Actuate AI Pricing 2026: Weapons Detection Cost per Camera Actuate Publishes No Prices, So Here Is What AI Gun Detection Actually Costs per Camera in Signed Public Contracts
Actuate AI sells firearm and intrusion detection software that runs on the cameras and VMS you already own, priced as a per-camera subscription across four tiers: Lite, Classic, Pro, and Premium. It publishes no dollar figures anywhere, and there is no free plan and no free trial. Every price comes through an integrator as a custom quote. So the only honest way to anchor a budget is to look at what comparable AI gun detection costs in contracts that districts have signed and disclosed.
How Much Does Actuate AI Cost?
Nobody outside Actuate and its integrator channel can tell you, because Actuate does not publish a price. Its own pricing page names four base subscription tiers, Actuate Lite, Actuate Classic, Actuate Pro, and Actuate Premium, and four specialty add-ons, Dynamic Slicing, Dewarping, Camera Health Monitoring, and Secure VPN. It attaches no dollar figure to any of them, and lists no free plan and no free trial. You get a number by talking to a security system integrator.
What Actuate does tell you is the shape of the bill. In its own words, you "only pay for what you need (per camera subscriptions)," costs come down as you expand camera coverage, and Actuate "does not participate in price stacking, so you will only pay for the subscription package you need based on your application." Translated: one tier per camera, no forced bundle of features you will not use, and a volume discount as the camera count climbs.
That volume curve is the part worth planning around, and it is steep. Public school district contracts for ZeroEyes, the closest verifiable comparable in camera-based AI gun detection, show the annual per-camera cost falling from roughly $592 at 38 cameras to roughly $168 at 650 to 800 cameras. Those are ZeroEyes contracts, not Actuate prices, and we say so plainly. But they are signed and disclosed, which makes them the best benchmark for what a quote in this category should look like. Our gun detection system cost guide covers the wider market, and our Evolv pricing guide covers the walk-through scanner side, a different product solving a different problem.
Sourced from Actuate's own pricing page, July 2026. Actuate attaches no dollar figure to any tier, so we do not invent one.
What AI Gun Detection Actually Costs per Camera
These are signed ZeroEyes contracts with public school districts, reported by StateScoop in 2024 from district records. ZeroEyes is not Actuate, and these are not Actuate's prices. We use them because ZeroEyes is a direct competitor selling the same thing, camera-based AI firearm detection on cameras a site already owns, and because these are the only numbers in this category a buyer can actually verify.
| District (ZeroEyes contract) | Cameras | Contract | Cost per camera per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| East Union School District, Afton, Iowa | Up to 38 | One year, $27,500 total: $22,500 per year plus a $5,000 one-time setup fee | About $592 |
| Kansas legislative proposal (statewide costing) | 25 per school, 1,300 buildings | About $8.5 million per year | About $340 |
| Mount Pulaski CUSD No. 23, Illinois | Up to 116 | Five years at $38,280 per year, setup waived | About $330 |
| Park City School District, Utah | 650 | $109,200 per year | About $168 |
| Iberville Parish, Plaquemine, Louisiana | Up to 800 | Five years, $687,000 total: $134,400 per year plus a $15,000 setup fee | About $168 |
Read that column from top to bottom and you have the single most useful fact in this whole category: the per-camera annual price for AI gun detection collapses as the camera count grows. About $592 per camera at 38 cameras. About $330 at 116. About $168 at 650 to 800. The same product, sold by the same vendor, costs three and a half times more per camera at a small site than at a large district. Nobody publishes this, and it changes how you should read a quote.
Actuate's Four Tiers and Four Add-Ons
Actuate names its packages publicly even though it prices none of them. The structure still tells you which levers your integrator pulls when the quote is built: four base subscriptions, each priced per camera, and four specialty add-ons layered on only where a given camera needs them.
The four base subscriptions
- ● Actuate Lite
- ● Actuate Classic
- ● Actuate Pro
- ● Actuate Premium
- ● Each is a per-camera subscription with no public price
The four specialty add-ons
- ● Dynamic Slicing, for detail in large or high-resolution scenes
- ● Dewarping, for fisheye and panoramic camera feeds
- ● Camera Health Monitoring, for offline and degraded feeds
- ● Secure VPN, for the connection between site and service
- ● Each is a separate subscription, added per camera as needed
Count the cameras that matter
Actuate charges per camera, so the bill starts with how many feeds you actually put under detection. Entrances, corridors, lobbies, and parking approaches carry most of the value. A stockroom corner carries almost none.
