Lumana pricing in 2026: what Lumana security costs per camera, and how to compare a quote

Lumana does not publish a price list, so every search for Lumana pricing ends at a form. That is a legitimate way to sell a system whose cost genuinely depends on your camera count, but it leaves you building a budget number with nothing to anchor it to. This piece assembles what Lumana does state publicly about how it charges, shows which three variables move the number, and lists the questions that change a quote most.

Written by a competitor, which you should weigh accordingly. The last section prices the same site on our own published software, and we have an obvious interest in how that comparison lands. Everything attributed to Lumana below comes from its own pricing page.

The short answer

Lumana pricing is an annual recurring licence, quoted rather than published, and set by three things: how many camera feeds you connect, how many days of video you keep, and how long a term you commit to. There are no feature tiers, so every capability is included at every price point, and you can pay yearly or pay the whole term upfront. On top of the licence sits Lumana Core hardware, which replaces your DVR or NVR and does the recording and the AI processing on site. There is no public dollar figure for any of it, and anyone quoting you one on a third party page is guessing.

What Lumana actually publishes

Four things, and they are more useful than they first look.

The licence is annual and recurring, priced per camera feed. That means the unit of cost is a stream, not a physical camera, which matters if you run multi sensor or multi imager units that present as several feeds from one housing. Ask how those are counted before you count your own cameras.

Pricing is not tiered by feature. Lumana states that all capabilities come standard to avoid licensing tiers and limitations. This is genuinely buyer friendly and it removes a whole category of negotiation, but it also means you cannot buy a cheaper version for the low risk cameras in the back office. Every feed costs a feed.

The platform is camera agnostic. Lumana works with any IP camera that supports standard streaming protocols, so your existing ONVIF and RTSP hardware carries over and there is no forced camera refresh. That is the single largest cost avoided in this category, and it puts Lumana in the same group as Coram AI, Spot AI and Eagle Eye Networks rather than with the platforms that sell you their own cameras. Our own comparison of Verkada competitors and alternatives lays out which side of that line each vendor falls on.

Storage is a priced variable, not a fixed allowance. Days of retention sit in the pricing formula alongside feed count, which is the honest way to do it, because storage is the expensive part of any video system. It also means the cheapest quote you receive may quietly be the shortest retention, so normalise every quote to the same number of days before you compare them.

The three variables in your quote

Because the formula is public even though the rate is not, you can model the shape of your own cost before the call and know which lever to pull when the number comes back too high.

Feed count. The one people get wrong. Count streams, not cameras, and separate the cameras that need AI from the ones that do not. A stockroom camera that exists purely for insurance footage may not need live classification at all. On a platform with no cheap tier, the only way to reduce that line is to connect fewer feeds.

Retention days. Thirty days is the default most people ask for out of habit rather than policy. If your actual requirement is a fourteen day window for incident review plus indefinite keeping of flagged events, say that, because it is a materially cheaper shape than thirty days of everything. Check whether your industry or your insurer has a written minimum before you guess.

Term length. Longer terms buy a lower annual rate across this whole category, and Lumana offers the upfront payment option that usually comes with the largest discount. The trade is flexibility: a five year commitment on a category moving as fast as AI video is a real bet. If you take it, get the renewal rate written into the original contract rather than left open.

The Core appliance line

Lumana Core devices sit on your network, store video and run the AI models locally in a hybrid cloud design. This is a genuine engineering advantage: processing on site means lower bandwidth use and no dependency on a fat uplink to keep detection running. It is also a hardware line in your quote and a box in your rack, so treat it like one.

Three things to pin down. Whether the Core is purchased, leased or bundled into the licence, because that determines whether it appears as capital expenditure or operating expenditure. How many feeds one Core handles, which sets your unit of expansion when you add cameras next year. And what happens when the Core fails or the site loses power, since a device doing both recording and inference is a single point for both. Facilities teams that already watch their own infrastructure usually have a monitor that checks the box every thirty seconds and tells them the moment it stops answering, which is worth having on any appliance holding your only copy of video.

What to ask before you sign

Five questions, in this order. They cost nothing and they move quotes more than negotiating on price does.

