Certara publishes no price for the Simcyp Simulator. The product page describes the engine, counts 29 population libraries and more than 100 small and large molecule models, credits a consortium that has run for 25 years across 37 global pharmaceutical companies, and then offers a demo. There is no tier, no per seat rate and no starting figure anywhere on it. Every buyer guide that turns up in a search for the price says the same thing in more words: contact the vendor.
US federal contract awards are public, though, and regulators are heavy Simcyp users. Nineteen awards name Simcyp in their own description, running from September 2008 to September 2027. They will not tell you what a biotech pays, because government buyers order against schedule pricing, but they are signed numbers rather than estimates, and they answer the two questions a quote never does: what does one license cost, and what happens at renewal.
The short answer
A single node license ran $10,500 a year in 2021 and $11,686 by 2023. A departmental license at the FDA sat flat at $65,000 a year for three consecutive years. The current enterprise agreement covering Simcyp licenses runs $636,459 across four years, about $159,100 a year. So the honest range for this one product spans roughly $10,500 to $159,000 a year, and where you land is decided almost entirely by how many people need a seat.
One contracting detail before the numbers
All nineteen Simcyp awards are written to Certara UK Limited, not to Certara USA. Simcyp began as a Sheffield company and the licensing entity stayed there after the acquisition. For a US buyer that is not trivia: it changes which entity signs, which jurisdiction governs the agreement, and how currency and invoicing are handled. Certara's other products in the same record, Phoenix WinNonlin and Pinnacle 21 among them, are contracted through Certara USA Inc. If your procurement team has a preference about contracting with a foreign entity, raise it early rather than at signature.
A single license, repriced three years running
This is the most useful table in the record, and the hardest kind of number to find anywhere. Three awards cover what is plainly the same license: the first is described as an annual node license, the next two as renewals of a Simcyp license, and all three end on April 20. That shared anniversary is what identifies them as one continuing agreement rather than three unrelated orders.
| Period | How the award describes it | Amount | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 2021 to Apr 2022 | Simcyp Simulator, annual node license | $10,500 | Baseline |
| Mar 2022 to Apr 2022 | Software license renewal for Simcyp license | $11,025 | Up 5.0 percent |
| Feb 2023 to Apr 2023 | Software license renewal for Simcyp license | $11,686 | Up 6.0 percent |
Five percent, then six percent. Over two renewals the license rose 11.3 percent in total, comfortably ahead of general inflation in the second year and roughly in line with it in the first. If you are holding a renewal notice that proposes more than that, this is the comparison to put in the reply, because it is a real signed figure from the same vendor rather than a market average.
It is worth knowing the mechanics that sit behind those dates too. A license with a fixed anniversary usually carries a notice window, and the leverage in a renewal negotiation lives entirely inside it. Teams that let the window pass renew on the vendor's terms by default, which is why the dates on a software agreement deserve the same attention as the price, and why keeping renewal dates and notice periods in one place tends to pay for itself the first time a quote arrives with an increase attached.
Departmental licenses, and three flat years
One step up from a node license is a departmental one. The FDA renewed Simcyp at exactly $65,000 in three consecutive years, which is the other genuinely useful pattern here: a negotiated rate can hold completely still for years, and a vendor proposing an annual uplift as though it were automatic is describing a policy rather than a law.
| Period | How the award describes it | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 2010 to Sep 2011 | Simcyp annual software renewal for FY 2010 | $48,000 |
| Aug 2014 to Sep 2015 | Simcyp licenses | $48,000 |
| Sep 2017 to Sep 2018 | Simcyp license renewal | $65,000 |
| Sep 2018 to Sep 2019 | Office of Clinical Pharmacology, Simcyp PBPK software | $65,000 |
| Aug 2019 to Sep 2020 | Simcyp license renewal and maintenance | $65,000 |
| Sep 2020 to Sep 2021 | Simcyp software suite | $52,500 |
Read across the decade, the departmental rate went from $48,000 a year in 2010 and 2014 to $65,000 by 2017, a 35 percent rise, then fell to $52,500 in 2020. Prices in this category do come down, usually when the scope is renegotiated at the same time. The 2020 award is described as a software suite rather than a renewal, so some of that drop is very likely a change in what was covered rather than a straight discount.
Enterprise agreements, where most of the money is
The largest awards are multi year and cover an institution rather than a team. The right hand column below is the total divided by the term, which is useful for scale and is not necessarily how the license was billed; option years and mid term additions both break an even split.
