Editor’s Note: As part of the Winter 2026 eDiscovery Pricing Survey series, conducted by ComplexDiscovery OÜ in partnership with the EDRM (Electronic Discovery Reference Model), this post explores the pricing of data processing, hosting, and project management services — the operational core of every eDiscovery engagement.
If forensic services are where the pricing pulse first registers, processing, hosting, and project management are where that pulse sustains. These are the recurring, volume-driven costs that define a matter’s financial trajectory — and the areas where commoditization pressures, alternative pricing models, and the analytics premium exert their strongest influence. Understanding how these services are priced reveals the tensions between scale, value, and innovation that shape the modern eDiscovery market.
Content Assessment: The Pricing Pulse: Data Processing, Hosting, and Project Management Insights from the Winter 2026 eDiscovery Pricing Survey
Information - 94%
Insight - 93%
Relevance - 94%
Objectivity - 95%
Authority - 96%
94%
Excellent
A short percentage-based assessment of the qualitative benefit expressed as a percentage of positive reception of the recent article from ComplexDiscovery OÜ titled, "The Pricing Pulse: Data Processing, Hosting, and Project Management Insights from the Winter 2026 eDiscovery Pricing Survey."
Industry Research
The Pricing Pulse: Data Processing, Hosting, and Project Management Insights from the Winter 2026 eDiscovery Pricing Survey
ComplexDiscovery Staff
Survey Background
The Winter 2026 eDiscovery Pricing Survey, a 25‑question instrument covering key stages of the eDiscovery lifecycle, was conducted from late December 2025 through February 21, 2026, and drew responses from 53 participants across the eDiscovery ecosystem. The respondent pool was overwhelmingly U.S.-based, with 92.5% of participants conducting their eDiscovery-related business in the United States. The remaining respondents were distributed across Europe — including the United Kingdom (3.8%) and non-UK Europe (1.9%) — and Asia/Asia Pacific (1.9%).
By segment, law firms accounted for the largest share at 43.4% of respondents, followed by software and/or services providers (24.5%), corporations (15.1%), consultancies (9.4%), and media/research organizations or educational associations (7.5%). This blend of demand-side and supply-side perspectives provides a grounded view of how these services are both consumed and priced.
From a functional standpoint, the pool was dominated by legal and litigation support professionals, who accounted for 67.9% of respondents. Business and business support functions made up 26.4%, while IT and product development professionals represented 5.7%. This composition means the results are most reflective of those closest to the day-to-day realities of eDiscovery scoping, budgeting, and delivery.
Data Processing: Ingestion vs. Completion
Processing Costs at Ingestion (Question 7)
Data processing priced at the point of ingestion shows a market gravitating toward the lower end of the cost spectrum. The largest group of respondents — 39.6% — reported per-GB costs between $25 and $75, while 34.0% indicated rates below $25 per GB. Together, nearly three-quarters of respondents (73.6%) placed ingestion-stage processing costs below $75 per GB, a finding that reflects the commoditization pressures that have reshaped this segment of the market over the past several years.
What stands out, however, is the significant share of respondents — 18.9% — who reported using alternative pricing models. This rate substantially exceeds anything observed in the forensic pricing questions and suggests that per-GB pricing at ingestion, while still dominant, is increasingly being supplemented or replaced by flat-fee, subscription, or bundled approaches. Only 7.5% selected “do not know.”
The concentration of pricing in the sub-$75 range signals that ingestion-stage processing has become a mature, competitive service where providers have limited room for premium pricing. The relatively high adoption of alternative models may reflect efforts to differentiate through pricing structure rather than price point alone — a strategy that favors providers who can bundle processing with downstream services like hosting or review.
Processing Pricing - Per GB Cost to Process ESI Based on Volume at Ingestion - Winter 2026
Processing Costs at Completion (Question 8)
Processing priced at the point of completion — that is, based on the volume of data that emerges after culling, deduplication, and filtering — presents a more varied and higher-cost picture. The largest response category was “less than $100 per GB” at 37.7%, followed by “between $100 and $150 per GB” at 15.1%, and “greater than $150 per GB” at 9.4%. This upward shift relative to ingestion-stage pricing reflects the additional labor and technology applied during processing to reduce a dataset to its reviewable core.
Alternative pricing models again featured prominently, cited by 22.6% of respondents — the second-highest alternative-model rate across the survey’s first twelve questions, trailing only user licensing (Question 11). This finding underscores a market in active transition. As processing becomes more tightly integrated with analytics, artificial intelligence, and review platforms, providers are experimenting with models that tie pricing to outcomes or downstream usage rather than raw volume.
