DHIS2vs
OpenMRS
OpenMRS: If the requirement is a facility electronic medical record rather than a national aggregate reporting system
DHIS2
Open source health information platform run from the University of Oslo and used by national ministries
As of 1 September 2026, DHIS2 is free to use. The routine health information system for the majority of low and middle income countries, free to licence and expensive to implement. Softwr lists it under Healthcare. DHIS2 is made by HISP Centre, University of Oslo, available on Web, Android, Self-hosted.
Overview
What DHIS2 does
DHIS2 is an open source platform for aggregate and individual-level health data, used as the national routine health information system in more than 70 countries. It covers data entry from facilities, offline Android capture, indicator and dashboard reporting, tracker modules for individual patient and case follow-up, data quality tools, and metadata packages for programmes such as immunisation, HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and disease surveillance. It runs on PostgreSQL and Java and is deployed either in-country or in cloud hosting arranged by a partner. What distinguishes it is custodianship. DHIS2 is developed by the HISP Centre at the University of Oslo, funded by Norad, the Global Fund, the Gates Foundation, PEPFAR and grants such as a three-year Wellcome award for climate and health work, and supported in country by a network of regional HISP groups that do the actual configuration and implementation. In 2025 HISP UiO introduced a voluntary annual Shared Services Fee asking organisations that depend on DHIS2 to contribute to the shared global infrastructure. That is the fact a buyer should register: the licence remains free, but the sustainability model is shifting towards asking users to pay something, and budgets set on the assumption of zero cost may need revisiting. Buyers, in practice, are ministries of health, large NGOs and donor-funded programmes. Nobody pays a licence fee. What they pay for is implementation, metadata configuration, hosting, training and ongoing support from a HISP group or a private implementer such as Devotta, and that total routinely runs into hundreds of thousands of dollars over a national rollout. Treating DHIS2 as free software rather than as a multi-year implementation programme is the single most common mistake made about it.
What people use it for
- A ministry of health replacing paper monthly reporting from thousands of facilities with a national routine system
- A donor-funded HIV or tuberculosis programme that must report standard indicators across several districts
- A disease surveillance unit needing weekly case reporting with outbreak alerting and mapping
- An NGO running individual patient follow-up in a programme where facilities are frequently offline
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 DHIS2.
- The licence is free and the implementation is not; national rollouts routinely cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in configuration, hosting, training and support, and budgets built on the word free fail immediately.
- HISP UiO introduced a Shared Services Fee in 2025, so organisations that depend on DHIS2 are now being asked for an annual contribution that did not previously exist in their plans.
- Development funding comes from a small set of donors including Norad, the Global Fund and the Gates Foundation, which concentrates the platform's long-term direction in the priorities of those funders.
- Implementation capability is concentrated in regional HISP groups, so a country whose local HISP group is overstretched has few alternative suppliers with equivalent expertise.
- Analytics performance depends heavily on how metadata was designed at the outset, and a poorly structured initial configuration produces slow dashboards and bad indicator definitions that are painful to correct years later.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of DHIS2
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.
- DHIS2vsKoboToolbox
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- DHIS2vsREDCap
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Pricing
What DHIS2 costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
DHIS2 software
Free
- BSD licence
- All modules including Tracker
- No user or facility limits
- Documentation and community forum
Shared Services Fee
On request
- Voluntary annual contribution introduced by HISP UiO
- Funds shared global infrastructure and platform sustainability
- Amount agreed with the HISP Centre
Implementation and support
On request
- Delivered by regional HISP groups or private implementers
- Configuration, metadata design, hosting, training and support
- Quoted per programme, commonly the dominant cost
Capabilities
Features
Aggregate data reporting
Facility and district level routine reporting against defined data sets
Tracker
Individual-level case and patient follow-up across programmes
Android capture app
Offline data entry and synchronisation from facilities without connectivity
Dashboards and analytics
Pivot tables, charts and maps over routine indicators
Metadata packages
Prebuilt configurations for immunisation, HIV, TB, malaria and surveillance
Data quality tools
Validation rules, outlier detection and completeness monitoring
GIS mapping
Displays indicators against administrative geography
Interoperability
FHIR and ADX support plus a web API for exchange with other systems
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.
Who owns and develops DHIS2?
The HISP Centre at the University of Oslo, funded by donors including Norad, the Global Fund, the Gates Foundation and Wellcome.
Is DHIS2 free?
The software is free under a BSD licence. Implementation, hosting, training and support are not, and are the dominant cost.
What is the Shared Services Fee?
A voluntary annual contribution introduced by HISP UiO in 2025 to fund shared global infrastructure and long-term platform sustainability.
Can I buy commercial support?
Yes, from regional HISP groups or private implementers such as Devotta, which is contracted by HISP UiO for core platform development and also works independently.
Keep looking
Where to go from DHIS2
- DHIS2 alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- DHIS2 pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- DHIS2 badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Healthcare softwareThe full category
- Best Healthcare softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Healthcare software for
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for DHIS2, 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.
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DHIS2 badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
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