Paliscope Explore
Paliscope Explore is on-premise investigation software that turns large exported datasets into leads. It imports chat exports, mobile forensic images, documents, audio and video, then searches text, faces and visual similarity using AI that runs entirely offline.
What is Paliscope Explore?
Paliscope Explore is the data analysis product in Paliscope's three-part platform, sitting between Find, which searches across multiple datasets and investigations, and Build, which handles evidence, chain of custody and courtroom reporting. Explore's own job is narrower and heavier: taking an overwhelming pile of exported material and turning it into something an investigator can actually work through.
It ingests legal returns, CSV files, social media exports, chat forums, documents, images, video, audio and mobile forensic images. Data goes in by drag-and-drop, through pre-configured import templates, or through templates you define yourself. Since version 26.2, released in July 2026, the major phone forensic formats Axiom, UFED and XRY import directly with no conversion step. Once indexed, the material can be searched by text, by image, by face and by visual similarity, and communications can be reviewed as messages, email conversations, forum threads or dialogue extracted from recordings.
The defining characteristic is where the intelligence runs. Explore is delivered on-premise and works entirely offline, and the vendor positions it squarely at organisations handling sensitive information. Seven AI capabilities are named: face recognition, object detection, voice recognition, natural language processing, hash values, transcription and translation, and licence plate recognition. All of them execute locally, which is why the stated hardware floor is 32 GB of RAM and a 12th-generation Core i7 or equivalent, with an Nvidia card recommended.
Three tiers are published. Community is free and permanent, covering import, text and image search, the investigative viewers, reporting, basic NLP and offline translation. Professional, at 3,995 euros per year, adds face and visual similarity search, alerts, advanced AI and API integration. Advanced, priced on request, adds distributed processing, folder monitoring, retention and purging, web access and full video analytics. An optional ClearSeek add-on brings reverse image search from DejaVuAI.
The published impact studies describe use by a European law enforcement agency, a military intelligence section, a border intelligence team and a US non-profit working on child trafficking.
What it does
- Import and index data, with dedicated parsers for formats such as Telegram, Discord and Snapchat
- Search across everything at once, by text, image, face or visual similarity
- Analyse communications, from messages and email threads to dialogue lifted out of audio and video
- Explore findings through the media, document, map and link viewers
- Set alerts on any type of entity and be notified when new information arrives
- Let on-device AI surface entities of interest automatically, including faces, objects and licence plates
- Produce a case report and export the underlying data
When to use Paliscope Explore / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Paliscope Explore is the right fit.
When to use Paliscope Explore
- Law enforcement teams triaging seized phones, legal returns and bulk data dumps under time pressure
- Military and government intelligence sections that must keep case material inside their own network
- Digital forensics and DFIR specialists who need face, object and voice recognition without a cloud service
- Financial crime, AML and insurance fraud investigators connecting people, places and conversations
- CSAM investigation units, who can run identification through to reporting inside a single tool since version 26.2
When not to use Paliscope Explore
- Individuals and hobbyists: sign-up requires an official organisation email, and general providers such as Gmail are rejected
- Teams without capable hardware, since 32 GB of RAM and a recent Core i7 are the stated minimum
- Anyone wanting a lightweight browser-based SaaS, as this is desktop software installed on your own machines
- Users looking for live online collection or open-web browsing, which sit in the sibling products Find and Build
- Buyers who need a fully published price list, because the Advanced tier and every add-on are quoted on request only
How to use Paliscope Explore
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Decide which product you need: Explore analyses exported data, while Find searches live across datasets and Build handles evidence and reporting
- Check the hardware first, as the sign-up form asks you to confirm 32 GB of RAM and a 12th-generation Core i7 or equivalent
- Request the free Community edition through the Explore sign-up form, using an official organisation email address
- Complete the one-time password verification sent to that address, and describe your intended use
- Install the software on designated machines located on your own premises, as the licence requires