Pick the tier per camera
Lite, Classic, Pro, or Premium. Actuate says it does not price stack, so you pay for the package the application needs rather than a bundle. A quote can mix tiers across a single site.
Add only the specialty subscriptions you need
Dynamic Slicing, Dewarping, Camera Health Monitoring, and Secure VPN are separate line items. A fisheye camera may need Dewarping. A fixed dome does not. These are where a quote quietly inflates if nobody checks it feed by feed.
Push on the volume curve
Actuate states that costs reduce as you expand camera coverage. Ask your integrator for the per-camera rate at your count, at double it, and at half. The slope of that answer is your real negotiating room.
Budgeting Bands from the Public Contract Data
These bands come from the contracts above, not from any Actuate price list. Use them as a sanity check on the number your integrator gives you. If a quote for 700 cameras is priced like a 40-camera site, the volume discount is not being passed on.
| Deployment | Cameras | Benchmark rate per camera per year | What else lands on the invoice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single small site or one school | Around 40 | About $590 | A one-time setup fee is common at this size. East Union paid $5,000 on top of the annual subscription |
| Small district or campus | Around 120 | About $330 | Setup was waived in the Mount Pulaski deal in exchange for a five-year term. Term length is a real lever |
| Mid-size district or multi-site | 650 to 800 | About $168 | Iberville Parish still paid a $15,000 setup fee even at 800 cameras, so volume does not always erase it |
| Statewide program | Tens of thousands | About $340 in the Kansas costing | A legislative estimate is not a negotiated contract. Scale does not guarantee the best rate |
One line item to watch specifically: the setup fee. It shows up at 38 cameras ($5,000) and it still shows up at 800 cameras ($15,000), and in one case it was waived entirely in exchange for a five-year commitment. It is negotiable, and it is the easiest thing to trade for term length. For the wider picture of what these systems cost, including monitoring center models, see our gun detection system cost guide.
The Hard Limits of Camera-Based Gun Detection
This applies to Actuate, to ZeroEyes, and to us. Before you sign anything, be certain the people approving the budget understand what the technology can and cannot do.
A camera-based system can only detect a weapon that is visible. If the gun is in a waistband, a backpack, or under a coat, no amount of AI on the video feed will see it. Concealed weapon detection is a different product category, generally walk-through sensing at a controlled entrance. If someone tells you camera AI finds concealed guns, they are wrong, and the distinction matters more than any line on the quote.
The false alarms are real and documented. A Texas high school went into lockdown because the system flagged the shadow of a student's arm. St. John Fisher University generated alerts from prop guns during a theater rehearsal. Neither is a scandal on its own, and both vendors route detections through human review for exactly this reason, but they set expectations honestly: the system will sometimes be wrong, and your staff will be the ones absorbing that.
Michael Dorn of Safe Havens International has made the point that many active shooter events are over in roughly nine seconds, which raises a fair question about how much detection speed alone can actually prevent. Chad Marlow of the ACLU argues that the word "proactive" is misleading in this category, since a genuinely proactive system would stop a threat before it reached the campus rather than react once a weapon is already visible on camera. Amanda Klinger of the Educator's School Safety Network notes that behavioral threat assessment is rigorously tested and effective, yet routinely gets overlooked in favor of flashier technology.
None of that makes AI gun detection worthless. It shortens the gap between a weapon appearing and someone in authority knowing about it, on cameras you already paid for. But it is one layer, and a budget that spends its whole safety line here while skipping threat assessment, drills, and access control is a badly balanced budget. See our AI gun detection guide and our weapons detection AI page for how the layers fit together.
Camera AI sees what the camera sees. A gun under a coat is invisible to it.
A shadow triggered a Texas lockdown. Theater prop guns triggered alerts at St. John Fisher.
Safe Havens International notes many incidents are over before any response can land.
A visible weapon becomes a verified alert in seconds instead of a phone call in minutes.
