Gun Detection System Cost: AI Weapon Detection Pricing per Camera (2026) Real Prices Rebuilt From Signed School District Contracts and Public Procurement Records, Because No Vendor in This Category Publishes a Price
Every major vendor in weapons detection hides its pricing behind a contact sales form. So this guide reconstructs what buyers actually paid, using signed school district contracts and public RFP documents that those districts had to publish. The headline finding: camera-based AI gun detection ran between about $168 and $592 per camera per year depending on how many cameras were in the deal, and a single walk-through screening lane came to $78,810 over four years. Here is the whole picture, including where each approach stops working.
How Much Does a Gun Detection System Cost?
It depends on which of two very different products you are buying, and buyers routinely confuse them. Camera-based AI gun detection is software that watches cameras you already own and alerts when a firearm becomes visible. In signed district contracts it priced at roughly $168 to $592 per camera per year, with one-time setup fees of $0 to $15,000. Walk-through weapons screening is hardware installed at an entrance to catch a concealed weapon. In one district's public RFP sheet, a single indoor lane came to $78,810 over 48 months including installation, with software renewing at $12,540 a year afterward.
Those two numbers are not competing quotes for the same thing. One buys coverage of an entrance. The other buys coverage of everywhere your cameras already point.
The reason this page exists: none of these vendors publish a price. ZeroEyes tells you it tailors every agreement to your camera streams and contract duration. Actuate lists four per-camera tiers by name and no dollar amount next to any of them. Evolv sells through resellers. The only way to know the real number before you sit down with a salesperson is to read what other buyers signed, and school districts have to make that paperwork public. That is what the tables below are built from.
Figures reconstructed from signed public school district contracts and a public RFP pricing sheet. Your quote will differ.
What Districts Actually Paid for AI Gun Detection
These are real ZeroEyes contracts, reported by StateScoop in 2024 from public district records. They cover camera-based software that runs on cameras the district already owned. We have added the per-camera annual rate for each, which nobody publishes, by dividing the annual software fee by the contracted camera cap.
| District | Contract | Cameras | Per camera, per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| East Union School District, Afton, Iowa | One year, $27,500 total: $22,500 a year plus a $5,000 one-time setup fee | Up to 38 | About $592 |
| Kansas legislative proposal (statewide costing) | Roughly $8.5 million a year, covering 25 cameras per school across 1,300 school buildings | 32,500 | About $340 |
| Mount Pulaski CUSD No. 23, Illinois | Five years at $38,280 a year, setup fee waived | Up to 116 | About $330 |
| Park City School District, Utah | $109,200 a year | 650 | About $168 |
| Iberville Parish School District, Plaquemine, Louisiana | Five years, $687,000 total: $134,400 a year plus a $15,000 setup fee | Up to 800 | About $168 |
Read that column top to bottom and a curve appears that no vendor and no analyst has put in writing: the per-camera annual price collapses as the camera count rises. At 38 cameras a district paid roughly $592 per camera per year. At 116 cameras, about $330. At 650 and at 800 cameras, about $168. The small district paid three and a half times the per-camera rate the big one did, for the same product.
That is the single most useful number on this page, because it gives you a benchmark to hold a quote against. Take the annual software figure a vendor puts in front of you, divide it by your camera count, and see where you land on this curve. If you are an 800-camera district being quoted $500 per camera, you have a sourced argument that comparable buyers landed near $168, and you should ask why.
Setup fees moved too, and they are negotiable. East Union paid $5,000, Iberville Parish paid $15,000, and Mount Pulaski had the fee waived outright. A waived setup fee is clearly something a vendor will do to win a deal, which means it is something you can ask for.
What none of these contracts show is a list price, because there is not one. ZeroEyes says in its own words that it tailors every agreement to your deployment, based on camera streams, contract duration, and the flexibility your organization needs across one site or many. It sells through procurement vehicles including Omnia, Carahsoft, TIPS, and AWS Marketplace, which is often how districts reach a signature without running a full bid. Actuate is quote-only as well, sold through integrators, with four per-camera tiers named Actuate Lite, Actuate Classic, Actuate Pro, and Actuate Premium, plus paid add-ons like Dynamic Slicing, Dewarping, Camera Health Monitoring, and Secure VPN, and no free plan. We break it down in our Actuate AI pricing guide and our overview of how AI gun detection works.
