Virtual Data Room Costs in 2025: Complete Pricing Guide
Traditional VDR providers charge $400-$5,000/month with complex pricing creating budget uncertainty, according to G2 reviews. Meanwhile, hidden fees and usage overages increase costs by 30-50% beyond quoted prices—making total cost of ownership difficult to predict.
Peony offers transparent per-user pricing: $40/user/month covers unlimited data rooms, unlimited documents, and all features—saving 90-97% vs. legacy providers. Purpose-built for cost-effective data rooms.
Here's your complete VDR pricing guide for 2025.
VDR Pricing Models Explained
1. Per-Page Pricing (Legacy Model - Avoid)
How it works: Charged $0.40-$0.85 per page uploaded
Example calculation:
- 1,000-page M&A deal
- $0.60 per page
- Cost: $600 just for upload + monthly fees
Problems:
- Unpredictable total costs
- Penalizes comprehensive documentation
- Encourages document reduction (bad for diligence)
- Additional fees for reprints or moves
- Can reach $10,000+ for large deals
Who still uses it: Old-school providers (Datasite, some Intralinks)
Recommendation: Avoid - pricing model from physical data room era.
2. Per-User Pricing
How it works: Charged $15-$250 per user per month
Typical tiers:
- Viewer: $15-$25/user/month
- Editor: $50-$100/user/month
- Admin: $100-$250/user/month
Example calculation:
- 3 admins × $150 = $450
- 10 team members × $50 = $500
- 20 external viewers × $25 = $500
- Monthly total: $1,450 ($17,400/year)
Problems:
- Costs multiply with team size
- Discourages collaboration
- Hard to predict user count
- Artificial user limits
Who uses it: DocSend, some Box plans, traditional providers
Recommendation: Expensive for teams, limits collaboration.
3. Storage-Based Pricing
How it works: Charged $60-$77 per GB per month
Example calculation:
- 50 GB of documents
- $70 per GB
- Monthly cost: $3,500 ($42,000/year)
Problems:
- Extremely expensive for large files
- Penalizes video, CAD, media files
- Additional storage costs unclear
- Compression doesn't help much
Who uses it: Some legacy providers
Recommendation: Avoid - prohibitively expensive for media-rich deals.
4. Flat-Rate Pricing
How it works: Fixed monthly fee regardless of pages, users, or storage
Typical range: $75-$1,000/month
What's included:
- Unlimited documents
- Unlimited storage (or generous limits)
- All features
- Support included
Example:
- Peony Pro: $40/user/month
- Annual cost: $480/user/year
Advantages:
- Predictable budgeting
- Encourages collaboration
- No usage anxiety
- Simple, transparent
- Scales naturally
Who offers it: Modern providers (Peony, SecureDocs)
Recommendation: Best choice - predictable, fair, transparent.
Provider Cost Comparison
Peony Pricing
Pro: $40/user/month
- Unlimited data rooms
- All security features
- Advanced analytics
- Custom branding (yourcompany.peony.ink)
- White-label experience
- AI-powered organization
- Watermarking
- Link controls
- Email verification
- Unlimited documents and storage
Enterprise: Custom
- API access
- SLA guarantees
- Dedicated support
- Custom integrations
Annual costs: $480/user/year
Traditional Provider Costs
Datasite:
- Pricing: Contact sales
- Typical: $2,000-$5,000/month
- Annual: $24,000-$60,000+
- Use case: $100M+ deals only
Intralinks:
- Pricing: Contact sales
- Typical: $1,000-$3,000/month
- Annual: $12,000-$36,000+
- Use case: Enterprise M&A
Firmex:
- Pricing: Contact sales
- Typical: $500-$1,500/month
- Annual: $6,000-$18,000+
- Use case: Mid-market deals
Ansarada:
- Pricing: Contact sales
- Typical: $1,000-$2,000/month
- Annual: $12,000-$24,000+
- Use case: Large enterprises
Modern Provider Costs
Box:
- Business: $20/user/month
- Business Plus: $33/user/month
- 10 users: $200-$330/month
- Annual: $2,400-$3,960+
- Limitation: Not purpose-built VDR
SecureDocs:
- Flat rate: $250/month
- Annual: $3,000/year
- Advantage: Simple, predictable
DocSend:
- Advanced: $250/month (3 users)
- Data Rooms: $300/month
- Annual: $3,000-$3,600/year
- Limitation: User limits
Hidden Costs to Watch For
Common additional fees:
Setup/onboarding: $500-$5,000
- Initial configuration
- Training sessions
- Custom integrations
- Data migration
User overages: $50-$250/user/month
- Exceeding included users
- Guest access fees
- Admin users
Storage overages: $50-$150/GB/month
- Beyond included storage
- Media file penalties
- Archive storage
Support: $200-$1,000/month
- Priority support
- Dedicated account manager
- 24/7 availability
- Phone support
Features: $100-$500/month
- Advanced analytics
- Custom branding
- API access
- Integrations
Per-transaction: $100-$1,000
- New deal setup
- Additional data rooms
- Project fees
Peony advantage: No hidden fees—all features included in plan price.
