eDiscovery cost per GB: processing, hosting, the real total
The per-GB price on a quote is one line of a bill with five or six. Processing is charged once per GB; hosting recurs every month for the life of the matter; user licenses, productions and project management sit on top. Over an 18-month matter the effective cost per GB is many times the headline.
Updated October 6, 2026
What does a gigabyte of eDiscovery data cost?
The per-GB figure on a quote is almost always the hosting rate, and hosting is one of five or six meters. Here is how the fees stack for a single gigabyte over the life of a typical matter:
| Fee | How it is charged | Published range (2026) | Effect on one GB over 18 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Processing | One time, per GB ingested | Per GB, higher at some providers | Paid once |
| Hosting | Per GB per month | $5–15 per GB per month | Paid 18 times |
| User licenses | Per user per month | No published range; tiers differ by role | Independent of GB |
| Productions and exports | Per GB, per page or per production | Frequently $25–75 per GB produced | Paid per production |
| Project management | Hourly | Hourly, discretionary | Independent of GB |
| Format conversion / OCR | Per page or per GB | Varies widely | Paid when imaging |
Sources: ComplexDiscovery’s semi-annual eDiscovery Pricing Survey reports a majority of respondents charging under $10 per GB per month for hosting, with a tail of higher-priced outliers above the typical band; processing rates are drawn from the same survey and published provider rate cards. User licenses carry no range because no published survey figure supports one. Ranges are ranges, not quotes.
Take the midpoints. A gigabyte processed at $6 and hosted at $10 for 18 months costs $6 + (18 × $10) = $186, before any user, production or PM charge is allocated to it. The headline “$10 per GB” understates the per-gigabyte cost by a factor of eighteen, because the headline is a monthly rate and the matter is not monthly.
What does a gigabyte of data contain?
The meter counts storage; the work is in documents. A gigabyte of email is about 10,000 documents and 100,000 pages. A gigabyte of scanned images is about 1,200 documents and 15,500 pages. Both are billed at the same per-GB rate. The pages-per-gigabyte guide has the full table; the point here is that per-GB pricing cannot see the difference, so neither can your budget.
Which questions change the per-GB number most?
Is processing billed on raw or reduced volume? Deduplication and de-NISTing commonly remove a large share of a collection. If processing is billed before they run, you pay to process data that is then discarded. Ask at which stage the gigabytes are counted.
How long will the matter be hosted? Hosting is the compounding line. Litigation frequently runs longer than the initial estimate, and every extra month is another full hosting charge on every gigabyte still in the platform. Ask what it costs to archive a dormant matter at a lower rate, and whether reactivation is charged.
How many people need access? Per-user licenses are independent of volume and add up quickly during a review push. Ask whether contract reviewers count as users, whether licenses can be turned on and off monthly, and whether read-only access is charged.
When does per-GB pricing stop making sense?
Per-GB pricing is fair when volume is small, the matter is short, and few people need access. It is a poor fit when any of those stop being true, because the bill grows with what the other side produces and how long the court takes, neither of which you control.
The alternative is a flat platform rate. The two models cross at roughly 130–400 GB across all active matters, for a firm with six users and four hours of project management a month, at $5–15 per GB hosting. Below that, per-GB is cheaper. Above it, the flat rate is, and the gap widens every month. The cost calculator computes the crossover for your numbers, and the pricing models comparison sets out the other structures in use.
How this works on a flat rate
Konvergence Inc operates Kavarn, which prices the whole platform rather than the gigabyte: $3,250 per month per private instance on a 12-month agreement, with no per-GB processing or hosting charge, no per-user fee, and productions included. Storage and compute are provisioned rather than metered, so the number of gigabytes and the number of months do not move the platform rate; more storage is added in fixed monthly steps. On a running instance, bandwidth is the only meter, and archive storage for finished matters is billed per gigabyte. The pricing page publishes every fee, including the ones that only apply sometimes. See what the platform includes, or book a walkthrough.
Sources
- ComplexDiscovery, eDiscovery Pricing Survey (semi-annual; hosting and processing rate distributions).
- RAND Institute for Civil Justice, Where the Money Goes (2012), on the share of cost attributable to review.
- The eDiscovery Fee Field Guide for each fee’s mechanics and the questions to ask.
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 a typical eDiscovery cost per GB?
For hosting, a majority of providers now charge under $10 per GB per month, with published ranges running roughly $5 to $15. Processing is a one-time per-gigabyte charge whose published range depends on which volume it is measured on, so a single figure rarely predicts a bill. Neither includes user licenses, productions or project management.
Does eDiscovery cost money?
Yes. Even self-service platforms charge for processing and hosting, and most charge per user and per production as well. The free tools available, including the ones on this site, help estimate and plan; they do not process or host data.
Is eDiscovery charged on raw or reduced volume?
It depends on the provider, and it is one of the most important questions to ask. Some bill processing on the raw collected volume and deduplicate afterwards; others bill on the volume that survives culling. Hosting is usually billed on the hosted set, which is post-culling, but confirm it.
How does a per-GB bill add up over a matter?
Processing is charged once per gigabyte, hosting every month the matter stays open, and user licenses and project management sit on top of both. For a single mid-size matter on per-GB pricing, a few thousand dollars a month is common once those are added together. Which model is cheaper depends on volume, user count and duration; the calculator shows the break-even, and the pricing page publishes the flat monthly rate.