CATMA vs Quirkos
CATMA
catma.deQuirkos
quirkos.comSide by side
| Figure | CATMA | Quirkos |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $5/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | — | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 2 | 8 |
| Spec score · Qualitative Data Analysis Software | 9.0 (#1) | 7.9 (#8) |
| Spec score · Text Analytics Software | 9.0 (#2) | 8.2 (#7) |
| Spec score · Text Analysis Software | 8.9 (#2) | 8.0 (#6) |
| Collaboration | Projects support synchronized and latest-contributions viewing modes, roles, permissions and collaborative comments. | Quirkos Cloud supports live synchronization, editing, chat, and an unlimited number of collaborators and collaborations at no extra fee. |
| Purpose | CATMA supports computer-assisted text markup and analysis, including annotation, analysis, interpretation, and visualization. | Quirkos is qualitative analysis software designed to help users explore and understand qualitative text data. |
| Support | The FAQ asks users who need help to contact the CATMA team, which says it will respond as soon as possible. | Quirkos offers email and phone support, and says its support team has experience in technical support and qualitative analysis. |
Plans
Quirkos
- Quirkos Cloud — Student$5 a month
- Quirkos Cloud$8 a month
- Quirkos Cloud — Academic and Nonprofit$13 a month
- Quirkos Transcribe$15 a month
- Quirkos Cloud — Public Sector$17 a month
- Quirkos Cloud — Commercial$23 a month
- Offline Licence — 1 computer$69, paid once
- Offline Licence — 2 computers$110, paid once
In their own words
CATMA
CATMA is a free tool for computer-assisted text markup and analysis, designed for qualitative text studies, especially literary studies. Users can upload corpora, share projects, create tagsets, and apply overlapping annotations. Work can be exploratory or taxonomy-based, qualitative or quantitative, and individual or collaborative. Its Analyze module provides interactive visualizations such as word clouds, distribution graphs, and Double Tree. The web application runs in common browsers on macOS, Windows, or Linux and needs a stable internet connection. CATMA Standalone can run on a local machine or private network, including settings without internet access. Projects can be exported as text, TEI-XML, or CSV; data is also accessible through Git, the GitMA Python package, or the JSON API. The hosted service stores data in Germany and makes automatic backups at least daily. CATMA says its server data is not encrypted at rest, though off-site backups are encrypted, and advises against uploading sensitive data. Standalone defaults to single-user use; some features need additional configuration or are unavailable.
Quirkos
Quirkos is qualitative analysis software for exploring and interpreting text data. It imports Word documents, plain text, PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, and text pasted from websites or other programs. Codes are displayed visually as users work, with support for groups, hierarchies, color coding, overlap views, and word clouds. Query View can search text, filter by data criteria, and compare data groups side by side. Quirkos Cloud adds live synchronization, editing, and chat, with unlimited collaborators and collaborations at no extra fee. Project data can be exported to Excel for use in SPSS or R, or in REFI-QDA format for other qualitative programs. Quirkos Transcribe converts audio and video into transcripts, accepts files up to 2 GB, and includes 100 free minutes for Cloud users. Transcribe runs in the web app; its five best-supported selectable languages are English, Italian, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. Cloud plans include student, academic and nonprofit, public sector, and commercial options. The Student plan costs $5 a month, billed annually; an offline licence for one computer costs 69.00 USD once for lifetime use.