What you are paying Covidence for
Covidence is a well-built screening tool: import references, screen titles and abstracts with a second reviewer, resolve conflicts, extract data, assess quality. A personal subscription runs around 450 USD per year, and it stops where the statistics start. When screening is done, you export to RevMan or R for the analysis.
The same workflow, free
- Import references (RIS), deduplicate with DOI and PMID matching, and review every duplicate pair before it is dropped
- Blinded dual screening: two reviewers vote independently, conflicts go to a resolver, agreement is reported as Cohen's kappa
- A separate full-text review stage with retrieval status and exclusion reasons
- AI-assisted title and abstract screening when you want a first pass
- Data extraction with custom templates, AI-assisted from your PDFs
- Risk of bias with RoB 2, ROBINS-I, NOS, JBI, and AXIS
- A PRISMA 2020 flow diagram that counts itself from your screening decisions
Where Covexe keeps going
The analysis Covidence never had is built in: meta-analysis validated against R's metafor, network meta-analysis validated against netmeta, GRADE certainty ratings, and a manuscript draft assembled from what you actually did. One project from question to figures.
An honest note
Covidence is a mature product with institutional support behind it. If your university library already pays for it and your team is trained on it, that is a real reason to stay. If you are paying out of pocket, or you want the analysis in the same place as the screening, that is the case for Covexe.