Total Cost of Ownership
Small M&A Deal (sub-$10M)
Legacy VDR (6-month deal):
- Setup: $1,000
- Monthly: $750 × 6 = $4,500
- Support: $200 × 6 = $1,200
- Total: $6,700
Peony (6-month deal, 3 users):
- Setup: $0
- Monthly: $120/month × 6 = $720 (3 users × $40)
- Support: Included
- Total: $720
Savings: $5,980 (89% reduction)
Mid-Market Deal ($10M-$50M)
Legacy VDR (9-month deal):
- Setup: $2,000
- Monthly: $1,500 × 9 = $13,500
- Overages: $2,000
- Support: $400 × 9 = $3,600
- Total: $21,100
Peony (9-month deal, 5 users):
- Setup: $0
- Monthly: $200/month × 9 = $1,800 (5 users × $40)
- Overages: $0
- Support: Included
- Total: $1,800
Savings: $19,300 (91% reduction)
Fundraising Round (4-month process)
DocSend Data Rooms:
- Setup: $0
- Monthly: $300 × 4 = $1,200
- Total: $1,200
Peony (2 users):
- Setup: $0
- Monthly: $80/month × 4 = $320 (2 users × $40)
- Total: $320
Savings: $880 (73% reduction)
ROI Calculation
Time savings:
- Manual organization: 40 hours ($2,000-$4,000 value)
- Peony AI organization: 30 minutes ($25-$50 value)
- Savings: $1,975-$3,950 + ongoing efficiency
Deal acceleration:
- Faster due diligence: 2-4 weeks saved
- Better organization: Fewer follow-ups
- Analytics: Strategic follow-up timing
- Value: Earlier deal close = faster deployment of capital
Risk reduction:
- Prevented leaks: Priceless
- Compliance assurance: Avoid fines
- Professional impression: Better deal terms
- Value: 5-10% better valuations typical
Total ROI calculation:
- Platform cost: $480/user/year (Peony Pro)
- Time saved value: $4,000-$8,000/year
- Deal improvement: Variable (often 5-figure)
- ROI: 4-20x+ in year 1
Cost-Saving Strategies
Strategy 1: Choose flat-rate pricing
- Predictable costs
- No usage anxiety
- Better for large teams
- Example: Peony vs. per-user models
Strategy 2: Avoid per-page/storage models
- Legacy pricing penalizes modern usage
- Unpredictable final costs
- Example: $0.60/page adds up fast
Strategy 3: Use free tiers strategically
- Many deals work on free plans
- Upgrade only when needed
- Example: Peony Free for simple deals
Strategy 4: Annual billing
- Typical discount: 15-20%
- Better for multi-deal use
- Example: $480/year vs. $576/year
Strategy 5: Right-size platform
- Don't overpay for unused features
- Start simple, scale up
- Example: Peony scales with needs
When Expensive VDRs Make Sense
Justifiable high costs:
$1B+ transactions:
- Deal value justifies $50k VDR spend
- Reputation matters (known brands)
- Complex multi-party structures
- Choice: Intralinks, Datasite
Highly regulated:
- Industry mandates specific platforms
- Compliance requirements extreme
- Audit expectations specific
- Choice: Firmex, ShareVault
Everything else:
- Modern alternatives like Peony
- 90%+ cost savings
- Better features often
- Faster setup
- Choice: Peony
Conclusion
VDR pricing in 2025 ranges from $40/user/month (Peony) to $5,000+/month (legacy providers). While per-page and storage-based models create unpredictable costs, transparent per-user pricing offers value and predictability.
For most M&A deals, fundraising, and due diligence processes, modern platforms like Peony provide all necessary features—security, analytics, branding, compliance—at 90-97% cost savings compared to legacy providers, without sacrificing capabilities.
Calculate your VDR savings: Try Peony