Which fees appear on an eDiscovery invoice?
Showing all 19 fees
What do processing fees cover?
What is a per-GB processing fee?
Processing · Volume-based · one-time per ingestion
- What it is
- Charged for converting raw collected data (mailboxes, files, chat exports) into searchable, reviewable documents: extraction, indexing, OCR.
- What it actually costs to deliver
- Processing is compute time. Once the pipeline is built, the marginal cost of processing a gigabyte is small and falls every year as compute gets cheaper.
- Watch for
- Per-GB processing penalizes you for collecting broadly. The safer, more defensible collection strategy becomes the more expensive one.
Ask before you sign
- Is processing charged on raw (pre-cull) or reduced volume?
- Is re-processing charged again if data is reloaded?
- Is OCR included, or a separate line?
What are ingestion and loading fees?
Processing · Volume or per-event
- What it is
- A separate charge for loading data into the platform, sometimes distinct from processing, so the same gigabyte is billed twice on its way in.
- What it actually costs to deliver
- Loading is an automated pipeline step. As a separate line item it mostly signals unbundled pricing designed to spread cost across more lines.
- Watch for
- Watch for ingestion and processing appearing as two separate per-GB charges for what is functionally one step.
Ask before you sign
- Is loading included in processing, or billed separately?
- What's the combined per-GB cost from raw data to reviewable document?
What does "data enrichment" actually cover?
Processing · Volume-based
- What it is
- A vaguely named per-GB charge for enhancement steps: normalization, metadata extraction, deNISTing, language identification.
- What it actually costs to deliver
- These are standard automated steps in any modern processing pipeline, rarely distinct work justifying a distinct price.
- Watch for
- The vaguer the name, the harder the fee is to compare across vendors. Ask exactly what it covers, or ask for it bundled.
Ask before you sign
- What specific steps does this fee cover?
- Which of them aren't already part of processing?
What is an ECA or culling fee?
Processing · Volume-based
- What it is
- Charges for early case assessment (deduplication, date filtering, keyword culling) to reduce data before review. Sometimes priced per GB in, sometimes per GB promoted to review.
- What it actually costs to deliver
- Culling is search and filtering: cheap compute. Some platforms include it; others charge for the reduction and then charge again to host what remains.
- Watch for
- Perverse incentive alert: a vendor paid per hosted GB has little reason to help you aggressively shrink your data.
Ask before you sign
- Is ECA included, or a separate per-GB fee?
- Am I charged on data in, data promoted, or both?
- Does deduplication happen before or after volume-based fees are calculated?
What are OCR and imaging fees?
Processing · Per-page or per-GB
- What it is
- Charges for optical character recognition on scanned documents, and for converting files to TIFF/PDF images, historically priced per page, a holdover from the photocopying era.
- What it actually costs to deliver
- OCR is a mature, automated technology. Per-page pricing on it is a legacy artifact.
- Watch for
- Per-page charges on high-volume image productions add up fast and are often negotiable or avoidable (native production).
Ask before you sign
- Is OCR included in processing?
- Can we produce natives instead of images to avoid conversion fees?
What do hosting fees cover?
What am I paying for in monthly hosting?
Hosting · Volume-based · recurring
- What it is
- A monthly charge for storing your matter data on the vendor's platform, typically $5–$15 per GB per month. It recurs for the life of the matter, often years.
- What it actually costs to deliver
- Cloud storage is a commodity that has dropped in price for a decade. Industry surveys now show most providers charging under $10/GB, with continued downward pressure.
- Watch for
- Hosting is where long matters quietly become six-figure line items: 100 GB hosted for 24 months at $12/GB is $28,800 for storage alone.
Ask before you sign
- What is the monthly per-GB rate, and does it apply to raw or reduced data?
- Does the rate drop as volume grows?
- What does it cost to archive a dormant matter instead of hosting it live?
What are archiving and rehydration fees?
Hosting · Recurring + per-event
- What it is
- Charges to move a dormant matter to cold storage, and separate charges (sometimes called reactivation or rehydration) to bring it back. A filed exhibit in Apple v. Samsung records six monthly "hibernated subcollection" charges totaling over $84,000, two of them above $20,000.
- What it actually costs to deliver
- Cold storage costs pennies per GB. Rehydration is an automated restore job.
- Watch for
- If archiving has a monthly fee AND reactivation has a fee, dormant matters are being monetized twice.
Ask before you sign
- What does archival storage cost per GB?
- What does reactivation cost, and how long does it take?
