Structure database license costs, from the public record
Cambridge Structural Database price, CSD license cost and CSD-Enterprise pricing, from 11 federal awards
CCDC publishes no price for a CSD license. US federal procurement records are public, so here is what the Navy, Army, Air Force and NIH actually paid for CSD-Enterprise, alongside the antibacterial activity read-out that a structure database does not give.
- 11 federal awards to CCDC
- Four agencies, one campus rate
- No number we cannot source
The activity a crystal structure cannot tell you
of 3 left
Strain panel
No account needed. 3 screens per session.
| Strain | MIC (µg/mL) | Call | Resistance risk | Conf. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| S. aureus (MRSA) | 0.5->32 | R Resistant | target mutation, grlA and gyrA Fluoroquinolone resistance is widespread in methicillin resistant lineages. | |
| E. coli | <=0.015-0.06 | S Susceptible | efflux, AcrAB-TolC in resistant isolates Potent against wild type; qnr carriage and gyrA changes shift the band sharply. | |
| K. pneumoniae (CRE) | 0.5->64 | R Resistant | gyrA mutation with plasmid qnr Carbapenemase producing isolates almost always carry quinolone resistance too. | |
| A. baumannii | 8->64 | R Resistant | efflux, AdeABC Constitutive efflux plus target changes leave little room at achievable exposure. | |
| P. aeruginosa | 0.25-2 | I Intermediate | efflux, MexAB-OprM Borderline: active on many isolates, lost quickly once efflux is derepressed. | |
| E. faecium (VRE) | 4->32 | R Resistant | target mutation, parC Enterococci are intrinsically poor fluoroquinolone targets. |
Why
Ciprofloxacin is a well characterised fluoroquinolone, so the Gram-negative bands are strongly supported by published activity data. The deciding factor across this panel is not target affinity but exposure: efflux in P. aeruginosa and A. baumannii, and acquired target mutation everywhere resistance is already common. Against a modern ESKAPE panel it reads as a Gram-negative agent with two reliable losses.
Closest published analogs
- Levofloxacin Broadly similar Gram-negative bands, better Gram-positive coverage
- Delafloxacin Retains activity against many ciprofloxacin resistant staphylococci
| Strain | MIC (µg/mL) | Call | Resistance risk | Conf. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Why
Closest published analogs
Want the rest of your series? Batch runs are on the paid tiers. screen left in this session. This session is used up.
Computational prediction from published literature. Research use only, not a lab measurement and not clinical guidance.
The short answer
What a CSD license costs, in one paragraph
The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre does not publish a price for a Cambridge Structural Database license. The US federal award record does. Four separate government labs paid $15,000 a year for a CSD-Enterprise campus or site license from 2022 through 2024, then $15,418 in 2025 and $15,727 for the year from June 2026. Those are government terms, and CCDC gives academics a heavy discount, so a company should read them as a floor for a commercial quote, not a forecast.
$15,000
a year, 2022 to 2024
$15,727
a year, from June 2026
$231,964
across all 11 awards
One campus license, five years
The CSD-Enterprise campus rate, year by year
Four agencies that have nothing to do with each other arrive at the same annual figure, which is what a price sheet looks like from the outside. The rate held for three years, then moved in small, round steps. Three year awards are counted at their total divided by three, and the note says where.
- 2022 $15,000 Baseline Air Force research lab, one year. Navy research lab, site license. Army research lab, $45,000 for a base year plus two option years.
- 2023 $15,000 Flat Air Force renews at $15,000 on a term running to 2028. Army option year, same rate.
- 2024 $15,000 Flat Navy research lab campus renewal at $15,000. A second Navy center signs $45,000 for three years.
- 2025 $15,418 Up 2.8 percent Navy research lab campus renewal. A second Navy order in July at $15,572.18, exactly 1.01 times this figure.
- 2026 $15,727 Up 2.0 percent A second Navy center, twelve months to May 2027. Exactly 2.0 percent above the 2025 rate.
Round steps, not a drift
The Navy's July 2025 order came to $15,572.18, which is $15,418 times 1.01 to the cent. The 2026 figure of $15,727 is 2.0 percent above $15,418, to within a dollar. Those are percentage uplifts applied to a base rate, not new quotes, and a percentage is something you can ask about by name at renewal.
Six users, same money
The Army's December 2024 award is a site license for six users with option years, obligated at $31,606.90 so far. That total equals $15,418 plus $16,188.90, and $16,188.90 is exactly 5 percent above $15,418. The record gives only the total, so read that split as consistent with the pattern rather than confirmed.
What you are actually buying
CSD-Core, CSD-Discovery and CSD-Enterprise, side by side
CCDC sells the database inside suites, and the suite decides the quote. These descriptions come from CCDC's own product pages. Only CSD-Community carries a public price, and that price is zero.
CSD-Community
FreeFree Mercury and browser access, the entry point CCDC offers academics at no cost.
- Mercury (free)
- WebCSD
CSD-Core
QuoteThe database plus the search, visualization and analysis tools. The base every other suite includes.
