REDCap is often described as "free," which is true but incomplete — it's free to license for qualifying organizations through Vanderbilt University's REDCap Consortium, not freely available for anyone to download and deploy commercially.
Who qualifies
The consortium license is intended for non-profit, academic, government, and healthcare institutions conducting research or related data collection — not for-profit commercial use. Qualifying organizations sign an institutional agreement directly with Vanderbilt, and each institution designates a REDCap administrator responsible for the local instance.
How the process actually works
- Initial inquiry — your institution contacts the REDCap Consortium to confirm eligibility and request access.
- Institutional agreement — a signed agreement between your institution and Vanderbilt establishes the license terms.
- Local administrator designation — someone at your institution (or a contracted infrastructure partner) is named the technical administrator.
- Software access — once approved, your institution gets access to the REDCap source code to deploy on your own infrastructure.
A common point of confusion
The license covers the software, not the infrastructure it runs on. Vanderbilt doesn't host your instance or provide server infrastructure — your institution is responsible for provisioning, securing, and maintaining the actual server environment, whether that's done in-house or through a managed hosting provider.
After licensing: the actual build-out
Getting the license is the first step, not the whole project. What comes next — provisioning a proper DEV/TEST/PROD environment, HIPAA-aligned infrastructure controls, and (for FDA-regulated studies) 21 CFR Part 11 configuration — is where most of the real technical work happens, and where institutions without dedicated IT capacity typically bring in a managed infrastructure partner.