Research · head to head
Aurelius vs Chemaxon
Aurelius
Research
UX research repository for tagging notes, building insights and finding them again years later
- From
- $49/month
- Rated
- -
Chemaxon
Research
Cheminformatics toolkits and structure handling, now a Certara subsidiary
- From
- On request
- Rated
- -
The short version
- Each has a real cost: Aurelius aurelius does not recruit participants or run unmoderated studies, so it is always a second tool alongside a testing or recruitment platform and never the whole research budget.; Chemaxon the October 2024 Certara acquisition ended two decades of vendor neutrality, and organisations that embedded JChem precisely because Chemaxon competed with nobody now depend on a component owned by a company that sells into their accounts.
- They diverge on capability: Aurelius covers Research repository, Chemaxon covers Marvin.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Aurelius and Chemaxon actually diverge.
Identical on both: free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Research).
What each one covers
Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.
Only in Aurelius
- Research repository
- Analysis board
- Tagging
- Insights and recommendations
- Transcription
- AI assist
- Automatic report builder
- Universal search
Only in Chemaxon
- Marvin
- JChem toolkits
- Calculator Plugins
- Compound Registration
- Instant JChem
- Design Hub
- Free academic package
- Embedded redistribution
What people use each for
The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.
Aurelius
- A research team of three whose findings currently live in individual Miro boards and Google Docs that nobody outside the team can find six months laternot Chemaxon
- A product organisation that wants every designer and product manager to search past research without paying forty repository seatsnot Chemaxon
- A consultancy running discovery for multiple clients that needs tagged evidence kept separate per client but searchable internallynot Chemaxon
- A team preparing a repeat study who need to know what was already learned about the same problem two years ago before they recruit anyonenot Chemaxon
Chemaxon
- A software vendor embedding a structure sketcher and search into its own product rather than writing chemistry codenot Aurelius
- A pharmaceutical informatics team building an internal compound registration system on JChem cartridgesnot Aurelius
- A computational chemistry group needing consistent pKa and logD prediction across a screening cascadenot Aurelius
- A university teaching cheminformatics that can use the free two-year academic package for a classnot Aurelius
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
Aurelius
- Aurelius does not recruit participants or run unmoderated studies, so it is always a second tool alongside a testing or recruitment platform and never the whole research budget.
- Integrations are thin, with Zapier, Jira and Slack rather than direct connections to the call recording and testing tools most teams already run, so getting material in often means manual upload.
- The tag vocabulary is only as good as the discipline applied to it, and repositories where several researchers invent overlapping tags become unsearchable within a year with no built-in governance to prevent it.
- Unlimited users is genuinely unlimited but permissions are basic below Enterprise, so a team that needs client-safe or stakeholder-only views has to buy the quoted tier for something that reads as a table-stakes control.
- It is a small independent vendor competing with much better funded repositories, which is a real procurement risk for an organisation storing years of research in it, and enterprise assurance material such as penetration test reports sits behind the top tier.
Chemaxon
- The October 2024 Certara acquisition ended two decades of vendor neutrality, and organisations that embedded JChem precisely because Chemaxon competed with nobody now depend on a component owned by a company that sells into their accounts.
- Licensing is genuinely complicated, with different terms for named users, servers, desktop applications and embedded redistribution, so working out what you are allowed to deploy usually requires a conversation rather than reading a document.
- The free academic package is granted for two-year terms and covers education rather than research, so a research group that assumed it was free discovers it needs a paid commercial academic licence.
- Nothing is priced publicly for commercial use, so a team evaluating Chemaxon against open source alternatives such as RDKit cannot compare total cost without entering a sales process.
- Open source cheminformatics has closed much of the functional gap for basic structure handling and search, so the commercial case increasingly rests on prediction quality, support and registration workflows rather than on capability that cannot be obtained elsewhere.
Pricing, plan by plan
Aurelius
$49/month- Professional$49/month
- Unlimited users
- Unlimited projects and storage
- Notes, tags and documents
- Premium$199/month
- Everything in Professional
- Recommendations
- Universal search across projects
- Enterprise$undefined/year
- Everything in Premium
- SSO with SAML 2.0
- IP allowlisting
Chemaxon
On request- Academic package$undefined/year
- Free of charge for education for a two-year term
- Covers a class including tutor and students, or an applicant faculty
- Non-commercial research use only
- Commercial licence$undefined/year
- Quoted per named user, per server or per redistributed application
- Toolkits, desktop applications and embedded redistribution licensed separately
- Annual support and maintenance included in the subscription
Which should you pick?
Choose Chemaxon if
- You need marvin.
- You work on Web, Windows, macOS, Linux, On-premise, API.
- You also want jchem toolkits.
Questions people ask
- Is Aurelius or Chemaxon better?
- Neither clearly leads. Aurelius starts at $49/month and Chemaxon at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Aurelius or Chemaxon?
- Aurelius starts at $49/month and Chemaxon at On request.
- Does Aurelius or Chemaxon run on more platforms?
- Aurelius runs on Web. Chemaxon runs on Web, Windows, macOS, Linux, On-premise, API.
- What is Aurelius best used for?
- Aurelius is most often used for a research team of three whose findings currently live in individual miro boards and google docs that nobody outside the team can find six months later, a product organisation that wants every designer and product manager to search past research without paying forty repository seats, a consultancy running discovery for multiple clients that needs tagged evidence kept separate per client but searchable internally, a team preparing a repeat study who need to know what was already learned about the same problem two years ago before they recruit anyone. Of those, a research team of three whose findings currently live in individual miro boards and google docs that nobody outside the team can find six months later and a product organisation that wants every designer and product manager to search past research without paying forty repository seats are not what Chemaxon is typically brought in for.
- What can Aurelius do that Chemaxon cannot?
- Aurelius covers Research repository, Analysis board, Tagging, Insights and recommendations. Chemaxon covers Marvin, JChem toolkits, Calculator Plugins, Compound Registration.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
Aurelius: Does the price really include unlimited users?
Yes. Professional at 49 US dollars a month and Premium at 199, both billed yearly, both with unlimited users, projects and storage.
Chemaxon: Is Chemaxon still independent?
No. It has been a subsidiary of Certara since October 2024. The products continue under the Chemaxon name.
Aurelius: Can I run usability tests in it?
No. Aurelius stores and analyses research; it does not recruit participants or host sessions. Pair it with a testing tool.
Chemaxon: Is the academic licence really free?
The education package is free for two-year terms covering a class or faculty. Non-commercial research groups pay a discounted commercial academic licence.
Aurelius: What is the difference between Professional and Premium?
Premium adds universal cross-project search, collections, recommendations and Zapier. If your value comes from finding old research, Premium is the tier that delivers it.
Chemaxon: Can I ship Chemaxon inside my own software?
Yes, but embedded redistribution is licensed separately from internal use and must be negotiated.
Aurelius: Is there single sign-on?
Only on Enterprise, along with IP allowlisting, Jira and advanced permissions. Everything below is quoted separately.
Chemaxon: How does it compare with RDKit?
RDKit is free and covers basic structure handling well. Chemaxon differentiates on property prediction, registration workflows, the sketcher and commercial support.
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