| Term | How the award describes it | Total | Total over term |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 2023 to Sep 2027 | Certara Simcyp software licenses | $636,459 | about $159,100 |
| Aug 2020 to Sep 2022 | CDER Certara Simcyp licenses subscription | $164,400 | about $78,700 |
| Jul 2011 to Sep 2014 | Simcyp software renewal | $144,000 | about $45,400 |
| Sep 2022 to Sep 2023 | FDA firm fixed price task order, Simcyp licenses | $114,316 | $114,316 |
| Sep 2008 to Sep 2010 | Simcyp software licenses | $96,000 | about $47,300 |
| Sep 2015 to Sep 2018 | Purchase of Simcyp software for CDER | $96,000 | about $32,000 |
| Apr 2019 to Apr 2021 | Renewal and new license purchase | $18,000 | $9,000 |
| Mar 2016 to Mar 2019 | Annual renewal of Simcyp software | $18,540 | $6,180 |
Two rows deserve a note. The 2016 to 2019 award covers an annual renewal at $6,180 a year, far below anything else at that scale, which suggests a small number of seats at a single office rather than an institutional deal. And a 2009 award is described as a Simcyp Simulator license for regulatory bodies in the US, at $3,000. Certara has treated regulators as a distinct category for a long time, so the lowest figures in this record are the least transferable to a company quote.
Why there is no list price, and what that means for you
Simcyp was built through a consortium of pharmaceutical companies that has run for a quarter of a century. Certara describes 37 member companies. That structure explains the pricing opacity better than any theory about sales tactics: consortium membership is a research relationship with contributed data and shared direction, and it is a different commercial arrangement from buying a license. A vendor running both cannot publish one number without undercutting the other.
Practically, it means three things. Ask which relationship you are being quoted for. Ask for the seat count and the license type on separate lines, because the spread between a node license and a departmental one in this record is six to one. And ask what the renewal mechanism is in writing, since the only two clean series available show one license rising 11 percent over two years and another holding flat for three.
What Simcyp answers, and what it leaves open
Simcyp is an exposure engine. It models where a compound goes, at what concentration, for how long, in which population, and how a second drug changes that. For a clinical pharmacology group those are the questions, and nothing here substitutes for it.
For an antibacterial program it is half of the argument. Efficacy against a bacterium is expressed as a ratio: the fraction of the dosing interval spent above the MIC, the area under the curve divided by the MIC, or peak concentration divided by the MIC. PBPK software supplies the numerator with real rigour. The MIC in every one of those denominators comes from a plate or a model, and Simcyp does not predict it. If you are pricing a PBPK seat before you know which compounds in the series inhibit anything, the order is inverted, because exposure modeling on an inactive compound produces a precise answer to a question that does not matter.
That is the cheaper half to obtain, too. A pre-trained antibacterial model returns a predicted MIC band per organism across an ESKAPE panel in about ten seconds, with a susceptibility call, the likely resistance mechanism and the closest published analogs, from $149 a month rather than an annual license and a quote cycle. The tool at the top of this page runs it on a compound you already know, which is the fastest way to judge whether the read-out is worth anything to you.
Comparing the two PBPK platforms on the same evidence
Simcyp and GastroPlus are the two names on most PBPK shortlists, and neither publishes a price. Read side by side from the same source, the GastroPlus price breakdown shows a 12 month platform license at $79,812 taking effect in September 2026 and a five year term averaging near $75,200 a year, though those cover several products at once rather than one. Simcyp's enterprise agreement runs higher still at about $159,100 a year, while its single node license is the cheapest clean seat figure in either record. Configurations differ enough that the headline numbers mislead; compare what sits on each line.
Both sit inside a wider pattern worth understanding before any quote arrives, which the drug discovery software cost pillar sets out across the category, from the one vendor that publishes a range to the many that do not. If property prediction rather than exposure is what you actually need, the ADMET Predictor price record is the closer comparison, and it lands near $19,400 a year per seat.
Questions people ask before buying
How much does Simcyp cost?
Certara publishes no price. Public US federal awards show a single node annual license at $10,500 rising to $11,686 across three renewals, departmental licenses at the FDA flat at $65,000 a year for three consecutive years, and a current four year institutional agreement at $636,459, about $159,100 a year. Commercial quotes come off a different price sheet.
Is there a published Simcyp price list?
No. The Simcyp platform page describes the population libraries, the molecule models and the consortium, then routes buyers to a demo or a consultation. It states no price, no tier and no per seat rate. Buyer guide sites that rank for the query do not publish a figure either; the only public numbers are in procurement records.
How much is one Simcyp seat?
The clearest single license figure in the record is an annual node license at $10,500 in 2021, renewed at $11,025 and then $11,686. That is the floor for a government buyer. A departmental license covering a team ran $65,000 a year at the FDA over the same era, so the seat count moves this price more than any other variable.
Do Simcyp renewals increase every year?
Not automatically. The two clean series in the record disagree, which is the useful finding. One license rose 5.0 percent and then 6.0 percent across two renewals. A departmental license was renewed at exactly $65,000 three years running, then fell to $52,500. An annual uplift is a negotiating position rather than a fixed term of the product.
Does Simcyp predict antibacterial activity?
No. Simcyp models pharmacokinetics: absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and drug interactions across populations. It predicts the concentration a compound reaches, not the concentration that inhibits a given organism. A MIC per strain has to come from a laboratory assay or from a model trained on antibacterial activity, and it is the denominator every PK and PD target for an antibacterial depends on.