coding time can add up—and for larger teams, cumulative user fees may approach or surpass the flat rate of services like UserCall.

From one researcher's perspective: I once spent days manually coding in Dedoose. With UserCall’s AI-driven theming, the same interview set could be coded and analyzed in just a morning. That difference in workflow efficiency is increasingly a key deciding factor.

Final Thoughts

Dedoose pricing is transparent and flexible: $17.95/month for standard individuals, $12.95 for students, group and enterprise options, plus media charges for audio/video. It's ideal for researchers who need manual control and occasional access.

Yet if your team values automation, scale, and less time spent on manual coding, modern tools like UserCall may provide more long-term value at a comparable cost.

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