What counts as overage on an "unlimited" plan?
Hosting · Threshold-based
- What it is
- Charges triggered when usage crosses caps: data caps inside 'unlimited' plans, user limits, storage tiers. The predictability of a flat fee disappears in the fine print.
- What it actually costs to deliver
- Overage pricing is legitimate when allowances and rates are published upfront. It's a problem when caps are buried and rates appear at invoice time.
- Watch for
- 'Unlimited' with undisclosed caps is the pattern to catch before signing, not after.
Ask before you sign
- What exactly is capped: data, users, storage, exports?
- What are the published overage rates for each?
- Can you show me a sample invoice for a matter that exceeded its caps?
What do review and access fees cover?
What is a per-seat user license?
Review & access · Headcount-based · recurring
- What it is
- A monthly charge per named user: attorneys, paralegals, contract reviewers, experts, co-counsel. Tiers often differ (reviewer vs. admin vs. project manager).
- What it actually costs to deliver
- An additional login costs the platform essentially nothing. Seat fees monetize your team size, not the vendor's delivery cost.
- Watch for
- Per-seat pricing punishes collaboration: adding contract reviewers for a deadline sprint, or giving co-counsel access, directly raises your bill.
Ask before you sign
- What exactly does each seat tier cost, and what can each tier do?
- Are inactive users billed?
- Is there a platform-license option with no per-user charge?
Why is AI review charged as a surcharge?
Review & access · Feature-based · recurring or per-use
- What it is
- Add-on charges for AI-assisted review, continuous active learning (CAL), clustering, threading, or concept search, billed per document, per GB, or as a premium module.
- What it actually costs to deliver
- AI review is rapidly becoming standard. Public surveys show per-document AI review pricing falling toward cents, and several major platforms now bundle AI review into their base price at no charge. Others price it as a separate line, which is not in itself a worse deal: what matters is whether the figure is published and fixed.
- Watch for
- Paying for AI is not the problem. AI cost you cannot see before the invoice is: a per-document or per-GB meter turns a review decision into a billing decision, and nobody can forecast it. Ask for a published flat price and what it covers.
Ask before you sign
- Is AI priced separately, and is that price published?
- Is AI charged per document, per GB, or flat?
- If AI reduces review hours, do my other line items actually go down?
What do production fees cover?
What is TIFFing, and why is it billed separately?
Production · Volume-based · per production
- What it is
- Charged for converting native files into the images used for production: typically single-page TIFFs, plus the load files and extracted text that accompany them. Often billed separately from both processing and export, so the same gigabyte can be charged three times on its journey from collection to opposing counsel.
- What it actually costs to deliver
- Image conversion is an automated batch operation. It is compute, not craft. Court records show wide variance, and conversion is routinely billed at a multiple of processing for the cheaper operation.
- Watch for
- Conversion cost has no relationship to review effort. A gigabyte of scanned images is roughly 15,500 pages; a gigabyte of plain text is closer to 678,000. You are billed by bytes for work measured in documents.
Ask before you sign
- Is TIFF conversion billed separately from processing and from export?
- What is the per-GB rate, and is it charged on raw or produced volume?
- If a production is reissued in a corrected format, is conversion charged again?
- Are native-only productions cheaper, and can we agree that format in the ESI protocol?
What are export and production fees?
Production · Volume-based · per event
- What it is
- Per-GB charges to export or produce documents out of the platform, including producing to opposing counsel and sometimes even retrieving your own data at the end of a matter.
- What it actually costs to deliver
- An export is a compute job measured in minutes. The fee monetizes the fact that your evidence is inside the vendor's walls.
- Watch for
- This is the fee practitioners resent most: paying to retrieve your own evidence. It also functions as an exit barrier when you consider switching providers.
Ask before you sign
- What does it cost to produce documents, and to export my full dataset if I leave?
- Are load files (DAT/OPT) and images included, or itemized separately?
- Is there a data-return fee at matter close?
What are media and delivery fees?
Production · Per-item
- What it is
- Charges for physical or electronic delivery of productions: encrypted drives, secure file transfer, or the notorious per-DVD charge.
- What it actually costs to deliver
- Secure electronic transfer costs approximately nothing. Physical media is a hardware-store purchase.
- Watch for
- A $55 DVD is the industry's most famous absurd line item for a reason.
Ask before you sign
- Is secure electronic delivery included?
- What do physical media cost, itemized?
What are endorsement and branding fees?
