An NVivo alternative for coding interviews on your own device
NVivo is the qualitative analysis program many universities and research teams use to code interviews, documents and survey answers. OBSCURA Research does the core of that work in a browser tab, keeps the transcripts on your own device, and holds the survey data and its statistics in the same project. It does much less than NVivo. What each is, from Lumivero’s own pages, checked on 6 October 2026, and when to stay with NVivo.
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If you want recordings transcribed for you, capture social media, rely on relationship maps or automatic coding, or work in a team that codes one project at the same time, stay with NVivo: Research has none of those. If you code interview transcripts, recordings, documents and a survey’s open answers yourself, or with a second coder, and want the coding, the queries, Cohen’s kappa and the survey’s statistics in one project, with the transcripts never leaving your computer, Research does that as part of OBSCURA Pro.
What NVivo is
NVivo, made by Lumivero, is a desktop program for Windows and macOS for qualitative and mixed-methods research. Lumivero sells it as an annual subscription, with student licences, and offers as extras an AI Assistant, which suggests codes and summarises documents, codes and cases, and NVivo Transcription, an automated service for audio and video. Teams share a project through NVivo Collaboration Cloud or Collaboration Server. There is a free trial.
It codes documents, PDFs, pictures, audio, video, surveys and social media gathered with NCapture, codes automatically by speaker, by theme or by sentiment, and has framework matrices and maps. Many universities licence it, and many methods courses teach in it. Nothing on this page argues otherwise.
Side by side
NVivo’s entries are from Lumivero’s product, trial and help pages, checked on 6 October 2026. Its prices depend on the licence and the extras chosen, and change, so none is given here; Lumivero’s store has them.
| NVivo | OBSCURA Research | |
|---|---|---|
| What it costs | An annual subscription, with AI, transcription and team options as extras | US$2 a month or US$19 a year on its own, or US$5 a month or US$48 a year in OBSCURA Pro, with every other OBSCURA application |
| Free trial | Yes | 7 days |
| Runs on | Windows and macOS, installed | A browser tab, on any system with a current browser |
| Sources | Documents, PDFs, pictures, audio, video, surveys and social media | Word documents, the text of PDFs, plain text, Markdown, pictures, audio and video with their transcripts, and a survey’s open answers from CSV or Excel |
| AI | An AI Assistant, as an extra | None, by design |
| Transcription | NVivo Transcription, as an extra | Typed by you beside the recording, with keys to play, pause, skip and stamp the time; nothing is sent to a transcription service |
| Teams | Several people in one project, through Collaboration Cloud or Server | Each coder in their own copy, merged, with Cohen’s kappa and Krippendorff’s alpha for every code |
| Statistical tests | Done in a separate statistics program | In the same project: t-tests, ANOVA, regression and the rest, on the survey data |
| Where the data are kept | On your computer, or on Lumivero’s cloud or your server for a team | In the browser on your device, and in files you save |
What Research does, in NVivo’s terms
| The job | In Research |
|---|---|
| Coding | Select the text and choose a code, or press its number; codes overlap freely, and each code’s passages are marked in the margin in its colour. Pictures are coded by drawing a rectangle, and audio and video by marking a stretch of time |
| Codes | A tree, each code with a colour and a description, merged, moved and renamed |
| Memos and annotations | Memos on the project, a code, a source or a passage; annotations on any span of text |
| Cases and attributes | Each participant a case, linked to their row of the survey data, so their answers are attributes and counts from the coding become variables |
| Survey answers | A survey’s open-ended columns become sources whose every answer belongs to its respondent |
| Queries | Text search, coding every hit or its sentence or paragraph; word frequency with stop words and stemming; keyword in context; coding queries such as "Cost" AND NOT "Access" or "Weather" NEAR/10 "Travel" |
| Matrix coding | Codes by an attribute, and code co-occurrence as a heat map; a matrix goes to a chi-square test in one step |
| Framework matrices | Cases against codes, with a summary written in each cell beside the passages coded there |
| Coding comparison | Merge a second coder’s project and get Cohen’s kappa, Krippendorff’s alpha and percentage agreement for every code, character by character, as NVivo calculates it |
| Anonymising | Names in transcripts replaced with the same pseudonym everywhere, with a key file for you to keep |
| Out | The codebook to Word or CSV, quotes by code to Word, the whole project as one .oresearch file, and a REFI-QDA project (.qdpx) that NVivo, ATLAS.ti and MAXQDA open |
What NVivo has that Research does not
- Transcription done for you. Research codes recordings, but it does not transcribe them: that would mean sending them to a service. A transcript is typed beside the recording, or brought in as WebVTT, SRT or timestamped text.
