EDC platform review

REDCap review

REDCap is a secure web application for building and managing online surveys and research databases, developed at Vanderbilt and licensed free of charge to non-profit organisations that join the REDCap Consortium. It is mainly used by universities, hospitals and other non-profit research institutions, each of which hosts its own installation for its researchers.

Facts checked: November 2026 · Rank 7 of 18 · How we rank

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Our score: 7.1/10
Best for: Academic studies at institutions that already run REDCap
Pricing: Free licence for non-profit organisations; licensed institution hosts and supports it
Vendor: Vanderbilt University Medical Center (REDCap Consortium), Nashville, Tennessee, USA

Unique feature

Free licence through a global non-profit consortium

REDCap is "free to non-profit organizations who join the REDCap Consortium", and each partner institution hosts and supports its own installation; the project site lists 8,505 active partners in 167 countries.

Fit

Who REDCap suits

Best for

Academic investigator-led studies at a consortium member institution
Longitudinal cohorts, registries and survey-based studies
Studies collecting participant data on phones via MyCap or offline via the mobile app

Less suited to

Commercial or for-profit organisations, which cannot hold a licence or self-host
Organisations without in-house IT staff to install and support the software
Teams wanting the software vendor to build the database for them

Features

Key features

What the vendor documents publicly, checked against its own pages. “Not stated” means we could not confirm it, not that it is missing.

✓ Yes◐ Partly+ Add-on– No? Not stated

–Vendor builds your databaseLicence states Vanderbilt provides no training, support or hosting services
✓Build forms yourselfStudy teams build forms and surveys themselves without programming
✓Audit trailField-level audit trails of user activity
✓Electronic signaturesOptional e-signature when locking instruments; enabled per instrument
✓Edit checks at data entryField validation plus data quality rules with real-time execution on forms
✓Queries and source data verificationData Resolution Workflow for query management
✓RandomisationBuilt-in module; allocation table generated externally and uploaded
✓ePRO and participant self-entrySurvey links and the MyCap participant app
✓eConsente-Consent Framework on surveys with automatic PDF archiving
✓Offline mobile data collectionREDCap Mobile App supports offline data collection
✓Forms in several languagesMulti-Language Management for forms and surveys
✓CDISC export (ODM / SDTM)CDISC ODM import/export; SDTM and define.xml not stated
✓Built-in reports and dashboardsAd hoc reports and Stats & Charts module
?Built-in statistical analysisDescriptive stats and charts shown; exports to SPSS, SAS, R
?Numbered tables, figures and listings
✓APIREST API supporting CSV, JSON and XML
✓Free or open-source optionFree to licensed non-profits; institution self-hosts

Verdict

Strengths and limitations

Strengths

No licence fee for eligible non-profit institutions
Built-in randomisation, eConsent, MyCap ePRO and offline mobile app
Large user community: 8,505 partner institutions in 167 countries

Limitations

Not licensable to for-profit organisations
Each institution must provide its own hosting, IT support and validation
Randomisation module needs an allocation table prepared outside REDCap

Details

Pricing, hosting and regulation

Pricing

Free licence for non-profit organisations; licensed institution hosts and supports it. Published prices: No cost or fee to licensed non-profit organisations; Vanderbilt's own hosted system is available to certain US groups for a monthly fee (amount not published). Pricing source.

Hosting and security

Hosting regions: Wherever each licensed institution installs it (self-hosted); no central vendor cloud for licensees. Licences are issued only to non-profits with internal IT infrastructure to self-host; licensees may use a contracted cloud host if the host has no access to the software. For-profit organisations may not hold a licence or self-host.

Certifications: None stated by the vendor.

Regulatory support

Vendor states REDCap supports "compliance with 21 CFR Part 11, FISMA, HIPAA, and GDPR"; its FAQ adds compliance depends on each site's installation.. Whatever the software offers, your own procedures, validation and training are still needed for a regulated study.

Scale and set-up

Project site lists 8,505 active partners in 167 countries, over 2,879,000 projects and over 4,630,000 users. Used for clinical research and basic science.. Self-service build by study teams; projects are built and tested in development before moving to production. Each partner institution installs, maintains and supports its own instance; the FAQ suggests about 0.25 FTE administrator time initially, then 0.1 FTE plus 0.5 FTE user support..

Alternatives

Sources (checked November 2026)