What a Walk-Through Weapons Screening Lane Costs
The other half of the category is hardware you stand at a doorway, which people walk through, and which is designed to find a weapon that is concealed. The clearest public pricing we have found for Evolv Express comes from Buffalo Public Schools RFP 22-0623E5-119, a public board document containing a reseller pricing sheet headed "Purchase - Subscription - 48 Months", with the note that all prices include installation and setup.
| Configuration | Hardware | 4-year software and services | Total (48 months) | Renewal after year 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single lane, indoor | $28,650 | $50,160 | $78,810 | $12,540 a year |
| Single lane, outdoor | $38,150 | $54,720 | $92,870 | $13,680 a year |
| Dual lane, indoor | $57,150 | $82,080 | $139,230 | $20,520 a year |
| Dual lane, outdoor | $66,650 | $86,640 | $153,290 | $21,660 a year |
Spread across the 48-month term, $78,810 for one indoor lane works out to about $1,642 a month. The dual outdoor configuration, at $153,290, comes to about $3,194 a month. Then the software keeps billing: $12,540 a year for that indoor lane once year four ends, forever, or until you rip it out.
One caveat you should carry with you into any budget meeting: these are one district's negotiated reseller figures from a public RFP, not a current national list price. Evolv does not publish list pricing. Treat these as a well-sourced order of magnitude, not a quote. Our Evolv pricing guide goes through the sheet line by line, and our Evolv weapons detection alternative page covers what you can and cannot replace with software.
Screening Lanes and Camera Software Are Not Substitutes
The temptation, when you put $78,810 next to $168 per camera per year, is to conclude that camera software is the bargain and screening is a rip-off. That conclusion is wrong, and acting on it will leave you with a real gap in coverage.
Screening lane: per entrance
- ● Costs tens of thousands of dollars, per doorway
- ● Covers that doorway and nothing else
- ● Can find a weapon that is concealed under clothing or in a bag
- ● Needs staff standing there to resolve every alarm
- ● Blind to the parking lot, the fence line, and the back door
Camera AI: per camera
- ● Costs hundreds of dollars per camera per year
- ● Covers everywhere a camera already points
- ● Runs on cameras you already own, so no new hardware
- ● Cannot see a concealed weapon. Only a visible one
- ● Alerts, but does not stop anyone at a door
The two products answer different questions. A screening lane answers "is this person carrying something into my building right now." Camera software answers "has a firearm appeared anywhere on my property that my cameras can see." A district that installs screening at the main entrance still has a parking lot, a bus loop, a stadium, and a service door that no lane covers. A district that buys camera software alone has nothing at the door that will find a pistol under a jacket.
Most buyers who deploy screening still need camera coverage across the rest of the property, and most buyers who deploy camera AI eventually get asked what happens at the front entrance. Price them as two separate budget lines, because that is what they are. Our guide to AI gun detection for schools walks through how districts sequence the two, and the weapons detection AI page covers what the software side detects.
What You Are Not Buying, at Any Price
We sell camera-based AI, so read the next few paragraphs knowing we are arguing against our own product where the evidence says we should. These limits apply to every camera-based vendor, ZeroEyes and Actuate and Surveillant alike.
The weapon has to be visible
Camera-based AI detects a firearm once it is out and in frame. It cannot see through a backpack or a coat. If someone walks into a building with a concealed handgun and never draws it, no camera-based system in this category will alert, including ours.
False alarms happen, and they are disruptive
A Texas high school went into lockdown over what turned out to be the shadow of a student's arm. St. John Fisher University got an alert triggered by prop guns during a theater rehearsal. Both are documented incidents, and any deployment plan that has not thought through how staff verify an alert before acting on it is incomplete.
Detection speed may not be the binding constraint
Michael Dorn of Safe Havens International has pointed out that many active shooter events are over in roughly nine seconds. That is a fair and uncomfortable question to put to every vendor here, ours included: how much does shaving seconds off detection change the outcome, when the event itself may already be finished?
"Proactive" is a marketing word
Chad Marlow of the ACLU has argued that calling these systems proactive is misleading, because a genuinely proactive system would stop a threat before it ever reached the campus, rather than reacting once a weapon is already visible on school grounds. Whatever you think of the policy argument, the description of what the technology does is accurate.
The boring thing that works gets skipped
Amanda Klinger of the Educator's School Safety Network has made the point that behavioral threat assessment is rigorously tested and repeatedly gets passed over in favor of flashier technology. If your safety budget is finite, that trade-off deserves an honest hearing before a purchase order gets signed.
Hidden costs buyers miss
One-time setup fees, which ranged from $0 to $15,000 in the contracts above. The human monitoring layer some vendors bundle in, which is a staffing cost dressed as software. Camera placement and image quality work, because a weapon detector is only as good as the pixels on target. And multi-year lock-in: three and five year terms are the norm here. Whoever owns your budget will want a clean way of tracking the obligations a multi-year security contract creates long after the person who signed it has moved on, because renewal clauses have a habit of surfacing at the worst possible moment.