What is the five year total, including Core hardware, licences, storage and support? Ask for it in writing as one number. A vendor that answers quickly is telling you something useful about the next five years of the relationship.

What is the renewal rate at the end of the term? An attractive first term with an unspecified renewal is the most common way this category gets expensive in year four. Get the ceiling in the contract.

How is a multi sensor camera counted? One housing, four imagers, four feeds, and four times the licence line if nobody asked.

What happens to my video if I leave? Export format, how long you have, and who pays for the transfer. On any platform where recording runs on vendor hardware, this is the real switching cost.

What is the accuracy on my cameras, not on the demo reel? Ask for a pilot on your worst camera, at night, in the rain. Every platform in this category looks excellent on a well lit 4K sample, and the difference between them shows up on the ten year old dome pointed at a parking lot. Since this is a recurring software licence, it will also sit on the same renewal calendar as the rest of the recurring software spend your finance team already tracks, so it is worth logging the renewal date the day you sign.

When Lumana is the right answer

If you need recording and analytics from one vendor, want the processing to happen on site rather than in the cloud, and would rather have every feature included than negotiate tiers, Lumana is a strong fit and the camera agnostic design means your existing hardware carries over. Organisations replacing an aging NVR anyway get particular value, because the Core is doing a job they were about to pay for regardless. Nobody in that position should switch away for a lower per camera number.

The case against is narrower and it is about scope. If your recorder works, keeps video for as long as you need and the only genuine failure is that it cannot tell a person from headlights, then a platform that bundles recording is selling you a solved problem alongside the unsolved one. That is the distinction our page on video management software for IP cameras works through in detail, including where the money goes in each licence model.

What the same site costs software only

For contrast, here is a published number for the half of the job that is detection. Our Operate tier is $149 a month for fifteen cameras, which is $9.93 per camera per month, or $1,428 a year billed annually. Nothing is recorded and nothing is racked: the software reads the same RTSP streams your existing recorder is already pulling, classifies person, vehicle, animal and package, and sends one alert worth reading. Over five years that is $7,140 for fifteen cameras, and the cameras and the recorder stay exactly where they are.

That is not the same product as Lumana and it should not be priced as if it were. Lumana stores your video, runs a full security platform and gives you one vendor for the whole stack. We do one half of it and expect you to keep the other half you already own. Which of those is better value depends entirely on whether the recorder in your closet is a problem or just old. If you are not sure, the test is to pull last Tuesday at 3am and see whether the footage is there.

Questions buyers ask

How much does Lumana cost?

Lumana does not publish a price. It charges an annual recurring licence set by the number of camera feeds, the days of video retained and the length of the term, with all features included at every price point, plus Lumana Core hardware for recording and on site AI processing. A figure only comes from a quote, and any number you find on a third party page is an estimate rather than a rate card.

Does Lumana work with existing cameras?

Yes. Lumana states it is completely camera agnostic and compatible with any IP camera supporting standard streaming protocols, meaning ONVIF and RTSP. Your installed cameras carry over and there is no forced hardware refresh on the camera side. The Core appliance does replace a traditional DVR or NVR, so the recorder is the part that changes, not the cameras.

Is Lumana cheaper than Verkada?

On hardware, almost certainly, because Verkada requires its own cameras and Lumana accepts yours, and at fifteen cameras replacing working hardware is a five figure line on its own. On software licensing neither publishes enough to compare directly, since Verkada publishes camera MSRP but quotes the licence, and Lumana quotes everything. The comparison only becomes real once you have both five year totals in writing, which is why that is the first question to ask either one.

Does Lumana have different pricing tiers?

No. Lumana states that all features and capabilities come standard, specifically to avoid tiered licensing and its limitations. That removes feature negotiation from the process entirely. The practical consequence is that there is no cheaper option for low priority cameras, so your feed count is the main lever you control.

What is the alternative to a quote based video platform?

Software that publishes its price and does not touch your recording. Analytics only platforms read your existing RTSP streams, classify what they see and alert, without storing video or supplying an appliance. It is a narrower product and it is materially cheaper per camera, because storage is what makes video systems expensive and you are not buying it a second time. Our published per camera pricing is the whole rate card, and the CCTV video analytics software page covers what runs on older ONVIF and RTSP installations.