Actuate Versus a Full Analytics Platform, Including Where We Cost More
Surveillant publishes its price: Plus is $42 per camera per month, Pro is $39 per camera per month, and there is a free forever plan for a single camera. Here is the comparison, and here is the part most vendor pages would bury.
| Factor | Actuate AI | Surveillant |
|---|---|---|
| Published price | None. Quote only, through integrators | Yes: Plus $42 and Pro $39 per camera per month |
| Free plan or trial | Neither is listed | Free forever plan for 1 camera |
| Cameras required | None. Runs on the cameras and VMS you own | None. Runs on any ONVIF or RTSP camera you own |
| Scope | Firearm detection, intrusion, loitering | Full analytics platform: natural language search across footage, intrusion, loitering, threat detection, investigations |
| Cost at 800 cameras | Unknown. Benchmark contracts in the category land near $168 per camera per year | About $468 per camera per year at the Pro rate, which is more per camera than that benchmark |
| Concealed weapons | Not detected | Not detected |
Do the arithmetic on our own price and it comes out uncomfortable, so we will do it for you. Surveillant Pro at $39 per camera per month is about $468 per camera per year. Iberville Parish and Park City are paying roughly $168 per camera per year for dedicated AI gun detection. At a large camera count, we are more expensive per camera than a purpose-built gun-detection contract. That is the truth, and we are not going to hide it behind a comparison table that quietly leaves the row out.
The distinction is what you get for the money. A dedicated gun detector does one job. Surveillant is a full video analytics platform: you can search across all your footage in plain language, run intrusion and loitering detection, flag threats, and pull an investigation together from the same feeds. If firearm detection is the only thing you need and you have 800 cameras, a specialist will likely quote you less per camera. If you want the whole analytics layer on the cameras you already own, that comparison is not the right one.
The other difference is that we publish the number. You can read it on the pricing page right now, without a call, an integrator, or a form. Actuate does not, and neither does ZeroEyes. That is worth something when every vendor in the category wants a discovery call before it will name a figure. If you are weighing the two, our Actuate AI alternative page lays out the differences without the sales gloss.
Actuate AI Pricing: Questions
How much does Actuate AI cost?
Actuate does not publish a price, so no honest answer exists in dollars. It sells per-camera subscriptions quoted through security integrators. For a budget anchor, signed contracts for comparable AI gun detection run about $592 per camera per year at 38 cameras and about $168 at 650 to 800 cameras.
Does Actuate AI publish pricing?
No. Actuate names its packages on its pricing page but attaches no dollar figure to any of them, and lists no free plan and no free trial. Pricing is quote-only through security system integrators, so the number you get depends on your camera count, your tier, and your add-ons.
How much does AI gun detection cost per camera?
It depends heavily on camera count. Public school district contracts show about $592 per camera per year at 38 cameras, about $330 at 116 cameras, and about $168 at 650 to 800 cameras. A small site will always pay a much higher per-camera rate than a large district. Setup fees are separate.
What are the Actuate AI pricing tiers?
Actuate sells four base per-camera subscriptions: Actuate Lite, Actuate Classic, Actuate Pro, and Actuate Premium. It also sells four specialty add-on subscriptions: Dynamic Slicing, Dewarping, Camera Health Monitoring, and Secure VPN. Actuate states it does not price stack, so you pay only for the package your application needs.
Does Actuate require new cameras?
No. Actuate is an AI software layer that runs on the cameras and VMS you already own. It is not a camera vendor and not a walk-through scanner. That is the same model Surveillant uses, which is why either can be added to an existing system without replacing hardware.
Can AI gun detection see a concealed weapon?
No. Camera-based AI can only detect a weapon once it is visible in frame. A gun in a waistband, backpack, or coat pocket will not be seen. This is the hard limit of the whole category and it applies equally to Actuate, to ZeroEyes, and to Surveillant.
Is AI gun detection worth the cost?
It shortens the time between a visible weapon and a verified alert, on cameras you already own. But false alarms are documented, concealed weapons are invisible to it, and many incidents end in about nine seconds. Fund it as one layer alongside behavioral threat assessment and access control, not instead of them.
Related Solutions and Guides
Actuate AI Alternative
How a published-price analytics platform compares to Actuate.
Gun Detection System Cost
What the whole category costs, from software to monitoring centers.
Evolv Pricing
What walk-through weapons screening costs, and where it differs.
AI Gun Detection
How camera-based firearm detection works, and what it misses.
Weapons Detection AI
Weapon detection on the ONVIF and RTSP cameras you already run.
Surveillant Pricing
Our per-camera price, published, with a free plan for one camera.
See the Number Before You Take the Call
Surveillant runs AI analytics on the ONVIF and RTSP cameras you already own, and we publish what it costs: $39 to $42 per camera per month, with a free forever plan for one camera. Try it on a single feed before you talk to anyone.
Works with the IP cameras you already own. No credit card required to start.