- CSD
- ConQuest
- Mercury
- WebCSD
CSD-Discovery
QuoteFor pharmaceutical and agrochemical teams. Adds conformer generation, target matching and GOLD docking.
- GOLD
- CSD-CrossMiner
- Conformer Generator
- Hermes
- SuperStar
- Python API
CSD-Enterprise
QuoteEverything in CSD-Core, CSD-Discovery and CSD-Materials. The suite every federal award above names.
- Mogul
- IsoStar
- GOLD
- CSD-CrossMiner
- ConQuest
- Python API
The detail that matters for a drug discovery budget: GOLD, CCDC's protein ligand docking engine, is part of CSD-Discovery and CSD-Enterprise, and CCDC describes it as running with no tokens. Docking elsewhere is often metered. Compare a CSD-Discovery quote against a MOE token price or an OpenEye application license on the same number of users, not on the list of features.
The whole record
Every federal award to CCDC, oldest first
Eleven awards, all written to The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre, read from USAspending.gov. CCDC's commercial products are the CSD suites, so the two Navy orders described only as database or diffraction software sit in the table with their own wording. Nothing has been averaged into a rate it does not state.
| Term | Buyer | How the award describes it | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 2018 to Dec 2018 | NIH, National Library of Medicine | CSD-Enterprise campus license renewal, for the NIH high performance computing group | $3,640 |
| Apr 2022 to Apr 2023 | Air Force Research Laboratory | Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) Enterprise software license | $15,000 |
| May 2022 to Jan 2024 | Army Research Laboratory | One annual license, subscription renewal of the CCDC database, base year plus two option years | $45,000 |
| Dec 2022 to Nov 2023 | Naval Research Laboratory | CSD site license | $15,000 |
| Apr 2023 to Apr 2028 | Air Force Research Laboratory | Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) software license, amount obligated so far | $15,000 |
| Jan 2024 to Dec 2026 | Naval Air Warfare Center | CSD-Enterprise license | $45,000 |
| Mar 2024 to Dec 2024 | Naval Research Laboratory | CSD-Enterprise campus license renewal | $15,000 |
| Dec 2024 to Dec 2026 | Army Research Laboratory | 12 month site license renewal of CSD-Enterprise for six users, plus two option years | $31,606.90 |
| Feb 2025 to Dec 2025 | Naval Research Laboratory | CSD-Enterprise campus license renewal | $15,418 |
| Jul 2025 to Aug 2025 | Naval Research Laboratory | Database software used to look up all known single crystal structures and maintain internal databases | $15,572.18 |
| Jun 2026 to May 2027 | Naval Air Warfare Center | Diffraction software | $15,727 |
The one figure that does not fit
In 2018 the NIH renewed a CSD-Enterprise campus license for its high performance computing group at $3,640, about a quarter of the later rate. The NIH is a research institute, and CCDC gives academic and research users a heavy discount, but the record does not say which sheet the price came off. It is shown here because it is real, and left out of the rate timeline because it is not comparable.
What moves your number
Four things that decide where a CSD quote lands
Campus, site or named users
The awards use three words for the same product: campus license, site license, and an enterprise license for six users. A campus or site license covers everyone at one location; a seat count caps it. The Army's six user site license and the Navy's campus license priced within a few hundred dollars of each other, so for a single site the headcount did not move the number much.
Which suite
CSD-Core is the database with its search and viewing tools. CSD-Discovery adds GOLD docking, CSD-CrossMiner and the conformer generator, which is what a drug discovery group actually uses. CSD-Enterprise adds the materials tools on top. Every federal award above buys Enterprise, so a Core or Discovery quote should come in lower.
Academic, government or commercial
CCDC says the full license is provided at a heavy discount to all academic users, and a FAIRE grant can cover the whole cost in 80 plus eligible countries. Government labs sit on their own sheet. A company pays the commercial rate, so treat the government figures on this page as a floor, not a forecast.
Multi year terms
Two of the awards buy three years for $45,000, the same $15,000 a year the single year awards paid. There is no visible multi year discount in the government record, but a locked rate protects against the 2.8 and 2.0 percent steps that followed in 2025 and 2026. That is the trade to ask for.
Where this tool fits, and where it does not
The CSD tells you the shape. It does not tell you the MIC.
Buy a CSD license when the question is geometry
Preferred conformations, torsion distributions, hydrogen bond geometry, packing, polymorphs and validating a ligand pose against 1.4 million experimental structures are what the CSD does, and nothing else does it with that depth. If your work is solid form selection, crystallography or structure based design with docking, the license earns its keep and nothing on this site replaces it.
You still need the activity number
A perfectly validated conformation of a compound that cannot cross a Gram-negative outer membrane is still inactive. The CSD does not predict inhibition, and antibacterial projects fail far more often on accumulation and efflux than on geometry. Knowing which compounds are active first means the structure work goes to the ones worth it.
A pre-trained antibacterial model returns a predicted MIC band per organism across a 6 strain ESKAPE panel in about ten seconds, with the mechanism class and the closest published analogs, for a monthly fee rather than an annual license.
