EAB Edify pricing: what public records show, and how Clema compares

EAB does not publish Edify pricing. The figure most IR leaders end up quoting comes from a public university's own records: a Fitchburg State University Financial Sustainability Task Force report (Phase Two, Administrative Efficiencies, dated December 15, 2023) that reproduced Edify's tiered fee schedule at $36,000 to $216,000 per year. That number usually reaches a buyer only after a procurement cycle and a scoping call.

Clema publishes its price: free to start, with paid plans from $99 per month, no credit card, and no implementation fee. This post lays out what the public record says about Edify pricing, what one real contract cost over five years, and what the gap means per hour of analyst time reclaimed. For the non-cost differences, see the Clema vs Edify comparison.

Before comparing numbers, be clear about scope, because the two products are not like for like. EAB describes Edify as an AI-powered data management platform for higher education: a cloud data lake and warehouse, pre-built connectors to campus systems, a higher-ed data model with more than 200 ready-made definitions, dashboards and "accelerators," AI assistants for querying and SQL explanation, and blocks of professional service hours. In short, Edify is a data platform.

Clema is the layer that answers questions on top of the data an institution already has. It reads from your warehouse, SIS, and files; it does not replace a warehouse. So if your institution needs to build its data foundation, Edify belongs in that conversation and Clema does not substitute for it. If the data exists and the bottleneck is getting answers out of it, the price comparison below is the relevant one.

The task force report lists these four tiers in a footnote and notes that overage hours are billed on a sliding scale that runs inverse to the tier: the cheapest tier pays the highest hourly rate. It also states that EAB was changing its fee structure to one based on institutional enrollment beginning in 2025. Treat the schedule as a documented reference point, not a current quote. A 2026 quote may be built differently, and an institution's enrollment will now shape where it lands.

The same report shows what one institution actually paid. Fitchburg State's Edify contract ran from December 31, 2020 through December 30, 2025, at a total cost of $914,460. A table in the report breaks that down by fiscal year: $220,800 in FY22, $225,840 in FY23, $231,132 in FY24, and $236,688 in FY25. That is an average of about $228,600 a year, above the top published tier, and the report does not itemize what accounts for the difference.

The report is also candid about results. The initial goal was to integrate the Banner SIS and the Slate CRM into EAB's cloud data hub. After more than three years, the task force wrote, the data feed between the two systems was still not functional, and the Office of Institutional Research and Planning had stopped using Edify for its state (HEIRS) reporting. The working group concluded that Edify "has not proven effective when measured by its original scope of work" and recommended reconsidering the product under a revised scope. One institution's experience does not predict yours, but it is the most detailed public account of Edify cost and outcome we have found, and it is worth reading in full before a renewal or a new contract.

Clema's paid plans start at $99 per month (the Pro plan, $1,188 per year billed monthly, or $990 billed annually) and include conversational chat across federal datasets and your own data, data request intake with AI-drafted responses, natural-language analytics on your warehouse, Power BI, and Tableau, predictive analytics (enrollment, retention, graduation), connections to 50+ sources (Banner, Colleague, PeopleSoft, Workday, Canvas, Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery), onboarding, and ongoing support. SOC 2 Type II security and FERPA-ready data handling are included. A free forever plan lets a single user start with no cost and no credit card. The full tier list is on the pricing page.

An Edify contract buys the platform layer described above (warehouse, data model, connectors, dashboards) plus a contracted block of service hours. Larger tiers buy more, and work beyond the block is billed hourly.

Clema typically goes live in 2 to 4 weeks with no implementation fee. The free plan connects a sample data source so you see value in the first session. See the setup guide for the four-phase walkthrough.

An Edify implementation is a platform build: connectors, data model mapping, and the downstream reports that depend on them, carried out with EAB's professional services. The Fitchburg account shows how long that can stretch when integrations stall. The procurement cycle for an enterprise contract can, on its own, run as long as Clema's entire implementation.

Sticker price only tells part of the story. The number that matters for a budget case is cost per hour of analyst capacity returned. The data request workflows whitepaper estimates a medium-sized IR team (4 to 7 staff) can reclaim 634 to 950 hours per year with AI-enabled workflows. Clema's Pro plan at $1,188 a year works out to $1.25 to $1.87 per reclaimed hour.

Run the same division on the Edify fee schedule against that 634 to 950 hour range: $36,000 a year is $37.89 to $56.78 per reclaimed hour; $66,000 is $69.47 to $104.10; $120,000 is $126.32 to $189.27; and $216,000 is $227.37 to $340.69. Even the lowest documented tier costs roughly 20 to 45 times Clema's per-hour figure, before any overage hours. The comparison is generous to Edify in one way and unfair in another. It assumes the same hours reclaimed, which a stalled integration would not deliver, and it ignores the warehouse and data model an Edify contract includes, which Clema does not provide.

For a single institution that already has its data in a warehouse or SIS and needs IR capacity and conversational analytics, the timeline gap is as real as the price gap: Clema is live in 2 to 4 weeks with no implementation fee, while an Edify contract adds a procurement cycle and a platform build before anyone asks a question. For institutions that need EAB's data platform, or its broader advisory relationship, Edify may still fit, and Clema can sit on top of an Edify warehouse as the question-answering layer.

If you are pricing other vendors in the same cycle, our HelioCampus pricing breakdown covers a platform that publishes no fee schedule at all, and the predictive analytics cost guide covers the forecasting tools that often get bundled into the same budget line.