KH Coder vs MAXQDA
KH Coder
khcoder.netMAXQDA
maxqda.comSide by side
| Figure | KH Coder | MAXQDA |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | ¥1,540/mo | $41/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 10 | 9 |
| Spec score · Text Analytics Software | 9.1 (#1) | 9.0 (#3) |
| Spec score · Text Analysis Software | 9.0 (#1) | 8.9 (#3) |
| Coding | Coding rules support code frequencies, cross-tabs, similarity matrices, correspondence analysis, multidimensional scaling, clustering, and co-occurrence networks. | Users can code by drag and drop, search-word autocoding, colors, symbols, emojis, keyboard shortcuts, weights and comments. |
| Documentation | Official support includes a tutorial, video, PDF slides, a 99-page reference manual, GitHub Discussions, and an archived forum. | MAXQDA publishes an online manual, a 30-page getting-started guide, videos, specialized analysis chapters, trainer network and user forum. |
| Integrations | KH Coder delegates database work to MySQL and statistical analysis and graphics to R; Windows packages bundle these dependencies. | Documented integrations include EndNote, Mendeley, Citavi, Zotero, SurveyMonkey, SPSS, Excel, YouTube and REFI-QDA exchange files. |
| Licence | The KH Coder core is free software under GNU GPL version 2 or later, permitting academic or commercial use, modification, and redistribution under GPL conditions. | MAXQDA is proprietary commercial software rather than open-source software. |
| Purpose | KH Coder is software for quantitative content analysis, text mining, and computational linguistics. | MAXQDA is qualitative data analysis software for qualitative and mixed methods research, including literature reviews, content analysis, interviews, questionnaires, and focus groups. |
| Support | The maker directs users to GitHub Discussions for questions and error reports and provides a tutorial, video, PDF slides, and reference manual. | Free online support is provided for the current and preceding versions, with context-sensitive help linked from dialog windows. |
| Visualization | Built-in analyses include correspondence analysis, multidimensional scaling, hierarchical clustering, co-occurrence networks, and self-organizing maps for words and codes. | MAXQDA includes MAXMaps, Code Matrix Browser, Codeline, word and code occurrence dashboards and other interactive visual tools. |
| What it does | KH Coder is desktop software for quantitative content analysis, text mining, and computational linguistics. | MAXQDA is qualitative and mixed-methods research software for organizing, coding, analyzing, visualizing and reporting text, multimedia, survey and bibliographic data. |
Plans
KH Coder
- Starting EditionFree
- Starting EditionFree
- KH Coder 5 Mac Edition$99, paid once
- Update subscription (academic)¥18,480 a year
- Base Edition (academic)¥24,750, paid once
- Update subscription (normal)¥43,780 a year
- Base Edition (normal)¥59,950, paid once
- Master Edition (academic)¥69,850, paid once
- Master Edition (normal)¥196,900, paid once
- Pro Edition (normal)¥396,000, paid once
MAXQDA
- AI Assist FreeFree
- MAXQDA Tailwind Free TrialFree
- MAXQDA Tailwind Pro$41 a month
- AI Assist Premium (12 months)Priced on request
- AI Assist Premium (6 months)Priced on request
- MAXQDAPriced on request
- MAXQDA Analytics ProPriced on request
- MAXQDA Tailwind EnterprisePriced on request
- MAXQDA TeamCloudPrice not published
In their own words
KH Coder
KH Coder is software for quantitative content analysis, text mining, and computational linguistics. It can be used with free-response survey answers, interview records, newspaper articles, and other text. The analysis options include word-frequency lists, keyword searches, KWIC, cluster analysis, multidimensional scaling, co-occurrence networks, correspondence analysis, self-organizing maps, and coding cross-tabulations. Visualizations include network views with betweenness centrality and community detection, correspondence-analysis plots, heatmaps, line charts, and bubble plots. Statistical analyses can be viewed with the source-text context, and analysis can run without an internet connection. The English site lists text support for Catalan, Simplified Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Slovenian, and Spanish. KH Coder runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, with on-premise deployment. Users can customize it by editing R and MySQL code. The free Windows Starting Edition limits analyzable data and some features and is an older beta; the paid Base Edition is presented as the full version. The Mac Edition costs $99.00 USD once and requires Apple silicon, macOS 11 or later, and 5 GB of available disk space.
MAXQDA
MAXQDA is desktop software for qualitative and mixed methods research, including literature reviews, content analysis, interviews, questionnaires, and focus groups. Its tools include qualitative and mixed methods analysis, quantitative text analysis with MAXDictio, and statistical analysis with Stats. Analytics Pro can import and connect Excel or SPSS data and includes descriptive statistics, crosstabs, ANOVA, independent-samples t-tests, cluster analysis, Pearson and Spearman correlations, and scale calculations. MAXQDA Transcription can automatically transcribe audio and video in over 50 languages without a MAXQDA license, though analyzing transcripts in MAXQDA requires a valid MAXQDA or Analytics Pro license. TeamCloud provides a protected cloud workspace with 25GB storage for one team lead and up to four team members per license. The desktop product runs on Windows and Mac with the same interface and functions on both. A 14-day free trial is available for either system. The page does not expose prices for MAXQDA licenses or Analytics Pro; AI Assist has Free and Premium options, with limited capacity.