What Clio actually costs, now that only one number is published.

One price on the page, three requests for a quote

The vendor's own pricing page shows a single price for Clio Manage: "Starting at $49/user" on the Starter card, which also carries a "Best Value" badge. Core, Signature and Elite each show a "Get pricing" action instead of a number. Core and Signature also show "Try for free". Elite shows "Book a demo". All three are marked "Add-ons available".

One note on how that was read. Direct requests to clio.com from two separate clients on our side returned HTTP 403 on September 16 and again on the morning of September 18, so the live page could not be retrieved. Every figure below was parsed instead out of dated Internet Archive captures of the vendor's own pricing page, the most recent from September 17, 2026, rather than taken from any comparison site. Confirm current terms with the vendor before relying on them.

That capture lists four plans under the page's Practice management tab: Starter, Core, Signature and Elite. Signature carries a "Popular" badge. Elite carries a "Save over 17%" badge, and the page does not state what that percentage is measured against. The page's FAQ says plans start at $49 USD per user per month, names the same four plans, and directs firms to Get pricing or Book a demo for pricing matched to the firm.

The grid came off the page between two captures

The captures dated January 5, February 4, March 6 and April 2, 2026 show a different page. An Annually and Monthly toggle sat above four plans with a full price grid in USD per user per month: EasyStart at $49 annually or $59 monthly, Essentials at $89 or $99, Advanced at $119 or $139, and Expand at $149 or $169.

Those captures also stated a trial: free for seven days, no obligation, no credit card required, cancel anytime. A document automation add-on appeared at an additional $59 per user per month annually, or $69 monthly, plus a one-time $399 fee.

By the May 18 capture the per-tier grid and the billing toggle are gone, leaving only "Starting at $49/user", and they are absent from the June 2 and July 3 captures too. The plan names were still EasyStart, Essentials and Advanced through that period, and the seven-day, no-credit-card trial line was still there.

The names changed between the July 3 and August 1 captures. By August 1 the page showed Starter, Core, Signature and Elite, the upper three showed Get pricing, the "Save over 17%" badge appeared on Elite, and the trial line was gone. The September 6 and September 17 captures match that structure.

The lowest published figure did not move across the whole period. It was $49 per user per month in January and $49 per user per month in September. What changed is how many other numbers sit beside it. For contrast, an earlier comparison of nine vendors' published pricing pages found six that publish a per-user rate outright and three that publish none and route every firm to a quote.

The rates that are still published

The comparison table lists the same payment processing rates on all four plans. eCheck payments are 1 percent. ACH is 1 percent. Credit and debit card payments are 2.95 percent, or 3.75 percent for Amex. Pay Later with Affirm is 4.95 percent. Court e-filing reads "Pay per filing" on every plan.

Those charges sit outside the subscription figure. On a $5,000 payment, 2.95 percent is $147.50 and 1 percent is $50. That is a calculation from the published rates, not a vendor quotation, and it runs the same on Starter as on Elite.

The tiers differ by cap, not only by feature

Several rows in the comparison table set a number rather than a yes or no. E-signature is capped at 3 on Starter and 15 on Core, and is unlimited above. Custom roles and granular permissions show none, then 2, then unlimited. Court calendaring rules show none, then 3 per firm, then 10 per firm. Saved report views show none, then 5, then unlimited. Data migration is self-serve on Starter and guided on the other three.

The yes-or-no rows split at two places. Accounting integrations for QuickBooks, Xero and TrustBooks, the secure client portal and client mobile app, and conflict checking all begin at Core. Single sign-on, live onboarding training, priority support, custom reporting, matter stages, multi-currency billing and split billing all begin at Signature. The website builder appears only on Elite.

Document storage is unlimited on all four plans, and trust account management, trust and operating reconciliation, financial reporting and check printing read yes on all four. So a firm can hit a numeric ceiling while every feature it cares about still reads yes. That is a different upgrade trigger than a missing feature, and it is worth checking against the firm's actual volumes.

Export, cancellation and support are on the page too

The FAQ states that accounting is included on every plan from Starter upward, as part of the subscription rather than a separate purchase. It also states that firm data, including contacts, matters and financial records, can be retrieved in open, nonproprietary formats while the account is active or within 90 days after cancellation, and that cancellation takes effect at the end of the current term, monthly or annual.

The page states a 99.9% uptime guarantee, SOC 2 Type II certification, and that every plan includes unlimited storage, encrypted backups and multi-factor authentication. Support hours are given as 24/5, Monday morning through Friday evening.

Those are business-day hours, and they are not the hours callers ring in. Answering the phone at 9 p.m. on a Saturday is a separate layer from any practice management tier, and it is the layer Archivar covers: every call answered in English and Spanish, intake taken as a conversation, and what it learns written into one shared firm record.

What to put in writing

For any plan above Starter, the quote is the price. Get the per-user rate in writing along with the billing period it assumes, since the page no longer carries a monthly and annual toggle, plus the term length, the renewal terms and any renewal uplift.

Ask where client intake and CRM sit. Clio Grow is bundled into Elite and into a plan the page calls Elite Work, and is an add-on to Core and Signature. Its card shows Get pricing and no number, as does the one for Clio for Personal Injury. Advanced document automation, court forms and template building each tell the buyer to contact a sales representative, and one lead-handling add-on row is priced per matter hired rather than per user per month, a different unit than everything else on the page.

Then write down the one-time implementation or onboarding fees, the caps that matter to the firm's volumes, and the processing and per-filing charges. Do not treat "Try for free" as a defined trial: the page publishes no length and no longer says a credit card is not required. And ask what the "Save over 17%" figure is measured against, because the page does not say.

A published starting price tells a firm what the cheapest seat costs, and nothing about what its own configuration costs.

The rest of it is a quote, and a quote is only worth what it says in writing.