- Bring data in by drag-and-drop, with a pre-configured import template, or with a template you define
- Search across the indexed material by text and image, and on paid tiers by face and visual similarity
- Review communications and follow connections through the media, document, map and link viewers
- Set alerts on the entities that matter so new matches surface without a manual re-run
- Generate the case report and export the data, then use myPaliscope for tutorials, licence management and full release notes
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Runs completely offline and on-premise, so investigative data never leaves your own network
- The Community tier is genuinely free and permanent rather than a countdown to a paywall
- The Professional price is published openly at 3,995 euros per year, which is unusual in this market
- A line-by-line comparison of all three tiers is available on the product page, so scope is easy to check
- The contract puts data ownership with the customer and the vendor states it does not access product data
- Cyber Essentials Plus certification was obtained through an independent technical assessment
- Broad format coverage, including the main mobile forensic images without a conversion step
Cons
- Demanding hardware: 32 GB of RAM and a recent Core i7 are the stated minimum, with an Nvidia card recommended
- The Advanced tier is quoted on request only, and even its system requirements are given on request
- No postal address and no telephone number are published anywhere on the site, only forms and two email addresses
- API integration is sold as a paid feature but no public API documentation exists
- No data processing agreement is published and no named list of subprocessors is available
- Access is filtered: an official organisation email is required and general providers are rejected
- No list of supported languages is published, despite translation and multilingual OCR being selling points
Pricing & Plans
A permanent free plan is available. Explore Community costs nothing and remains free, and requesting it also opens a 30-day trial of the Professional tier. The lowest paid entry point is the Professional tier at 3,995 EUR per year. The Advanced tier is quoted on request, as are the optional add-on modules. Prices are stated exclusive of VAT, which is applied according to the customer's location, and invoices are issued annually in advance with payment due within thirty days. Prices hold for the initial term and each renewal, and any increase must be notified at least four months before the renewal date.
- import and indexing
- text and image search
- investigative viewers
- case reporting and export
- basic NLP
- offline translation
- comparisons and associations
- fully offline operation
- everything in Community plus face and visual similarity search
- alerts
- advanced AI (face recognition
- object detection
- scene classification
- OCR
- sentiment analysis)
- integration via API and professional support. Requires 32 GB RAM
- everything in Professional plus distributed processing
- folder monitoring
- data retention and purging
- web access
- full video analytics with AI assistance
- optional AI modules and add-ons
- and custom support. System requirements provided on request
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Paliscope Explore handles your data.
GDPR overview
GDPR compliance is claimed explicitly. The privacy statement says it is designed to meet the requirements of the GDPR, adds compliance with the CCPA, and states that personal information is not sold. A Data Protection Officer is nominated and reachable by email. Seven data subject rights are set out individually: access, rectification, erasure, objection, restriction, portability and withdrawal of consent. Transfers outside the EU and the UK are covered by an adequacy decision, EU standard contractual clauses or binding corporate rules. Encryption in transit and at rest, incident response procedures, privacy impact assessments, privacy by design, internal audits and staff training are all described. One material limit: the statement expressly excludes the product licence agreements from its scope, so the regime governing investigative data is contractual and not public.
Who owns the data?
The customer keeps ownership. Clause 13.3 of the general conditions states that the customer possesses and retains all right, title and interest in and to customer data. Paliscope undertakes not to access or use that data beyond what is needed to deliver the service, and not to give any third party access to it, unless required by applicable law or by a proper legal or governmental authority, in which case it commits to notifying the customer promptly. The privacy statement repeats that the vendor does not access user-created data inside its products. Conversely, the software itself, and the materials supplied with it, remain the intellectual property of Paliscope: the licence conveys a right to use, not ownership.
