Per-user pricing
Per-user pricing in eDiscovery is the billing model in which headcount is the primary meter: the bill tracks how many people hold access to the review platform and is largely indifferent to how much data the matter holds. A per-seat license fee exists inside several models; what makes this one distinct is that seats are the main thing being counted.
Also called: per-seat pricing · seat-based pricing · user-based pricing · per-user licensing · named user pricing
Updated September 16, 2026
Per-user pricing charges by how many people hold access rather than by how much data the matter holds. The meter is headcount, so the bill moves when the review team changes size and stays still when the data does. That is the mirror image of volume-based billing, and it moves the pressure from what you collect to who is allowed to look at it.
How does per-user pricing work?
Access is counted, and the count is what the invoice reads.
The unit is a seat, granted per person or per simultaneous session, and the charge normally recurs monthly. What distinguishes this as a model rather than as a line item is primacy: a per-seat license appears inside per-gigabyte and hybrid contracts too, but there it sits alongside a volume meter that dominates the total. Where headcount is the primary meter, data volume becomes close to irrelevant to the bill and the size of the team becomes the whole of it.
The incentive this creates runs the opposite way from per-GB pricing, and it is worse. Under a volume meter the rational response is to cull, which is a discipline that improves the matter: fewer irrelevant documents reach the review platform and nobody pays to read them. Under a headcount meter the rational response is to ration access, and the people being rationed are the ones doing the review. Optimizing the bill means running the review with fewer pairs of eyes than the matter warrants, which is a saving made in the wrong place.
The second thing the model does is decouple the bill from the thing that actually drives effort. A matter that doubles in volume without adding reviewers costs the same, so the meter stops tracking the work at exactly the point the work gets harder.
What does per-user pricing look like in practice?
The headline rate rarely settles the total. Four terms sitting underneath it do.
| Term | Question it answers | Why it moves the number |
|---|---|---|
| Named or concurrent | Is a seat a person or a session? | Shift work needs far fewer concurrent seats |
| Tiering | Do reviewer, admin and read-only seats differ? | A cheap review seat can sit beside an expensive admin one |
| Release | How quickly can a seat be given back? | Unreleased seats bill after the person has gone |
| Minimum term | Is a seat committed per month, or per quarter? | Short engagements pay past their end date |
The market is not sitting still here. In the Winter 2026 eDiscovery Pricing Survey, user licensing was described as “in an active state of structural transition”, with 34.0% of the 53 respondents reporting alternative pricing models, the highest alternative-model proportion in that survey’s processing and hosting section. The analysis reads the movement as running “away from traditional per-seat licensing toward enterprise agreements, volume tiers, and managed service arrangements that bundle access costs into broader contract structures”, which is the shape described under hybrid pricing.
How does per-user pricing show up on an eDiscovery invoice?
As a seat count multiplied by a rate, which looks like the simplest line on the page and hides the four terms above.
The line itself is what the Fee Field Guide records as a per-seat user license, charged monthly on a headcount basis. Where the model is primary rather than incidental, that line carries most of the total and the volume charges beside it are small or absent. Where it is incidental, the same line sits under a much larger hosting charge and deserves less attention than it usually gets.
Worth asking: whether seats are named or concurrent, what each tier can actually do, whether inactive seats are billed, how and how fast a seat is released, what the minimum commitment is, and whether a platform arrangement with no per-user charge is available at all. The full fee list sets this meter against the others, the pricing page publishes a rate that carries no per-user charge, and the models comparison puts the four structures side by side.
Sources
- ComplexDiscovery, A Complete Analysis of the Winter 2026 eDiscovery Pricing Survey, conducted with EDRM across December 2025 through February 2026 on a cohort of 53 respondents, quoted for the structural transition in user licensing and the direction of travel. The survey documents the shift; it does not define the model.
- The Sedona Conference, Glossary: eDiscovery & Digital Information Management, for the surrounding vocabulary.
- Per-seat license structure and the questions to ask: the Fee Field Guide dataset.
Related terms
Per-GB pricing · Flat-rate pricing · Hybrid pricing · Review platform · Technology-assisted review
eDiscovery at one flat monthly rate
$3,250 a month on a 12-month agreement. No per-user fees and no per-GB hosting charges.
Common questions
What is the difference between named and concurrent seats?
A named seat belongs to one person whether or not they sign in. A concurrent seat is one simultaneous session, shared across a larger pool. The same headline rate means very different totals under the two, and a review team that works in shifts or across time zones can run on far fewer concurrent seats than named ones. Ask which is being quoted before comparing two offers.
Are inactive users billed?
Under named seats, usually yes, until the seat is released. That makes the joiners-and-leavers process a billing process, not just an administrative one, and an unreleased seat for a reviewer who finished months ago is one of the commonest quiet charges on a long matter. Ask how a seat is released and whether the change takes effect immediately or at the next period.
How does per-user pricing handle contract reviewers?
Badly, in the sense that it charges most exactly when a team is largest. A surge of contract reviewers for a document-heavy review adds seats for the weeks they are needed, and where seats are named and billed monthly the charge can outlast the engagement. Ask whether short-term seats can be added and released within a period and what the minimum commitment is per seat.