Production · Per-page or per-doc
- What it is
- Charges for stamping Bates numbers, confidentiality designations, and redaction burn-ins onto produced documents.
- What it actually costs to deliver
- Fully automated rendering. Per-page pricing here is another photocopier-era holdover.
- Watch for
- Often bundled into production fees, so make sure it isn't billed both ways.
Ask before you sign
- Are endorsements included in production, or per-page?
- Do redaction burn-ins cost extra?
What do services and admin fees cover?
What do project management hours actually cover?
Services & admin · Hourly · recurring
- What it is
- Hourly billing for the vendor's project managers to run ingestions, searches, exports, and productions on your behalf.
- What it actually costs to deliver
- Real labor, but the volume of it depends on how self-service the platform is. Software that requires vendor staff for routine tasks generates its own billable hours.
- Watch for
- On platforms that aren't self-service, every routine task becomes an hourly charge. Ask what you can do yourself.
Ask before you sign
- Which tasks can my team do without vendor involvement?
- What's the PM hourly rate, and is there a monthly minimum?
- Are simple tasks (a search, an export) billed in minimum increments?
What triggers a rush or expedite fee?
Services & admin · Per-event surcharge
- What it is
- A premium, often 25–100%, for processing or productions on tight timelines.
- What it actually costs to deliver
- Sometimes genuine (overnight staffing), but on fully automated pipelines a rush is often just queue priority.
- Watch for
- Litigation runs on deadlines; if every real-world timeline triggers a rush fee, the base price is fiction.
Ask before you sign
- What turnaround is standard, and what triggers rush pricing?
- Is rush a fixed fee or a multiplier?
What is a monthly minimum in eDiscovery?
Services & admin · Recurring floor
- What it is
- A minimum monthly invoice or base 'platform fee' charged regardless of usage, so small or quiet matters still generate full bills.
- What it actually costs to deliver
- Pure revenue floor. Its function is to make small matters as billable as large ones.
- Watch for
- For a small-case docket, minimums can make defensible eDiscovery economically impossible, a problem the industry has acknowledged for 15 years.
Ask before you sign
- Is there a monthly minimum per matter or per account?
- What does an idle month on a stayed case cost me?
What are eDiscovery collection fees?
Services & admin · Per-custodian or hourly
- What it is
- Charges for collecting data from custodians, devices, and cloud sources: per custodian, per source, or hourly forensic rates.
- What it actually costs to deliver
- Legitimate skilled work when forensic rigor is required; increasingly automated for standard cloud sources (M365, Google Workspace, Slack).
- Watch for
- Standard cloud collections are largely API-driven now. Forensic rates for routine cloud pulls deserve scrutiny.
Ask before you sign
- What's the rate per custodian/source?
- Are standard cloud connectors automated or billed as forensic time?
What are support and training fees?
Services & admin · Hourly or subscription
- What it is
- Charges for help desk access, user training, or 'premium support' tiers, sometimes bundling mandatory support hours into contracts.
- What it actually costs to deliver
- Basic supportability should be a property of the software. Mandatory support bundles for routine guidance signal a platform that's hard to use.
- Watch for
- Watch for contracts that bundle required support hours whether you use them or not.
Ask before you sign
- What support is included in the base price?
- Are training and onboarding one-time or recurring charges?
No fees match that search.
The pattern behind every fee on this page
Almost every line item above exists because legacy eDiscovery pricing charges for data volume and headcount rather than for the work performed: per GB, per seat, per export, per click. The alternative is a flat platform price: one number, unlimited users, with clearly stated allowances and published overage rates. That is how Konvergence prices Kavarn, at $3,250 a month, no per-user fees, on your firm's own private instance.
See our pricing, the whole thing →Sources. The hosting range of $5 to $15 per GB per month is a commonly published market rate. The vendor-bill figures on this page are drawn from a filed exhibit in Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., No. 5:11-cv-01846-LHK (N.D. Cal.), Dkt. 2853-25.
About this guide. This page is educational content published by Konvergence Inc. It describes fee structures generally observed across the eDiscovery industry; it does not describe, evaluate, or refer to any specific vendor, and it is not legal, financial, or purchasing advice. Market figures reflect publicly available industry reporting, including the RAND Institute for Civil Justice cost studies, the ComplexDiscovery eDiscovery Pricing Survey, and a filed court record, Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., No. 5:11-cv-01846-LHK (N.D. Cal.), Dkt. 2853-25. Verify all pricing directly with any provider you evaluate.