- Automatic coding. Research does not code by speaker, by theme or by sentiment, and nothing in it suggests codes or summarises. The coding is the researcher’s; the help is counting.
- Maps and social media. Neither of these, and pictures are coded by rectangle, not by free shape. Scanned PDFs need their text recognised first, which PDF Studio does.
- One project for a whole team at once. In Research two people cannot edit one project at the same time; each codes a copy and the copies are merged.
- NVivo’s own project file. Research does not open an
.nvpor.nvpxfile, which only NVivo can read. Exported from NVivo as a REFI-QDA project, the sources, codes, coding, memos and cases come across. - A licence you may already have. If your institution pays for NVivo, your supervisor and your methods course probably use it too.
What Research adds
- The transcripts stay on the device. Interviews often hold personal data, and ethics approvals and data protection rules usually say where they may be kept. A project is kept in the browser’s private storage, and nothing is sent to a server; there is no account. A data protection officer can check this in the browser’s network panel.
- No AI, by design. Nothing reads a passage and decides what it means, so no model sees the data and every code was applied by a person.
- Mixed methods in one project. The survey and the interviews are one project, so a code can be tested against the survey’s groups without exporting anything. The SPSS page has the statistics.
- Nothing to install. It runs in a current browser on any computer, including one where you cannot install software.
- One subscription for several jobs. The same Pro plan covers OBSCURA Write for the thesis itself, PDF Studio and the other paid applications.
Starting a project in Research
- Bring the transcripts in as Word documents, PDFs with text, plain text or Markdown, any pictures as PNG, JPEG, WebP or GIF, and recordings as MP3, M4A, WAV, MP4 or WebM, with their transcripts if you have them.
- If there is a survey, import its export (CSV or Excel) as a survey with open answers, so every answer is tied to its respondent’s other answers.
- A project already coded in NVivo comes across whole: in NVivo choose File, Export, Export Project as a REFI-QDA project, and open the
.qdpxfile from Research’s File menu. Otherwise, make the code tree. - Link the cases to the data, code, and save the project as a
.oresearchfile now and then: clearing the site’s data in the browser deletes a project kept only there.
What it costs
Research on its own is US$2 a month or US$19 a year; all of OBSCURA Pro is US$5 a month or US$48 a year. Each comes with 7 days free first. For a team, each coder needs a plan of their own and works in their own copy. There is no free version of Research with features held back: without Pro, its page shows what it does and asks for a plan.
See it before you pay. Research’s page shows an interview being coded in its demo project, an invented evaluation of a community garden programme, and says what it cannot do.
Questions people ask about An NVivo alternative for coding interviews on your own device
Is there an NVivo alternative that keeps transcripts on my own device?
OBSCURA Research codes interview transcripts, documents, pictures and a survey's open answers in a browser tab. The project is kept in the browser on your device, nothing is uploaded, and there is no account.
Can Research open an NVivo project?
No. It does not open NVivo projects or REFI-QDA exchange files. The transcripts come across as Word, PDF, text or Markdown files, but coding done in NVivo does not.
Can two people code the same project?
Each coder works in their own copy of the project. Merging a colleague's file brings their coding in under their name, and Reliability gives Cohen's kappa and percentage agreement for every code. Two people cannot edit one project at the same time.
Does Research use AI or transcribe audio?
No. Nothing in it suggests codes, summarises or guesses what a passage means, and it does not code audio or video or transcribe recordings. NVivo offers an AI Assistant and NVivo Transcription as extras.
What does it cost?
Research on its own is US$2 a month or US$19 a year, and all of OBSCURA Pro is US$5 a month or US$48 a year, each with 7 days free first; Pro covers every OBSCURA application. NVivo is sold by Lumivero as an annual subscription, priced on its own pages.
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