The “do not know” rate also rose to 15.1%, suggesting that completion-stage pricing is less transparent or less uniformly encountered than ingestion-stage pricing. This may reflect the fact that some organizations use all-in or bundled models that obscure the per-GB cost at this stage, or that the distinction between ingestion and completion pricing is not always clearly delineated in vendor proposals.
Processing Pricing - Per GB Cost to Process ESI Based on Volume at Completion - Winter 2026
Hosting: The Analytics Premium
Hosting Without Analytics (Question 9)
Hosting costs for electronically stored information without analytics capabilities show strong concentration at the lower end of the pricing range. More than half of respondents (54.7%) reported costs below $10 per GB per month, while 30.2% fell in the $10 to $20 range. Just 1.9% reported rates exceeding $20 per GB per month.
Alternative models accounted for 7.5% of responses, and the “do not know” rate was a low 5.7% — suggesting that basic hosting is a well-understood, widely encountered cost that most respondents can readily estimate.
The dominance of sub-$10 pricing for basic hosting reflects a service that has been substantially commoditized. Storage infrastructure costs have declined steadily, and competitive pressures have pushed hosting rates downward. For many providers, basic hosting is no longer a meaningful profit center in its own right but rather a foundation on which higher-value services — analytics, review tools, and managed access — are layered.
Processing Pricing - Per GB Cost Per Month to Host ESI without Analytics - Winter 2026
Hosting With Analytics (Question 10)
When analytics capabilities are included, the pricing distribution shifts upward. The largest group (43.4%) reported rates below $15 per GB per month — higher than the sub-$10 floor for basic hosting. Another 32.1% fell between $15 and $25 per GB per month, and 11.3% reported rates exceeding $25 per GB per month.
The “do not know” rate rose to 9.4%, and alternative models dropped to 3.8%. This combination suggests that analytics-enabled hosting is more commonly priced on a per-GB basis than its basic counterpart, and that the market has coalesced around recognizable pricing tiers for this service.
The upward shift from basic to analytics-enabled hosting quantifies the premium that analytics commands. While basic hosting centers firmly below $10, the addition of analytics moves the center of gravity into the $15 to $25 range for a substantial portion of the market. This premium reflects the value of search, clustering, concept grouping, and other analytical tools that transform hosted data from a static repository into an active workspace for review teams.
Processing Pricing - Per GB Cost Per Month to Host ESI with Analytics - Winter 2026
User License Fees (Question 11)
User license fees for access to hosted data reveal a market divided between conventional per-user pricing and alternative approaches. The largest group — 41.5% — reported fees between $50 and $100 per user per month. However, 34.0% of respondents indicated the use of alternative pricing models, the highest alternative-model rate across the survey’s first twelve questions.
Only 17.0% reported fees below $50 per user per month, and 7.5% selected “do not know.” Notably, no respondents reported fees exceeding $100 per user per month.
The high prevalence of alternative models for user licensing is significant. It suggests that the traditional per-user-per-month structure, while still the most common single approach, is under pressure from models that tie access costs to matter size, data volume, or enterprise agreements rather than individual user counts. For organizations with large review teams or fluctuating staffing needs, per-user fees can become a cost management challenge, and alternative structures offer more predictable or scalable pricing.
Processing Pricing - User License Fee Per Month for Access to Hosted Data - Winter 2026
Project Management: Valuing Coordination and Oversight
Project Management Support (Question 12)
Project management pricing anchors firmly in the mid-to-upper hourly range. More than half of respondents (52.8%) reported rates between $100 and $200 per hour, while 26.4% indicated rates exceeding $200 per hour. Together, 79.2% of respondents placed project management above $100 per hour, underscoring the value the market assigns to coordination, workflow oversight, and client communication in eDiscovery engagements.
Only 3.8% of respondents reported rates below $100 per hour, and 11.3% cited alternative pricing models. The “do not know” rate was a low 5.7%, suggesting that project management is a widely encountered and well-understood cost component.
The concentration of pricing above $100 per hour reflects the role project management plays in bridging the gap between technical execution and client expectations. Effective project management reduces downstream costs by catching issues early, optimizing review workflows, and ensuring defensibility — value that justifies the premium relative to more routine processing or hosting services. The 26.4% of respondents above $200 per hour likely reflects senior-level or specialist project management roles where strategic oversight, cross-functional coordination, and direct client engagement command higher rates.
