Frequently asked questions
Everything you need to know about Magnolia, the free, open-source qualitative data analysis (QDA) software — a free alternative to NVivo, Atlas.ti, and MAXQDA.
Is Magnolia really free?
Yes. Magnolia is completely free — there's no trial, no subscription, and no paid tier. It's released as open-source software under the European Union Public Licence (EUPL), so it stays free for everyone to use, change, and share.
What is QDA (qualitative data analysis) software?
QDA software helps researchers organise, code, and analyse qualitative data, such as text documents, images, audio, video, and survey responses. It's as if you had an infinite number of highlighters: highlight content you think is important, give the highlighter a name, and then easily show everything which was highlighted with it. QDA software lets you do this digitally and lets you query and visualise what you have marked. Magnolia is a free, open-source QDA tool that does all of this locally on your own computer.
Is there a free alternative to NVivo, Atlas.ti, or MAXQDA?
Yes. Magnolia is a free, open-source alternative to paid QDA tools like NVivo, Atlas.ti, and MAXQDA. It offers coding, a graphical query builder, relationship maps, transcription, survey analysis, and a full analysis suite. Because it reads and writes the open QDPX standard, you can import and export projects to and from other tools.
What is the best free QDA software?
The best free QDA software depends on your needs. Magnolia aims to match the paid tools feature-for-feature while remaining free and open source, with a graphical query builder, relationship maps, a full analysis suite, transcription, and survey support. Other open-source options include Taguette and QualCoder, which are lighter-weight.
Does Magnolia use AI?
No. Magnolia doesn't use AI for coding, analysis, or transcription. You stay in control of the interpretation — you are the researcher.
Is my data private, and does Magnolia use the cloud?
Your data never leaves your machine. There's no account, no cloud sync, and no telemetry. Your project is simply a file saved on your own disk or a network drive — exactly where you put it.
Which platforms does Magnolia run on?
Magnolia runs on macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel), Windows (installer and portable builds), and Linux (AppImage and .deb).
Can I open my existing NVivo, Atlas.ti, or MAXQDA projects in Magnolia?
Magnolia uses the open QDPX standard natively. If your current tool can export a QDPX file, you can open that project in Magnolia — and export your Magnolia work back out the same way, so there's no lock-in.
What kinds of data can I analyse in Magnolia?
Magnolia supports text (.txt, .md, .markdown, .pdf, .docx, .rtf, .odt), images (.jpg, .png, .gif, .webp, .tif, .heic and more), audio (.wav, .mp3, .ogg, .flac, .m4a, .aac), video (.mp4, .mov, .avi), and survey data (.csv, .xlsx).