A NEXIS | PRO 20 TB engine is $7,500 MSRP. With the network hardware you need to actually use it, budget under $10,000. Two engines for 40 TB with networking comes in under $15,000.
Those are the numbers people are looking for and rarely find, because NEXIS is usually quoted rather than listed.
Prices verified 2026-08-09. Avid sells through resellers and street pricing varies — treat MSRP as the ceiling.
What the money buys
NEXIS is Avid's shared storage: a hardware engine plus the software that makes it behave as a real-time, multi-user editing volume with per-workspace bandwidth control. The PRO line is the entry tier, built for small facilities rather than broadcast.
- PRO engine: 40 TB, scalable to 160 TB by combining up to four engines
- 20 TB engine at $7,500 MSRP
- Avid has reduced list prices on 60/100/120 TB systems by 8–14% from previous pricing
The thing to understand about the price: the engine is not the whole cost. NEXIS wants proper networking, and a 10 GbE switch plus adapters for every workstation is what takes $7,500 to closer to $10,000. Quotes that omit it are not wrong, they are incomplete.
The comparison that matters
At roughly $10,000 for 20 TB, the per-terabyte capital cost is about $500 — once, not monthly. Set against subscription storage:
| Cost for 20 TB | |
|---|---|
| NEXIS PRO 20 TB + networking | ~$10,000 once |
| Blackmagic Cloud Media Storage at $15/TB/mo | $300/month, $3,600/year |
NEXIS pays for itself against cloud storage somewhere around year three — before you count electricity, drive replacements, and the fact that somebody has to own it.
That is the honest version of the argument. The dishonest version stops at "it pays for itself" and skips the maintenance.
When NEXIS is the right call
- Three or more editors on the same network, cutting the same jobs, needing real-time
multi-stream performance.
- You are already an Avid house. NEXIS integrates with Media Composer's bin locking and
project sharing in a way third-party NAS does not.
- Your work is steady. Capital equipment rewards predictable volume.
When it is not
- Fewer than three editors. A well-specced NAS with 10 GbE will do the job for a fraction of
it.
- Distributed teams. NEXIS is a same-building product. Remote access means VPN and pain.
- Lumpy freelance work. Paying monthly for what you use beats owning what you might not.
The number nobody puts in the quote
Whatever you buy, you will fill it — and a meaningful share of what fills it will be media no project references any more. On subscription storage that is a recurring bill. On NEXIS it is worse in a different way: it is the reason you buy the second engine a year early, at $7,500.
Auditing before you scale up is the cheapest capacity you will ever add. Clip Sweeper shows what every project on a drive actually references — including footage shared between projects, which is exactly what makes manual cleanup on shared storage so risky.
Related: Is Avid NEXIS Worth It for a Small Team in 2026? covers the buying decision rather than the price.