PositioningLegal document review: on-premise against metered cloud IDP
Hosted review and parsing services are capable and widely used. In legal the distinguishing question is narrower: who becomes a recipient of the document, and what does that do to privilege.
Legal document review: on-premise against metered cloud IDP| Criterion | Metered cloud IDP | Vendor BYOC tier | DocxIntel |
|---|
| Where privileged documents are read | Vendor cloud | Your cloud tenant | Your infrastructure, including bare metal |
|---|
| Adds a recipient outside the firm | Yes | Vendor-controlled images | No |
|---|
| Parsed content cached by the vendor | Commonly cached by defaultdocumented at 48 hours on some services | Vendor-managed | Nothing to cache |
|---|
| Named in client confidentiality undertakings | Usually required | Usually required | Not applicable |
|---|
| Cost of a 200,000-page data room | Roughly $2,500 to $60,000 per matterillustrative list-rate arithmetic at $0.0125 to $0.30 per page | Still metered per page | No incremental chargeGPU time only |
|---|
| Re-running the portfolio for an obligations audit | Charged again per page | Charged again per page | No incremental charge |
|---|
| Redaction removes underlying content | Varies by product | Varies by product | Content removed |
|---|
| Self-hosting available on | No plan | Top enterprise tier only | Every licence |
|---|
Where privileged documents are read
- Metered cloud IDP
- Vendor cloud
- Vendor BYOC tier
- Your cloud tenant
- DocxIntel
- Your infrastructure, including bare metal
Adds a recipient outside the firm
- Metered cloud IDP
- Yes
- Vendor BYOC tier
- Vendor-controlled images
- DocxIntel
- No
Parsed content cached by the vendor
- Metered cloud IDP
- Commonly cached by defaultdocumented at 48 hours on some services
- Vendor BYOC tier
- Vendor-managed
- DocxIntel
- Nothing to cache
Named in client confidentiality undertakings
- Metered cloud IDP
- Usually required
- Vendor BYOC tier
- Usually required
- DocxIntel
- Not applicable
Cost of a 200,000-page data room
- Metered cloud IDP
- Roughly $2,500 to $60,000 per matterillustrative list-rate arithmetic at $0.0125 to $0.30 per page
- Vendor BYOC tier
- Still metered per page
- DocxIntel
- No incremental chargeGPU time only
Re-running the portfolio for an obligations audit
- Metered cloud IDP
- Charged again per page
- Vendor BYOC tier
- Charged again per page
- DocxIntel
- No incremental charge
Redaction removes underlying content
- Metered cloud IDP
- Varies by product
- Vendor BYOC tier
- Varies by product
- DocxIntel
- Content removed
Self-hosting available on
- Metered cloud IDP
- No plan
- Vendor BYOC tier
- Top enterprise tier only
- DocxIntel
- Every licence
Cost figures are our own arithmetic on publicly published list rates as of 2026, not vendor quotations. Caching and self-hosting behaviour reflects publicly documented terms of metered parsing services. Verify against current vendor documentation, and take your own advice on privilege, before making a decision.