Physics based molecular modelling and drug discovery software, licensed by token pool
Pricing on request10 researched notes
OpenEye, Cadence Molecular Sciences
Computational chemistry toolkits and the Orion cloud platform, now inside Cadence
As of 31 August 2026, OpenEye, Cadence Molecular Sciences's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. The OMEGA and ROCS shape-based drug discovery toolkits, plus the Orion cloud platform, sold by Cadence Design Systems after its acquisition of OpenEye. Softwr lists it under Research. OpenEye, Cadence Molecular Sciences is made by Cadence Design Systems, available on Linux, Windows, macOS, Web.
Overview
What OpenEye, Cadence Molecular Sciences does
OpenEye produces computational chemistry software for drug discovery: OMEGA for conformer generation, ROCS for three-dimensional shape-based virtual screening, plus toolkits covering cheminformatics, molecular modelling, docking and structure preparation. Orion is the cloud platform that runs these at scale, and ROCS X extends shape search with machine learning to screen libraries in the trillions of molecules. The toolkits are licensed for programmatic use in Python and C++, which is why they sit inside so many pharmaceutical companies internal discovery pipelines rather than only in the hands of specialists. The ownership change is the fact that should affect a shortlist. OpenEye is now Cadence Molecular Sciences, part of Cadence Design Systems, an electronic design automation company. That brings capital and computing scale, and the ROCS X launch shows the direction, but it also means molecular sciences is a growth line inside a business whose centre of gravity is chip design. Cadence licensing practice, annual subscriptions, node and token style entitlements and enterprise contracting, is a different commercial culture from the academically rooted one many long-standing OpenEye users grew up with. Academic licensing is unusually explicit and worth reading before applying. There are three routes: a paid annual Academic Package for groups under ten people that keeps support and intellectual property rights; a Public Domain Research Licence that costs nothing but comes with no support and no intellectual property rights, requiring results be placed in the public domain; and a free Teaching Licence for time-limited courses. Any use in a revenue generating capacity, including contract research, is excluded from the free routes. Commercial pricing is not published.
What people use it for
- A pharmaceutical discovery team screening a multi-billion compound library by three-dimensional shape rather than by two-dimensional similarity
- A computational chemist embedding conformer generation into an internal pipeline through the Python toolkits
- A university group publishing openly that can accept the public domain licence terms in exchange for zero cost
- A biotech scaling virtual screening on cloud compute without building its own cluster
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 OpenEye, Cadence Molecular Sciences.
- The free Public Domain Research Licence requires surrendering intellectual property rights and publishing results into the public domain, which rules it out for any academic group with a technology transfer office or patent ambitions.
- Free academic licences are renewable but re-evaluated annually with no guarantee of continuation, so a multi-year research programme has no assured software entitlement beyond the current year.
- OpenEye now sits inside Cadence Design Systems, whose core business is chip design, so the roadmap and licensing culture are set by a company for which molecular sciences is one growth line among several.
- Commercial pricing is entirely unpublished and structured as annual subscriptions with separate Orion compute, making total cost of a screening programme hard to forecast before contracting.
- The toolkits assume real computational chemistry expertise; they are libraries and applications for specialists, not an interface a medicinal chemist can drive without training.
Pricing
What OpenEye, Cadence Molecular Sciences costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Commercial licence
On request
- Annual subscription priced through Cadence sales
- Toolkits and applications licensed separately from the Orion platform
- Orion compute billed on top of software entitlements
- Enterprise agreements typical for pharmaceutical customers
- No public price list
Academic Package
On request
- Paid annual subscription for university groups under ten members
- Includes support
- Researchers retain intellectual property rights
- Requires employment at an accredited degree-granting university
- Cannot be used in any revenue generating capacity
Public Domain Research Licence
Free
- No cost
- No support of any kind
- No intellectual property rights retained
- Results must be placed in the public domain
- Renewable but re-evaluated annually with no guarantee of continuation
Capabilities
Features
OMEGA
Conformer generation for three-dimensional molecular libraries
ROCS
Shape-based virtual screening by three-dimensional overlay
ROCS X
Machine learning accelerated shape search across very large chemical spaces
Orion platform
Cloud environment for running discovery workflows at scale
Programmatic toolkits
Python and C++ toolkits for embedding in internal discovery pipelines
Academic routes
Paid academic package, free public domain research licence, free teaching licence
Structure preparation
Protein and ligand preparation tools ahead of modelling
Docking and scoring
Structure-based screening applications alongside shape methods
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.
Is OpenEye still OpenEye?
It trades as OpenEye, Cadence Molecular Sciences, and is part of Cadence Design Systems following acquisition. The product names OMEGA, ROCS and Orion continue.
Can academics use it for free?
Yes, through the Public Domain Research Licence or a Teaching Licence, but both come with no support and no intellectual property rights. Keeping IP rights and support requires the paid Academic Package.
What is ROCS X?
A machine learning enabled extension of ROCS shape search, built on the Orion platform, aimed at screening chemical spaces in the trillions of molecules.
Is commercial pricing published?
No. Commercial licences are annual subscriptions quoted through Cadence sales, with Orion compute charged separately.
Keep looking
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for OpenEye, Cadence Molecular Sciences, 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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