Zuva

Zuva is a contract-analysis suite for sell-side M&A teams, advisers, and developers building contract AI into products. It is strongest when a team needs legal review or configurable extraction, but the pay-as-you-go minimums make it a poor fit for occasional use.

Overview

Zuva brings together a lawyer-delivered diligence service, tools for document analysis and bidder questions, and an API for contract extraction. That range can support both a transaction workflow and product development, but these are distinct offerings rather than one all-purpose plan; buyers should match each product and its cost structure to a specific need.

The team behind Kira Systems founded Kira in 2011, sold it to Litera in 2021, and retained underlying AI technology and part of the team when forming Zuva. Zuva states that it is SOC 2 Type II certified and that all employees are background-checked.

Key features

Diligence and bidder questions

For sell-side M&A, Zuva’s lawyers review contracts for execution status and deal-relevant provisions, then prepare findings and outputs ready for disclosure schedules. Most deals take 1–2 weeks; rush delivery costs extra, and scope may change for disclosure schedules. This is suited to sellers and advisers seeking a delivered review, not teams looking for a self-serve tool or a predictable per-document fee.

Bidder Question Management imports Excel and Word question lists, detects similar questions, surfaces prior answers, and supports team coordination. Reusing answers can help organize a deal’s question process, while similarity detection is most relevant when bidder lists overlap.

Analyze and API

Analyze classifies uploaded documents, runs built-in or custom extraction workflows, and exports results to Excel or Word or displays them in its review interface. It is a practical fit for teams that want structured review outputs without building an extraction pipeline, though its per-document price comes with a substantial minimum commitment.

The REST API extracts contract provisions, classifies more than 225 document types, detects predominant language, and supports custom field training. A Power Automate connector offers one integration route; Zuva says the API can integrate with any platform. Customers can choose cloud hosting on Azure in the US or EU, or self-host on Azure or AWS. API customers can configure retention, including deletion immediately after processing; Analyze documents can be deleted when the customer chooses.

Pricing

Zuva is freemium, but the free access is better treated as a limited evaluation than a sustained production tier. Analyze can be tried on five documents without a credit card. API Free costs nothing and resets daily: 25 files, 25 classifications, 25 language requests, and 25 extractions per day, with a maximum of 10 fields per extraction request.

API Pay-as-you-go costs $1.25, paid once, billed at $1.25 per document plus $0.0015 per field/page, with a $5,000 minimum commitment. It includes 1,400+ AI fields, 225+ document classifications, custom field creation, cloud-hosted or self-hosted deployment, and configurable retention. This fits teams with recurring API volume and a need for deployment control; the minimum commitment is difficult to justify for experiments or sporadic extraction.

Analyze Pay-as-you-go costs $10, paid once, billed at $10 per document, and also requires a $5,000 minimum commitment. It includes 1,400+ pre-built AI fields, 225+ document types, custom workflows, and Excel and Word export. Compared with the API, it gives teams a ready-made analysis workflow rather than an integration surface, but its minimum makes low-volume document review expensive.

Diligence Reviews costs $10,000, paid once, billed as a deal-specific fixed fee: $10K–$75K for about 75% of deals and $125K+ for large or complex scopes. This suits transaction teams buying a defined legal review; rush delivery costs extra and disclosure-schedule work may change the scope. Analyze Enterprise uses custom pricing for large-scale or ongoing analysis, with volume-based pricing, multi-product discounts, hosting options, and dedicated support. API Enterprise is also custom, with volume-based pricing, dedicated support, and SLA options. These enterprise plans suit buyers who need scale or service commitments, rather than a published entry price.

Platforms

Zuva offers web access and an API, with self-hosting available for the API on Azure or AWS. Cloud API hosting is on Azure with US or EU region choice. The Power Automate connector is a specific integration option for workflow teams; the API’s stated ability to integrate with any platform is more relevant to developers building custom connections.

Who it's for

Zuva is aimed at companies selling a business, advisers working on a sale, and teams building products that need contract AI. Sellers and advisers should consider the lawyer-led service when they want deal findings and disclosure-schedule-ready outputs. Legal operations or contract teams needing repeatable extraction may prefer Analyze; developers needing custom fields, hosting choices, or embedded extraction should look at the API. Occasional users and teams unable to commit $5,000 to pay-as-you-go plans should look elsewhere.

Pros and cons

• Pros: Lawyer-delivered diligence combines contract review with deal-ready findings, and most deals take 1–2 weeks.
• Pros: The API supports custom field training, more than 225 document types, configurable retention, and cloud or self-hosted deployment.
• Pros: Analyze’s five-document free access and the API’s daily free tier let teams evaluate the products before paying.
• Cons: Both pay-as-you-go plans require a $5,000 minimum commitment, a major hurdle for low-volume users.
• Cons: Diligence Reviews can cost $125K+ for large or complex scopes, and rush delivery adds cost.
• Cons: The main workflows serve different buyers, so a team needing both legal diligence and embedded extraction must assess separate products and pricing.

Alternatives

For a different legal-AI workflow, compare Legal AI Software and AI Contract Review Software. Choose Clearbrief instead if its free law-student plan or web and Windows availability better suits your use; its Solo plan is $300/month per user. Alice is a paid, cross-platform option with a Core plan at €85 / month per user, billed monthly or yearly with 15% off shown for yearly billing.

Manupatra AI Search is a better match for readers seeking judgment summaries: its High Court Judgments AI Summary plan costs ₹5,000/year excluding GST and offers unlimited summaries of High Court judgments. Judicio has a Professional plan with 5,000 credits/month, one seat, and 10,000 free upload pages/month before credit use, for readers comparing a credit-based option. LegitQuest offers a freemium alternative with a Plus (SMEs) plan shown at ₹40,000 yearly; its stated allowance includes fewer than five IDs, five keyword suggestion alerts, and 1,200 AI chats annually. Robin AI is another paid option with a free plan and web and extension platforms. OpusLaw is a freemium web alternative, with Carta Actus at $9.99/mo and Carta Corpus at $29.99/mo.

Verdict

Choose Zuva if you are selling a business, advising on a sale, or building a product that needs contract extraction, and you can justify its deal fees or $5,000 pay-as-you-go minimum. Its distinction is the combination of lawyer-led M&A review and configurable analysis infrastructure. Look elsewhere if your document volume is low, your budget cannot absorb the minimum commitment, or you need a narrower legal-AI tool.