CommCarevs
REDCap
REDCap: Free for member institutions and better suited to clinical research data capture than to frontline case management
CommCare
Offline-first case management and mobile data collection for frontline health and development programmes
As of 1 September 2026, CommCare starts at $100/month. Dimagi’s field platform, priced from $100 a month with included mobile users, unlimited web users and $2 per extra mobile user. Softwr lists it under Nonprofits. CommCare is made by Dimagi, available on Android, Web.
Overview
What CommCare does
CommCare is a mobile data collection and case management platform designed for frontline workers in low-resource settings. Programmes build applications in a browser app builder, deploy them to Android devices, and workers use them offline to register clients, follow protocols, and track individuals over time. The case management model is the point: a community health worker sees the households assigned to them, what is due, and what happened at the last visit, rather than filling in an unconnected form each time. Dimagi is a United States B Corporation and the platform is open source, but the commercial reality is that almost nobody self-hosts. The hosted service is priced publicly: Standard at $100 a month for 50 mobile users, Pro at $500 for 250, Advanced at $1,000 for 500 and Enterprise from $4,000, with extra mobile users at $2 each per month and web users unlimited and free. Hosting is offered in the United States, European Union or India, which matters where data residency rules bind a ministry. Buyers are NGOs, ministries of health, research programmes and funders, typically in Africa and South Asia, with the money frequently coming from a grant rather than an operating budget. That is the trade-off buyers underestimate. The licence is affordable and the implementation is not: application design, device procurement, worker training and ongoing supervision usually dwarf the subscription, and Dimagi sells professional services for exactly that reason. A programme funded for a three-year grant cycle should ask what happens to the subscription in year four.
What people use it for
- A community health worker programme where each worker must see their own assigned households, what is overdue and what happened last visit, which a survey tool cannot represent
- A ministry of health digitising a national frontline protocol and requiring in-region data hosting for legal reasons
- An NGO running the same intervention in four countries that needs one application, several languages and consolidated reporting
- A research team collecting longitudinal data on the same participants over years, where linking visits to a case rather than a submission is the whole requirement
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about CommCare.
- Pricing is by included mobile user bands with a hard step between them, so a programme at 260 mobile users pays the Pro band plus per-user overage or jumps to Advanced, and neither option matches its actual size.
- The subscription is the small number; application design, device procurement, worker training and supervision dominate the real cost, and grant budgets that fund only the licence stall at deployment.
- Grant funding cycles and subscription renewals rarely align, so programmes routinely face a year-four cliff where the software is embedded in a workflow and the money that paid for it has ended.
- It is Android-only on the device side, which is usually right for the target markets but blocks iOS-issued staff and makes the platform a poor fit for programmes in higher-income settings.
- The open source option is real but effectively theoretical: self-hosting CommCare HQ requires substantial engineering, so the licence being free does not translate into an escape from the subscription.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of CommCare
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- CommCarevsFulcrum
Fulcrum: If you need general field data collection with published pricing and no case model
- CommCarevsArcGIS Survey123
ArcGIS Survey123: If the data must land in an existing ArcGIS estate and location is the organising principle
Pricing
What CommCare costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Standard
$100 /mo
- 50 mobile users included
- $2 per additional mobile user per month
- Unlimited free web users
- Offline case management
- Multi-language support
- Scheduled exports
Pro
$500 /mo
- 250 mobile users included
- Case sharing and child cases
- Web report builder
- API access
- Priority support
Advanced
$1,000 /mo
- 500 mobile users included
- Power BI and Tableau integration
- Web applications
- Data de-identification
- Two-way SMS
- HIPAA business associate agreement
Enterprise
$4,000 /mo
- Custom mobile user count
- Single sign-on
- Named account management
- Customised product terms
- Roadmap input
Capabilities
Features
Case management
Track individuals or households over time with assigned caseloads per worker
Offline-first mobile app
Full functionality without connectivity, syncing when a device reaches a network
App builder
Build and update applications in a browser without writing code
Multi-language support
Deliver the same application in several languages including right-to-left scripts
Two-way SMS
Send and receive SMS as part of a workflow on Advanced and above
Report builder
Build web-based reports and export on a schedule
API access
Pull and push data programmatically from Pro upwards
BI integration
Connect Power BI and Tableau on the Advanced plan
Data de-identification and HIPAA BAA
Available on Advanced for programmes with regulatory obligations
Regional hosting
Choose United States, European Union or India data residency
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
How much does CommCare cost?
Standard is $100 a month for 50 mobile users, Pro $500 for 250, Advanced $1,000 for 500 and Enterprise from $4,000. Extra mobile users are $2 each per month; web users are unlimited and free.
Is CommCare open source?
Yes, CommCare HQ is open source, but self-hosting requires serious engineering capacity. Nearly all users take the hosted service.
Where is our data stored?
You choose United States, European Union or India hosting, which is what makes it acceptable to ministries with data residency rules.
Who funds CommCare?
Dimagi is a for-profit B Corporation funded by customer subscriptions and services. Individual deployments are usually funded by donors such as USAID successors, the Gates Foundation or national health budgets.
Does it do case management or just forms?
Case management. Workers hold a caseload of individuals or households and see history and due actions, which is the main reason to choose it over a form tool.
Keep looking
Where to go from CommCare
- CommCare alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- CommCare pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- CommCare badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Nonprofits softwareThe full category
- Best Nonprofits softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Nonprofits software for
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for CommCare, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on CommCare
CommCare alternatives
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CommCare pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare CommCare
Put it head to head with anything we hold
CommCare badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
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Per user per month by tier