Processing Pricing - Per Hour Cost of Project Management Support for eDiscovery - Winter 2026
Aggregate Analysis: What the Processing, Hosting, and Project Management Pricing Pulse Reveals
Viewed together, the Winter 2026 results for data processing, hosting, and project management illuminate a segment of the eDiscovery market where commoditization and differentiation coexist.
Processing is bifurcated by measurement point. Ingestion-stage processing clusters below $75 per GB (73.6% of respondents), while completion-stage processing spreads across a broader and higher range, with 24.5% of respondents at $100 or above. This gap reflects the additional value — and cost — associated with transforming raw data into a reviewable dataset.
Alternative pricing models are most prevalent in licensing and processing. The alternative-model rate reached its peak across the first twelve survey questions at 34.0% for user licensing and was also elevated for completion-stage processing (22.6%) and ingestion-stage processing (18.9%) — far exceeding rates observed in the forensics section of the survey. These figures signal that the middle tiers of the eDiscovery workflow are where pricing innovation is most active, driven by the integration of processing with analytics platforms and the limitations of per-unit models for services with variable usage patterns.
Hosting costs are stratified by capability. Basic hosting has been driven below $10 per GB per month for the majority of providers (54.7%), while the addition of analytics pushes the distribution upward, with 43.4% of respondents in the sub-$15 range and 32.1% between $15 and $25. This tiered structure reflects a market that has successfully separated infrastructure costs from analytical value.
Project management commands a consistent premium. With 79.2% of respondents pricing project management above $100 per hour and more than a quarter above $200, the market clearly values the coordination and oversight that skilled project managers bring to complex matters. The relatively low “do not know” rate (5.7%) and minimal use of alternative models (11.3%) suggest that hourly billing remains the standard and well-accepted model for this service.
Uncertainty concentrates in the middle of the workflow. “Do not know” rates were highest for completion-stage processing (15.1%) and hosting with analytics (9.4%), suggesting that these services — which sit between the well-defined costs of collection and the well-understood rates of review — are where pricing transparency has the most room to improve.
Demographics reinforce interpretation. With law firms (43.4%) and service providers (24.5%) representing the two largest respondent groups, the results capture both the buyers who negotiate these rates and the sellers who set them. The dominance of legal and litigation support professionals (67.9%) means the data reflect practitioners who encounter processing, hosting, and project management costs as regular, recurring elements of their work—not occasional or peripheral expenses.
Emerging Pricing Signals for 2026 and Beyond
The pricing pulse for processing, hosting, and project management in Winter 2026 reveals a market in transition. Commoditization has firmly established the lower bounds for ingestion-stage processing and basic hosting, but the growing prevalence of alternative pricing models — particularly for completion-stage processing and user licensing — signals that the industry is actively seeking structures that better align costs with value.
Analytics continues to command a clear premium over basic hosting, and project management sustains its position as a valued professional service priced well above the operational tiers of the workflow. As artificial intelligence and integrated platforms continue to reshape how data is processed, hosted, and managed, the boundaries between these service categories may continue to blur — and with them, the pricing models that define them.
In the next installment of this series, we follow the pricing pulse into document review — the most labor-intensive and cost-significant phase of the eDiscovery workflow.
News Source
- Rob Robinson and Holley Robinson, ComplexDiscovery OÜ, “Winter 2026 eDiscovery Pricing Survey,” February 2026.
Assisted by GAI and LLM Technologies
Additional Reading
- The Pricing Pulse: Forensic Collection, Examination, and Testimony Insights from the Winter 2026 eDiscovery Pricing Survey
- ComplexDiscovery OÜ Launches Winter 2026 eDiscovery Pricing Survey, Seeking Clarity in a Maturing GenAI Market
- Industry Benchmarks in an Era of Transformation: The Complete Summer 2025 eDiscovery Pricing Survey
- The Front Door of eDiscovery: Forensic Pricing Insights from the Summer 2025 eDiscovery Survey
- Processing, Hosting, and Project Management Pricing: The Engine Room of eDiscovery in the Summer 2025 Survey
- The Human Core of eDiscovery: Review Services in the Summer 2025 Pricing Survey
- Generative AI at the Frontier of eDiscovery: Pricing Insights from the Summer 2025 Survey
- eDiscovery Surveys Archives – ComplexDiscovery
Source: ComplexDiscovery OÜ

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