Research · head to head
Aurelius vs Terra
Aurelius
Research
UX research repository for tagging notes, building insights and finding them again years later
- From
- $49/month
- Rated
- -
Terra
Research
Open biomedical research platform for genomic analysis, priced only by the cloud you consume
- From
- Free
- Rated
- -
The short version
- Only Terra has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
- 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.; Terra the absence of a licence fee hides the real cost driver: an idle notebook virtual machine left running overnight, or a workspace bucket full of intermediate workflow outputs, quietly consumes grant money with no vendor invoice to prompt a review.
- They diverge on capability: Aurelius covers Research repository, Terra covers No platform licence fee.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Aurelius and Terra actually diverge.
Identical on both: 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 Terra
- No platform licence fee
- Cloud pass-through billing
- WDL workflow execution
- Notebook environments
- Controlled-access data
- Workspace sharing
- Compliance posture
- Multi-cloud
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 Terra
- A product organisation that wants every designer and product manager to search past research without paying forty repository seatsnot Terra
- A consultancy running discovery for multiple clients that needs tagged evidence kept separate per client but searchable internallynot Terra
- 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 Terra
Terra
- A genomics lab running whole-genome alignment and variant calling pipelines without provisioning or maintaining a local clusternot Aurelius
- A consortium sharing controlled-access human data across institutions where the data cannot be copied to each sitenot Aurelius
- A health system analysing patient genomic data under a HIPAA business associate agreementnot Aurelius
- A federal or federally funded project needing FedRAMP Moderate authorisation for its analysis environmentnot 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.
Terra
- The absence of a licence fee hides the real cost driver: an idle notebook virtual machine left running overnight, or a workspace bucket full of intermediate workflow outputs, quietly consumes grant money with no vendor invoice to prompt a review.
- Cost governance is entirely the customer responsibility, and grant-funded groups without a cloud engineer routinely overspend before anyone reads the Google or Azure bill in enough detail to find the cause.
- It assumes genuine bioinformatics competence: writing or adapting WDL workflows, managing data tables and debugging failed tasks are all on you, so a wet lab without computational staff cannot use it productively.
- Feature parity between the Google Cloud and Azure deployments is not identical, so a decision on cloud provider constrains which capabilities and datasets you can reach and is expensive to reverse later.
- It is a research platform rather than a regulated clinical system: it is not a validated GxP environment and does not carry the qualification package a diagnostic or submission workflow would require, so clinical use needs additional infrastructure and validation you provide yourself.
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
Terra
Free- Terra platformFree
- No charge for the platform, administration, security controls or frontline support
- Workspaces, workflow execution and notebook environments included
- Available on Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure
- Cloud consumption$undefined/month
- Google Cloud or Azure charges passed through at cost with no markup
- Running notebook virtual machines around 0.22 USD per hour, roughly 0.027 USD per hour when paused
- Storage billed continuously on workspace buckets and intermediate workflow outputs
Which should you pick?
Choose Terra if
- You need no platform licence fee.
- You want to start without paying.
- You work on Web, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure.
- You also want cloud pass-through billing.
Questions people ask
- Is Aurelius or Terra better?
- Neither clearly leads. Aurelius starts at $49/month and Terra at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Aurelius or Terra?
- Terra has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $49/month for Aurelius and Free for Terra.
- Does Aurelius or Terra run on more platforms?
- Aurelius runs on Web. Terra runs on Web, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure.
- Can I use Terra for free?
- Yes. Terra has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Aurelius starts at $49/month.
- 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 Terra is typically brought in for.
- What can Aurelius do that Terra cannot?
- Aurelius covers Research repository, Analysis board, Tagging, Insights and recommendations. Terra covers No platform licence fee, Cloud pass-through billing, WDL workflow execution, Notebook environments.
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.
Terra: Is Terra really free?
The platform is. There is no licence fee. Everything you pay is Google Cloud or Azure compute, storage and egress, passed through at 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.
Terra: What actually drives the bill?
Running virtual machines and stored data. Pausing notebooks drops a virtual machine from about 0.22 to about 0.027 dollars an hour, and deleting intermediate workflow outputs is the other main saving.
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.
Terra: Can I use it with protected health information?
Yes. Terra signs HIPAA business associate agreements and GDPR data processing agreements, and the Azure deployment holds FedRAMP Moderate authorisation.
Aurelius: Is there single sign-on?
Only on Enterprise, along with IP allowlisting, Jira and advanced permissions. Everything below is quoted separately.
Terra: Is it validated for clinical or GxP use?
No. It is a research platform. Regulated clinical or submission workflows need validation and controls you build yourself.
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