Research · head to head
Aurelius vs REDCap
Aurelius
Research
UX research repository for tagging notes, building insights and finding them again years later
- From
- $49/month
- Rated
- -
REDCap
Research
Research data capture licensed free to non-profits, and not licensable at all to companies
- 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.; REDCap a for-profit company cannot hold a licence or self-host REDCap, so a biotech or CRO that liked it at university simply cannot deploy it the same way and must buy a commercially licensed hosted version instead.
- They diverge on capability: Aurelius covers Research repository, REDCap covers Form and survey designer.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Aurelius and REDCap 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 REDCap
- Form and survey designer
- Longitudinal projects
- Data quality rules
- Randomisation
- Audit trail and e-signature
- API and exports
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 REDCap
- A product organisation that wants every designer and product manager to search past research without paying forty repository seatsnot REDCap
- A consultancy running discovery for multiple clients that needs tagged evidence kept separate per client but searchable internallynot REDCap
- 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 REDCap
REDCap
- An academic research group at an institution that already runs REDCap, where a new study database costs nothing beyond the time to build itnot Aurelius
- A hospital collecting patient reported outcomes where data must stay on institutional infrastructure rather than a vendor cloudnot Aurelius
- An investigator initiated trial that needs randomisation, an audit trail and statistical export without a commercial EDC budgetnot Aurelius
- A multi site academic collaboration where each site can be given scoped access to a single longitudinal projectnot 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.
REDCap
- A for-profit company cannot hold a licence or self-host REDCap, so a biotech or CRO that liked it at university simply cannot deploy it the same way and must buy a commercially licensed hosted version instead.
- Because each institution hosts its own instance, support, uptime, backup and version currency vary by university, and a researcher has no recourse to Vanderbilt when the local instance is two years out of date.
- It is free of licence fee but not free of cost: the hosting institution carries server, security, patching and support staffing, which is why some institutions charge internal recharges per project.
- Validation for regulated use is the deploying institution responsibility, so an instance is not Part 11 compliant simply because REDCap supports the features; someone locally has to produce and maintain the evidence.
- The interface and reporting are dated compared with commercial survey and EDC tools, and complex logic is built through data dictionary spreadsheets rather than a modern visual builder, which slows non technical study teams.
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
REDCap
On request- REDCap non-profit licence$undefined/year
- No licence fee to non-profit and government institutions that join the consortium
- Institution must install and host it on its own infrastructure
- For-profit organisations may not hold a licence or self-host
Which should you pick?
Choose REDCap if
- You need form and survey designer.
- You work on Web, Linux, Windows.
- You also want longitudinal projects.
Questions people ask
- Is Aurelius or REDCap better?
- Neither clearly leads. Aurelius starts at $49/month and REDCap at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Aurelius or REDCap?
- Aurelius starts at $49/month and REDCap at On request.
- Does Aurelius or REDCap run on more platforms?
- Aurelius runs on Web. REDCap runs on Web, Linux, Windows.
- 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 REDCap is typically brought in for.
- What can Aurelius do that REDCap cannot?
- Aurelius covers Research repository, Analysis board, Tagging, Insights and recommendations. REDCap covers Form and survey designer, Longitudinal projects, Data quality rules, Randomisation.
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.
REDCap: Is REDCap really free?
The licence is free to non-profit institutions and government organisations that join the consortium, but they must host and support it themselves, so there is real internal cost.
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.
REDCap: Can my company use REDCap?
Not by holding a licence or self-hosting. For-profit organisations must use a separately licensed commercial hosted route.
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.
REDCap: Is REDCap 21 CFR Part 11 compliant?
It has the features to support Part 11 use, but compliance depends on how the hosting institution configures, validates and documents its own instance.
Aurelius: Is there single sign-on?
Only on Enterprise, along with IP allowlisting, Jira and advanced permissions. Everything below is quoted separately.
REDCap: Who supports it?
Your local institutional REDCap administrator, not Vanderbilt. Support quality varies by site.
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