Our Price, and Where It Is Worse Than the Alternative
Surveillant is software-only AI video analytics that runs on ONVIF and RTSP cameras you already own. We sell no hardware and no screening lanes. Our published price: Plus at $42 per camera per month, Pro at $39 per camera per month, and a free forever plan for one camera.
| Factor | Dedicated gun detection (ZeroEyes, Actuate) | Surveillant |
|---|---|---|
| Published price | None. Contact sales, quote through integrators or procurement vehicles | $39 to $42 per camera per month, listed publicly |
| Cost at a large camera count | About $168 per camera per year at 650 to 800 cameras | About $468 per camera per year at the Pro rate. More per camera than that |
| Scope | Single purpose: firearm detection | Full analytics platform: natural language search across footage, intrusion, loitering, threat detection, investigations |
| Concealed weapons | No. Visible weapons only | No. Visible weapons only |
| Cameras | Runs on existing cameras | Runs on existing ONVIF and RTSP cameras. We sell none |
| Try before you buy | No free plan | Free forever plan for one camera |
Look at the second row honestly. Our Pro plan at $39 per camera per month is about $468 per camera per year. At the scale of Park City or Iberville Parish, that is substantially more per camera than the roughly $168 per camera per year those districts signed for a dedicated gun-detection contract. If your only requirement is firearm detection and you have 650 cameras, a purpose-built vendor with volume pricing will likely beat us on that line. We are not the cheapest, and we will not pretend otherwise on a page about what things cost.
Where we are a better buy is when firearm detection is one of several things you need from your footage. Surveillant is a general video analytics platform: search your recordings in plain language, get alerts on intrusion and loitering, run investigations across sites, and detect a visible weapon. Paying two vendors, one for gun detection and one for everything else, is often more expensive than paying one. And we publish our price, which neither Actuate nor ZeroEyes will do, so you can size a budget on the pricing page instead of inside a sales cycle.
What we will not tell you is that we replace a screening lane. We do not. No camera-based product does.
Gun Detection System Cost: Questions
How much does a gun detection system cost?
It depends on the type. Camera-based AI gun detection software ran about $168 to $592 per camera per year in signed school district contracts, plus a one-time setup fee of $0 to $15,000. A walk-through weapons screening lane is a separate category: one district's public RFP priced a single indoor lane at $78,810 over 48 months including installation.
How much does AI gun detection cost per camera?
Roughly $168 to $592 per camera per year, and the rate falls steeply with camera count. A 38-camera district paid about $592 per camera per year. A 116-camera district paid about $330. Districts with 650 and 800 cameras both landed near $168. Divide any quote you receive by your camera count and compare.
How much does a weapons detection system cost for a school?
Signed district contracts for camera-based AI ranged from $27,500 for one year at a small Iowa district to $687,000 over five years for an 800-camera Louisiana district. Screening hardware is priced per entrance instead: about $78,810 over 48 months for one indoor lane, with software renewing at $12,540 a year afterward.
Do gun detection systems require new cameras?
Camera-based AI gun detection does not. It is software that analyzes the feeds from cameras you already own, which is why districts price it per camera rather than per unit of hardware. Image quality and camera placement still matter, though, and some sites need to reposition or upgrade specific cameras before detection performs well.
Can AI gun detection detect a concealed weapon?
No. Camera-based AI only detects a firearm once it is visible in frame. It cannot see through a jacket or a backpack. This limit applies to every camera-based vendor, including Surveillant. Detecting concealed weapons requires walk-through screening hardware at an entrance, which is a different product with a different budget line.
What is the difference between gun detection software and a weapons screening system?
Gun detection software runs on your existing cameras, costs hundreds of dollars per camera per year, and alerts when a weapon becomes visible anywhere a camera points. A screening system is hardware at a doorway, costs tens of thousands of dollars per entrance, finds concealed weapons, and covers only that entrance. They are complements, not substitutes.
Are there hidden costs in a gun detection contract?
Yes, four common ones. One-time setup fees ($0 to $15,000 in public contracts, and sometimes waived if you ask). A bundled human monitoring layer, which is staffing cost inside a software line. Camera placement and image quality remediation. And multi-year lock-in, since three and five year terms are the norm in this category.
Related Guides and Solutions
Evolv Pricing
The Buffalo RFP lane pricing sheet, line by line.
Actuate AI Pricing
Four per-camera tiers, no published dollar figures.
AI Gun Detection
How camera-based firearm detection actually works.
Gun Detection for Schools
What districts deploy, and in what order.
Weapons Detection AI
Visible weapon detection on the cameras you own.
Surveillant Pricing
$39 to $42 per camera per month, published.
See the Detection Before You Sign Anything
Surveillant runs visible weapon detection, natural language footage search, intrusion, and loitering alerts on the ONVIF and RTSP cameras you already own. Start with one camera free, forever, and price the rest yourself.
Software only. No hardware to buy. Cannot detect concealed weapons, and we will always say so.