For 2025, the UMCG is generously offering a monthly discount of up to €100 per person (incl. VAT) for using the DRE workspace, with the possibility of extension after 2025. In other words, if a research group’s DRE workspace costs do not exceed €100 per advanced member per month (incl. VAT), they will not be charged for their DRE usage. Note that the discount resets every month. Within your workspace, you can find a DRE budget equal to your monthly discount. 

To maintain the sustainability of this discount, we kindly encourage you to use it responsibly by utilizing the resources necessary for your work and ensuring your team size accurately reflects your actual needs. If the overall costs become unsustainable, the UMCG may be required to review the discount policy and adjust it accordingly. 

We are very grateful for the support from the UMCG and hope this discount will be beneficial for your research activities. For more details on the discount, please contact Lifelines data management. 

The provided UMCG discount practically always covers the DRE workspace costs for researchers. Therefore, we recommend to exclude a credit for these costs within your offer.

• Credit deposit: If preferred, it is possible to request a credit deposit to capture any possible costs in advance:
  • One free annual credit increase is permitted.
  • Additional credit motifications include an administration fee.
  • Minimium credit increase is set at €100 including VAT.
• Credit release: Credit can be used if your DRE workspace costs exceed the UMCG discount or for other services, such as extending your project or adding another workspace user.
• Credit reimbursement: At the end of your project, remaining credit over €50 (incl. VAT) will be reimbursed.

Note if you have a credit, this will not be visible within your workspace, but will be monitored by the Lifelines finance department. 

Projects that started before 2025 have already paid (in advance) for workspace costs, due to using 2024 fees. This  amount will be translated into a credit. Note that we have previously called this credit a ‘DRE budget’.

For migrated projects from the old VRW to the DRE, Lifelines service costs and workspace costs were included in the current, valid offer. With your migration, the remainder of these paid workspace costs are saved as an outstanding credit (see above) by Lifelines using the remaining months of access after your migration. The costs for further extension will follow our current prices (see Costs of data). 

To help you understand the DRE workspace costs, two cost tables with estimates are provided below. These estimates represent the expected annual workspace costs per virtual machine (VM) for different workload scenarios. Note that these estimates do not include the UMCG discount.

For more accurate calculations, you can use the DRE cost estimator tool available at DRE Cost Estimator. Please be aware that the fee per month might slightly deviate from the cost estimator.

DRE workspace costs
Per year per VM including VAT

Storage costs
Per year per workspace including VAT