Beta now available for macOS
The local-first qualitative analysis workspace for Mac.
Transcribe, code, and analyze your research interviews — entirely on your Mac. No cloud upload, no per-seat subscription, no wondering where your participants' recordings ended up.
Download the beta Free during beta · macOS 14+, Apple Silicon
Free beta for Mac
The full app. No account, no license key.
- Free during beta
- macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon (M1+)
- Notarized by Apple
- Runs fully offline
What it looks like
A workspace built around the transcript, not the software.
Sources, transcript, and codebook live in one window — no exporting to spreadsheets to see what you have.
Three commitments
Built for research, not repurposed for it.
Truly local
Transcription, speaker separation, and AI analysis run on your Mac — not in a data center. Liminon works with no network connection at all, and shows a live indicator whenever it does talk to the network, so "local" is something you can watch, not a line in a privacy policy. Built for the realities of IRB review and participant confidentiality.
AI suggests, you decide
Liminon proposes codes, clusters emerging themes, and surfaces related quotes by meaning, not just keyword — every suggestion sits in a pending state until you accept it. Every accept, reject, and edit is written to an audit trail you can export, so when a reviewer asks what the AI actually did, you have an answer.
One-time purchase
$179, once. Early-bird $129, students $79. No annual renewal — and this is a promise, not a hedge: no future version of Liminon will lock you out of a project you built in an older one.
How it works
Four steps, one file, zero uploads.
Import
Bring in audio or video interviews directly. Nothing is queued to a server to get started.
Transcribe
A local, Whisper-class model transcribes and separates speakers automatically, on-device.
Code
Code whole segments or any selected phrase, with a keyboard-driven flow. Nest codes into trees, merge them later, and pull every quote for a code in one view.
Analyze
AI-assisted theme discovery that proposes candidate themes from your data — every suggestion reviewed by you. Export quote tables as Word documents and theme matrices as CSV, with a full audit trail.
Why not NVivo?
The honest comparison.
No mainstream QDA tool runs its AI features on your machine — yours goes to a vendor's cloud the moment you turn AI on. That's the gap Liminon is built to close.
Scroll to compare →
| Liminon | NVivo | MAXQDA | ATLAS.ti | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| License | $179 once early $129 · student $79 |
Academic subscription $295–595 / yr |
Subscription ~$253 / yr |
Subscription |
| AI features | Included | +$250 / yr add-on | Extra cost | — |
| Where AI runs | On your Mac, always | Cloud (OpenAI) | Cloud | Cloud |
| Heard in the field | —, public beta just started | "Upgraded and my coding was gone" | — | "10–15 seconds per code click" |
Questions
Frequently asked
Does my data ever leave my Mac?
No. Transcription, speaker separation, and AI analysis all run locally, on-device. Liminon shows a live indicator whenever it makes a network request, so "local" isn't something you have to take our word for — it's something you can watch. The app works fully with no network connection at all.
What about IRB compliance?
Because recordings and transcripts never leave your Mac by default, Liminon fits cleanly into protocols that require participant data to stay on a single, non-networked device. It doesn't replace your IRB's judgment — but it removes "did this vendor's cloud see our data" from the list of questions you have to answer.
Which Macs are supported?
Apple Silicon (M1 or later), macOS 14 or later. On an Intel Mac, Windows, or Linux? Nothing is ruled out, but the local AI models we rely on need Apple Silicon to run well today — leave your email in the form at the bottom of this page and we'll write once when your machine is supported.
Is Liminon available now?
Yes. The beta is available now — download it here. It's fully free during the beta. A one-time purchase gets you a permanent license key by email; it doesn't unlock any feature, and there's no subscription — see pricing.
Do you offer student pricing?
Yes — $79 with a valid .edu (or equivalent institutional) email address, verified at checkout on the pricing page.
Can I import from NVivo?
REFI-QDA (QDPX) import is on the roadmap. It's the closest thing our field has to a portable project format, and we intend to support it.
Other machines
Not on an Apple Silicon Mac?
Liminon runs on Apple Silicon Macs today. On an Intel Mac or Windows? Leave your email and we'll write once when Liminon supports your machine.
On an M1 or later? Download the free beta instead.