Reuse rights
Because Explore is delivered on-premise and can run completely offline, the customer processes its own case material on its own designated machines and needs no permission from the vendor to search, analyse, translate, export or report on it. The licence is a non-exclusive right to use the software, and it may not be transferred or sub-licensed, except to a subsidiary that is more than fifty percent owned and was part of the original licence. The one reservation concerns the optional Cloud Service: there, Paliscope may use customer data for general anonymous statistics such as pages visited, timing, frequency and country, strictly on condition that neither the customer nor any individual end user can be identified. Responsibility for processing case data lawfully rests with the customer.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
For the product itself there is no vendor hosting to describe. Explore is delivered on-premise and can run completely offline, and the licence requires installation on designated machines located at the customer's own facilities and in the customer's direct possession. Investigative data therefore sits wherever the customer puts it, under the customer's own jurisdiction, and no hosting country is announced because none applies. An optional Cloud Service exists in part C of the general conditions, applicable only if a customer subscribes to it, but no hosting location is stated for it either. A separate regime covers website and commercial relationship data. There, the privacy statement says data may be transferred outside the EU and the United Kingdom, including to the United States and Canada, protected by an adequacy decision, EU standard contractual clauses or binding corporate rules. Encryption in transit and at rest is claimed. The public website is served through Cloudflare with Azure DNS, which describes the marketing site only and says nothing about where case data lives.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Paliscope Explore.
- The terms warn that the software may contain technology subject to export restrictions from the United States, Sweden and the EU, and to import restrictions in some countries. No country is named, so cross-border deployment must be checked case by case
- The privacy statement does not cover the product licence agreements, so the rules that actually govern investigative data are contractual and not publicly readable
- Highly sensitive processing, including a CSAM workflow and intelligence work, without a published DPA, a named subprocessor list or a trust and security page
- Paliscope itself flags a public dispute involving DejaVuAI, the supplier of the optional ClearSeek add-on, stating it is not a party to it and referring questions to DejaVuAI
- The Cyber Essentials Plus certification dates from May 2022 and needs annual reassessment, but no evidence of renewal is published
- Liability is capped at the lower of the average annual fee and EUR 50,000, and the terms specifically exclude liability for claims relating to accusations of possessing child sexual abuse material
- Contracts renew automatically and cancellation requires written notice at least three months before the term ends
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Moderate to high, and mostly a hardware question. Explore installs locally on designated machines at your own premises, and Paliscope states a floor of 32 GB of RAM and a 12th-generation Core i7 or equivalent, with an Nvidia card recommended. The Community sign-up form makes you confirm that capacity and warns that without it some features will not run. Access also requires an official organisation email and a one-time password verification. The Advanced tier adds distributed processing and web access, with system requirements supplied on request. Documentation, tutorials and licence management sit behind the myPaliscope portal.
Deployment
Integrations
Behind Paliscope Explore
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
Does Paliscope Explore work without an internet connection?
Is there a free version?
How much does the paid version cost?
What hardware do I need to run it?
Is there an API?
Which data formats can Explore import?
Can Paliscope see the data I load into Explore?
Who publishes Paliscope Explore?
Does Paliscope hold any security certification?
Can I sign up with a personal email address?
Should you pick Paliscope Explore?
Paliscope Explore is a focused, serious tool with an unusually clear proposition: heavy data triage for investigators, with every AI capability running on the customer's own hardware. That offline, on-premise stance is consistent from the marketing pages through to the contract, and it is the reason the product exists in a market where most analysis tooling now assumes a cloud.
Two things stand out favourably. The first is pricing transparency that is rare in law enforcement software: a permanent free Community tier, a published Professional price of 3,995 euros per year, and a line-by-line comparison of what each tier actually includes. The second is the contractual position on data, where the customer explicitly retains ownership and the vendor states it does not access product data, backed by an independently assessed Cyber Essentials Plus certification.
The gaps are worth weighing. Paliscope publishes no postal address or telephone number, no data processing agreement and no named list of subprocessors, and its privacy statement expressly excludes the product licence agreements from its scope. For a tool that now advertises a complete CSAM investigation workflow and serves military intelligence, that means the regime governing investigative data is contractual rather than public. API integration is sold as a paid feature yet has no public documentation. The export restriction clause in the terms should also be checked before any cross-border deployment.
This is not a tool to evaluate casually. The hardware floor is real, access is filtered to organisational email addresses, and the free tier is deliberately limited. For an investigative team that can meet those conditions and needs analysis to happen inside its own perimeter, Explore is a credible option under active development, with releases documented through to July 2026.
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