Schrodingervs
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Benchling: If the priority is capturing and organising experimental and biologics data rather than physics based prediction
Schrodinger
Physics based molecular modelling and drug discovery software, licensed by token pool
As of 31 August 2026, Schrodinger's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. The computational chemistry suite behind Maestro, Glide and FEP+, sold to pharmaceutical and materials companies on annual licences and to academics on a published site licence. Softwr lists it under Research. Schrodinger is made by Schrodinger, Inc., available on Linux, macOS, Windows, Web.
Overview
What Schrodinger does
Schrodinger sells a suite of physics based molecular simulation and modelling software used in small molecule drug discovery and materials science. The core products are Maestro, the graphical interface, Glide for docking, FEP+ for free energy perturbation binding affinity prediction, Desmond for molecular dynamics, Jaguar for quantum chemistry, BioLuminate for biologics and LiveDesign, a collaborative design platform that sits over the modelling stack. There is a separate materials science line built on the same engines. The licensing model is what buyers get wrong. Applications draw from a shared pool of tokens, so a licence does not entitle a site to unlimited use of a module, it entitles it to a level of concurrency. Maestro is generally unrestricted while the compute heavy applications consume tokens per job, which means two chemists running large FEP+ campaigns can exhaust a pool sized for a whole department. Academic site licences are published, starting around 7,500 USD a year for a premium package with a token allocation, while commercial pricing is quoted per customer against modules, cores and term. Buyers are pharma and biotech computational chemistry groups, materials companies and university modelling groups. The trade-off is cost and specialism: FEP+ in particular requires a trained computational chemist and substantial GPU capacity to be worth its price, and a company without that function will pay for capability it cannot convert into decisions. Schrodinger also runs its own drug pipeline, which some prospective customers treat as a competitive concern and which the company manages through separated agreements.
What people use it for
- A medicinal chemistry programme using FEP+ to prioritise which analogues to synthesise, where avoiding a handful of wasted syntheses pays for the licence
- A structure based design campaign that needs docking at scale against a target with a good crystal structure
- A materials group modelling polymer or electrolyte properties before committing to formulation experiments
- A university modelling group that qualifies for the published academic site licence and needs Maestro across a teaching and research cohort
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 Schrodinger.
- Licences are sold as token pools rather than unlimited module access, so a department can be blocked mid campaign because colleagues are consuming concurrency, and expanding the pool is a new commercial negotiation rather than a setting.
- Commercial pricing is not published and is negotiated against modules, cores and term, so two companies of similar size can pay very different amounts and neither can benchmark the other.
- FEP+ needs substantial GPU capacity that is not included in the licence, so the real annual cost includes cloud or on premise hardware that often rivals the software line item.
- The tools require trained computational chemists to produce trustworthy results, and an organisation without that function will generate predictions it cannot interpret or defend to its own medicinal chemists.
- Schrodinger runs its own internal drug discovery pipeline alongside selling software to discovery companies, and some prospective customers treat that dual role as a conflict when discussing proprietary targets, which slows procurement even where contractual separation exists.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Schrodinger
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.
Pricing
What Schrodinger costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Commercial licence
On request
- Quoted per customer against modules, cores and licence term
- Applications draw from a shared token pool that caps concurrency
- GPU compute for FEP+ and Desmond is a separate cost, on premise or cloud
- Support and training typically bundled into the annual agreement
Academic site licence
On request
- Published academic entry around 7,500 USD a year for a premium package with a token allocation
- Restricted to academic and research use, not work supporting a commercial enterprise
- Maestro generally unrestricted with tokens shared for compute heavy applications
Capabilities
Features
Maestro
The unified graphical interface for building, visualising and launching molecular modelling work
Glide
Ligand docking with several precision settings trading speed against accuracy
FEP+
Free energy perturbation for relative binding affinity prediction, GPU intensive
Desmond
Molecular dynamics simulation, GPU accelerated
Jaguar
Quantum mechanical calculations for reaction and property prediction
LiveDesign
A shared design environment where chemists post and compare compound ideas and predictions
Materials Science suite
Separate module set for polymers, catalysts, electronics and formulation
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 is Schrodinger software licensed?
Annual licences with a shared token pool. Tokens cap how much you can run at once rather than which modules you own outright.
Is there published pricing?
Only for academic site licences, which start around 7,500 USD a year for a premium package. Commercial pricing is quoted.
Do I need my own GPUs?
For FEP+ and Desmond in practice yes, or cloud GPU capacity. Compute is not included in the licence.
Does Schrodinger compete with its customers?
It runs its own drug pipeline as well as selling software. It manages this through contractual separation, but buyers with sensitive targets should raise it during procurement.
Keep looking
Where to go from Schrodinger
- Schrodinger alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Schrodinger pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Schrodinger badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Research softwareThe full category
- Best Research softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Schrodinger, 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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