Who reads this page
Six reasons people look this number up
You are budgeting a structure database
Put a signed campus rate in the plan before the quote arrives, and know it has moved about 2 to 3 percent a year since 2024.
You are facing a CSD renewal
Hold the increase against three years flat at $15,000, then $15,418 and $15,727.
You want GOLD docking
GOLD ships inside CSD-Discovery and CSD-Enterprise, not as a token priced add-on, so the suite price is the docking price.
You are comparing modeling suites
Set the CSD rate beside what a MOE token or an OpenEye application costs for one year.
You work on antibacterials
Crystal geometry tells you how a molecule sits. It does not tell you whether it inhibits a Gram-negative.
Your first question is activity
If you do not yet know which compounds are active against which organisms, that is the cheaper question to answer first.
The CSD is one line in a modeling budget. The drug discovery software cost pillar puts every suite we have priced side by side, the Schrodinger software cost breakdown covers the largest of them, and for field based design the Cresset Flare pricing record shows what a five user group license costs.
Questions people ask before buying
CSD pricing, answered plainly
How much does a Cambridge Structural Database license cost?
CCDC publishes no commercial price. Public US federal awards show what government labs paid for CSD-Enterprise: $15,000 a year from 2022 through 2024 at the Air Force, Army and Navy, then $15,418 in 2025 and $15,727 for the year from June 2026. Companies buy off a separate commercial sheet, so expect a commercial quote at or above these figures.
Is the Cambridge Structural Database free?
Not in full. CCDC offers free tools, including free Mercury and the CSD-Community license for academics, and browser access to individual structures through WebCSD and Access Structures. Searching and analyzing the whole database with ConQuest, Mogul or the Python API needs a paid license. Academic licenses are heavily discounted, and FAIRE grants can cover the cost in eligible countries.
What is included in CSD-Enterprise?
CSD-Enterprise includes all the tools in the CSD-Core, CSD-Discovery and CSD-Materials suites. CCDC lists ConQuest, the CSD itself, the CSD Python API, CSD-CrossMiner, GOLD, Hermes, IsoStar, Mercury, Mogul, SuperStar and WebCSD. It is the suite named in every federal award on this page.
How much does GOLD docking cost?
GOLD is not sold on its own price sheet in the public record. It is included in CSD-Discovery and CSD-Enterprise, and CCDC describes it as docking with no tokens, so a site running a CSD-Enterprise license at about $15,000 to $15,700 a year on government terms has GOLD inside that figure. A commercial CSD-Discovery quote is the number to ask for.
How often does CSD pricing go up?
On the government record, not every year. The campus rate held at $15,000 across three services from 2022 to 2024, rose 2.8 percent to $15,418 in 2025, and 2.0 percent to $15,727 in 2026. A Navy order in July 2025 came to $15,572.18, exactly 1 percent above the February figure.
Is there a CSD site license?
Yes. The Naval Research Laboratory bought a CSD site license in 2022 and renews a CSD-Enterprise campus license each year, and the Army Research Laboratory holds a 12 month site license renewal for six users. CCDC states that license terms and included tools depend on the license type, so confirm how many users and locations a site license covers before you compare.
How many structures are in the Cambridge Structural Database?
CCDC states the CSD holds over 1.4 million curated 3D crystal structures from X-ray, neutron and electron diffraction, established in 1965 with historical structures back to the 1920s. That size is what the license pays for: searching and mining the whole set, not viewing one structure, which is free.
Does the Cambridge Structural Database predict antibacterial activity?
No. The CSD holds experimental geometry: conformations, packing, bond lengths and intermolecular contacts. CCDC curates some bioactivity annotations, but the database does not predict whether a compound inhibits a bacterial strain or at what concentration. That read-out comes from a susceptibility assay or an activity model.
Pricing
Published, monthly, and on this page
Lab is $149 a month for 250 screens with batches up to 50 compounds, which is $1,788 across a year. Discovery is $499 for 2,000 screens, batches up to 1,000, and adds the API. Program is $1,490 for 10,000 screens with batches up to 10,000. One year of the 2026 government CSD campus rate would pay for about 8.8 years of Lab. That comparison is fair only when the activity answer is the one you need first.
Yearly billing is two months cheaper, charged once a year.
Lab
$124 /mo
$1,488 charged once a year
250 screens a month against the standard panels, with CSV export.
Get startedAcademic AMR lab, 1 to 2 chemists
Discovery
Most popular$416 /mo
$4,992 charged once a year
Custom panels, batch runs of a full series, API access and roles.
Get startedBiotech antibacterial program
Program
$1,241 /mo
$14,892 charged once a year
Library-scale runs, your own isolates, SSO, audit log and an SLA.
Get startedMulti-program biotech or discovery CRO
Enterprise
Talk to sales
Custom terms, invoiced
Private deployment, your internal isolate library, a named contact.
Pharma, institute or consortium
Find out which compounds are active before you study their shape
Paste a compound you already know the MIC for, read the panel, then decide which structures are worth the crystallography.
What you are agreeing to
- Your compounds stay yours
- Never used for model training
- Deletable on request
- No card needed to create your account
Related reading
The pages behind the calls a screening budget has to make.