Comparison
Recense vs Infotools Harmoni
Recense is self-serve software at a fraction of the seat cost. Harmoni is software-plus-services with a multi-month implementation phase. If you want a product to use directly, Recense fits; if you want a long-running services engagement, it doesn't. Point by point below.
What stays the same
- Survey-aware tabulation. Crosstabs, weighting, sig testing, multi-response — the foundation is the same.
- Multi-source data. Recense imports SPSS .sav, CSV, and Excel; harmonising waves and sources is supported in the canvas.
- Time-series and tracking workflows. Wave-over-wave analysis with sig testing across periods.
What changes
- Self-serve from day one. No services engagement, no demo gate, no implementation phase. Sign up, drop a file in, work.
- Modern, configurable canvas. Tables, derived variables, narrative, and formula cells live in one workspace, not in separate "Shape / Investigate / Share" stages.
- AI agents with surface parity. Brief an agent the way you would a colleague. It builds tables and writes commentary in the same canvas — not as a separate ChatHarmoni-style probing layer.
- Bring your own model. Frontier model choice is yours. Connect a key, swap providers, or use the built-in agent with credits.
- Browser-based, no install. Tabulation runs client-side via WebAssembly. Local files stay local.
- Transparent pricing. Tiers are public; pricing isn't software-plus-services.
Cost
Harmoni's Creator licence is around $4,900 per user per year, and in practice the licence is bundled with Infotools Services fees — it's not a standalone self-serve product. Recense Starter is £30 / month with full tabulation and BYOK AI; Pro is £90 / month. See the pricing page.
Migration
Export your underlying datasets (SPSS .sav or equivalent) and import directly into Recense. Variable structure, labels, weights, and multi-response definitions are preserved. Harmoni "Stories" and prepared dashboards are a different artifact — plan on rebuilding them as Recense canvases. Most teams find the rebuild is faster than expected because the canvas does more of the work the dashboard layer was hand-assembling.
Where Harmoni still fits
If your team relies on a long-running services engagement — data harmonisation help, custom dashboard design, ongoing implementation support — that delivery model is what Harmoni sells. Recense is a self-serve software product and isn't a substitute for that engagement. For agencies and freelancers who want the software directly, the trade-off goes the other way.
Try Recense without an implementation phase
Free to start. Drag in a .sav and you're working.