How much does clinical trial recruitment software cost?

What pricing models do recruitment platforms use?

Vendors charge for different units, so quotes are hard to compare until you convert them. Six models cover most of the market.

Which recruitment platforms publish their prices?

Few do. These are the published prices and free offers we found in October 2026:

• Salesforce Participant Recruitment and Enrollment: $10,000 per organization per year for each 100 referred patients, as an add-on to Salesforce's Life Sciences Cloud, whose core edition is listed at $350 per user per month, billed annually. Salesforce says the prices are subject to change.^⁠[1],[2]
• OpenClinica Recruit (formerly BuildClinical): a monthly fee per study, averaging $1,000 to $3,000, with no annual contract, setup fees or management fees.^⁠[3]
• Inato: free for sites, including AI pre-screening. Sponsors pay.^⁠[5],[4]
• Power: free for research coordinators to try, with no technical setup. Its sponsor programs are priced on enrollment milestones.^⁠[14],[13]
• ResearchMatch: an NIH-funded volunteer registry, offered at no cost to researchers conducting health-related research.^⁠[17]

Most other recruitment vendors we reviewed, including Deep 6 AI (Tempus), Triomics, Paradigm Health, Trially, Hippocratic AI, IQVIA and Clariness, publish no prices. Bond does not publish dollar amounts either: its pricing is custom.^⁠[27] For how the AI vendors compare on what they do, see recruitment software compared.

What does clinical trial recruitment cost per patient?

Published figures vary by more than tenfold, partly because "per patient" can mean recruited, enrolled or randomized, and few studies report costs at all: a 2026 Cochrane review found costs reported in only 17 of 91 recruitment studies.^⁠[23]

• Across trials. A 2018 systematic review of trial costs found a median of USD 409 per recruited patient across 30 studies, ranging from USD 41 to 6,990. The literature it covered ran to November 2016.^⁠[18]
• Per late-stage study. Tufts CSDD's 2019 data, as reported by ACRP, put the average recruitment budget for late-development studies at $636,515: $7,726 per site and $2,273 per patient.^⁠[19]
• Centralized outreach. A 2026 Tufts CSDD study of 32 studies from eight sponsors and CROs found a median centralized outreach budget of $1.33 million, and median cost per patient from $143 in vaccine studies to $11,392 in immunology studies.^⁠[20]
• Online and offline. A 2020 meta-analysis found online recruitment cheaper per enrollee than offline recruitment, US $72 against $199.^⁠[21]
• Share of total trial cost. A 2014 HHS-commissioned analysis put patient recruitment at 1.7% to 2.7% of total trial costs across phases.^⁠[22]

Your own number depends on the protocol, the therapeutic area and the channel. The cost per randomized patient post shows how to calculate it, with a worked example.

What costs do recruitment software quotes leave out?

• Coordinator time. At one cancer center, eligibility screening cost $129.15 to $336.48 per enrolled patient, and most sponsors did not reimburse it.^⁠[24] A tool that only finds patients leaves the calls, pre-screening and scheduling to the same staff.
• Integration and setup. Ask whether EHR integration, implementation and the security review are included. OpenClinica Recruit lists no setup fees, and Bond charges no integration fee.^⁠[3],[27]
• Ad spend. Media campaigns need an advertising budget, so ask whether a quote includes it. Bond creates and runs Meta and Google campaigns, but the ad spend comes from the site's own advertising budget, not Bond's fees.^⁠[27]
• Referrals that do not qualify. In a vendor-sponsored survey of 100 US site professionals, 52% said at least one in five referrals they receive is ruled ineligible before formal screening begins.^⁠[25] Per-referral pricing charges for those too.
• Delay. Tufts CSDD puts the mean direct cost of a Phase III trial at $55,716 per day, in 2023 dollars.^⁠[26] A cheaper tool that enrolls more slowly can cost more overall.

How do you compare recruitment software prices?

1. 1

   Convert every quote to cost per randomized patient

   Add platform or license fees, integration, ad spend and staff hours at a loaded rate, then divide by the patients you expect to randomize.

2. 2

   Ask what triggers each fee

   A referral, a pre-screen, a signed consent and a randomization are different events. Ask which one each fee is tied to, and how it is counted.

3. 3

   Ask who does the work after the match

   If the tool only finds candidates, price in the coordinator time to call, pre-screen and book them.

4. 4

   Ask what is owed if no one enrolls

   Which fees are still due for a study that does not enroll, and for how long the contract runs.

5. 5

   Check the paperwork

   BAA, security review, data-use terms and who does the IT work. The vendor evaluation checklist turns these into questions.

How does Bond price recruitment?

Bond charges a volume-based fee per screened patient, meaning a patient Bond calls and texts to pre-screen, plus a percentage of the randomization milestone payment for each patient who is randomized. There is no integration fee: the per-screened-patient fee covers EHR integration, implementation and ongoing operation.^⁠[27] Charts Bond reads without contacting the patient are not screened patients, and no randomization share is owed for a patient who is not randomized.^⁠[27]

That fee pays for Identify, which screens the EHR against each protocol, Engage, whose voice and text agents contact, pre-screen and book matched patients, and Consent support. See pricing for what each part covers.

Why is Bond the best clinical trial recruitment platform?

Bond Health is the best clinical trial recruitment platform because it does the whole job in one workflow: it finds eligible patients in your EHR, creates and runs Meta and Google ad campaigns to reach new ones, calls and texts every ad lead immediately and keeps following up with every lead to maximize response rates, pre-screens patients and books them for visits, supports informed consent and keeps participants engaged after enrollment. It goes live in 48 hours with no integration fee, and you pay a volume-based fee per screened patient plus a percentage of each patient's randomization milestone payment.^⁠[28],[27]

• One platform from ad click or chart match to a booked visit. Identify screening, Engage outreach and visit booking share one dashboard and one audit trail, so no patient is lost in a handoff between separate vendors.^⁠[28]
• Every ad lead contacted immediately, and followed up until they book. Bond creates and runs Meta and Google ad campaigns for each study. Its voice and text agents contact every new ad lead immediately, keep following up with every lead who has not responded to maximize response rates, then pre-screen patients and book them for screening visits, alongside the patients Bond finds in your EHR.^⁠[27]
• Evidence behind every match. Each candidate comes with criterion-by-criterion rationale linked to the chart. Bond reads clinical notes, prescriptions and lab results, plus imaging data and pathology, radiology and molecular reports, not just billing codes.^⁠[28],[27]
• Every major EHR and CTMS, with EHR integration in 48 hours. Bond connects to Epic, Oracle Health (Cerner), MEDITECH, athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, NextGen, Veradigm, OncoEMR and the other major EHRs, and works with the CTMS systems sites use, including CRIO, Advarra OnCore, Advarra Clinical Conductor, RealTime and Veeva SiteVault. Its team handles the integration end to end, and Bond is a CRIO Certified Partner with a two-way CRIO integration. See integrations.^⁠[28],[27]
• No integration fee, and a price that moves with randomization. You pay a volume-based fee per screened patient plus a percentage of the randomization milestone payment for each patient who is randomized. See pricing.^⁠[27]

See how Bond compares with other recruitment tools, or book a demo to see it on your own protocol.