Last updated: September 18, 2026
Quick Answer
The median school district vape detector contract is $14,204. Where districts disclosed how many units they bought, the median price paid was $925 per detector. This is based on 1,225 contracts awarded between 2019 and 2026 across 284 named districts.
- Half of all contracts fall between $4,350 and $43,951. The full range runs from $100 to $3.2 million.
- Installation appears in 426 awards, monitoring in 247 and software or subscription in 204. Hardware alone is rarely the whole deal.
- Award volume grew from 17 in 2019 to 262 in 2025, with 229 in 2022 alone as settlement money arrived.
- Thirty-four awards named ESSER as the funding source. That route closed on March 28, 2026.
How much do school districts actually pay for vape detectors?
The median contract is $14,204. That figure covers the whole award rather than a single sensor. It is the number a board member should carry into a budget discussion. For the separate question of whether the detectors actually work, we looked at the research and the repeat-buying data separately.
The spread is very wide. A quarter of districts signed for under $4,350. Another quarter signed for more than $43,951.
| Percentile | Total contract value | What sits here |
|---|---|---|
| 10th | $1,000 | A renewal, a single sensor, or a support invoice |
| 25th | $4,350 | One building, a handful of restrooms |
| Median | $14,204 | A high school, or two smaller schools |
| 75th | $43,951 | A multi-school rollout with installation |
| 90th | $94,277 | District-wide, secondary schools covered |
What one detector costs
Only 33 awards disclosed both a price and a unit count. Across those, the median works out to $925 per detector. The middle half sits between $622 and $1,553.
Read the tails carefully. The cheapest figures, around $39 to $47 per unit, are annual software license renewals rather than hardware. The most expensive, $3,331 per unit on an eight-sensor job, reflects installation at a small site where labor cannot be spread.
What the vendors say next to what districts paid
Published guidance is not far off on the middle. It is silent on the spread, which is where budgets actually break.
| Source | Claimed per-unit price | Type of claim |
|---|---|---|
| Safe and Sound | $1,000 to $1,500 mid-range | Vendor guidance |
| Avigilon | “A few thousand per unit” | Vendor guidance |
| NPR reporting | About $1,000 per device | Journalism |
| This dataset | $925 median, $622 to $1,553 middle half | Signed contracts, n=33 |
So the sticker guidance is roughly honest. What it hides is that the same sensor lands anywhere from $622 to $1,553 depending on how many you buy and who installs them.
What districts paid by vendor
Two names dominate by contract count. The median contract size tells a different story from the volume.
| Vendor | Contracts | Median contract | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zeptive | 195 | $4,189 | $100 to $156,975 |
| Soter Technologies | 124 | $4,416 | $222 to $115,000 |
| HALO / IPVideo | 33 | $15,000 | $1,295 to $560,000 |
| Verkada | 21 | $30,886 | $1,961 to $165,000 |
| Triton Sensors | 21 | $15,499 | $525 to $273,168 |
| Other and resellers | 831 | Mixed | Cabling and integration firms |
Zeptive
Zeptive shows up most often, in 195 awards. Its median contract is small at $4,189, which fits a pattern of single-building purchases and incremental adds rather than district-wide rollouts.
Soter Technologies
Soter, which makes FlySense, appears in 124 awards at a similar median of $4,416. Its top end reaches $115,000, so the same vendor serves both a single middle school and a full secondary rollout.
HALO, Verkada and Triton
These three appear less often but at much larger sizes. Verkada’s median contract of $30,886 is seven times Zeptive’s, which reflects sensors sold alongside a camera platform rather than on their own.
One caution on all of this. The largest single group in the table is not a sensor maker at all. It is 831 awards to cabling firms, integrators and technology resellers, which is a reminder that the purchase order often names the installer.
What real district purchases look like
Percentiles hide the texture. These are six actual awards from the dataset, from a small rural buy to a district-wide rollout.
Judson ISD, Texas: the only full price build-up in the dataset
In October 2021, Big State Electric quoted Judson ISD. The job was 480 Verkada sensors and 480 five-year licenses. The quote itemized everything.
Product subtotal was $604,195.20. Freight added 1.40%, or $8,458.73. The contractor added a 10% material markup. The total came to $673,073, which is about $1,402 per unit.
That markup line is the part districts miss. The sensors were not the expensive decision. The install contract was.
Granite School District, Utah: a settlement-funded district rollout
Granite School District awarded $1,246,048 to Utah Yamas Controls in March 2025. The job covered every junior high and high school restroom. It included detectors and people-counting cameras.
Two details matter here. The money came from Juul settlement funds. The buy ran on state contract MA4372, so the district skipped its own bid.
Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland: the largest single appropriation
Montgomery County Public Schools received $2,000,000 in October 2024. The award names Juul settlement funds. It covers vape detection and prevention together.
Note the word prevention. The largest awards in this dataset tend to fund a whole program rather than a product.
Lincoln Public Schools, Nebraska: an estimate rather than a signature
A March 2023 report looked at HALO sensors for all secondary restrooms at Lincoln Public Schools. They would tie into the district’s camera system. The estimate was about $2,000 per unit across 280 restrooms, or $560,000.
Treat that figure as planning. It sits well above the $925 median actually paid. Estimates built before a quote usually do.
Waxahachie ISD, Texas: what a renewal costs
In February 2025, Waxahachie ISD renewed detector licences for five years at its secondary campuses. The cost was capped at $59,400. It passed on the consent agenda.
That is roughly $11,880 a year for software alone, on hardware bought earlier. It is also a useful reminder that renewals often clear without discussion.
Morrill Public Schools, Nebraska: the small end
ByteSpeed proposed $5,659 to Morrill Public Schools in January 2022. The job was Soter FlySense vaping and elevated-sound detectors. This is what the 25th percentile looks like.
One rural district, a handful of sensors, bought through a computer reseller rather than a security integrator.
Who actually receives the award
This is the finding most likely to surprise a vendor. The sensor manufacturer is usually not the party being paid.
Of 1,225 awards, 831 went to a firm that is not a sensor maker. Electrical contractors, cabling firms, audio-visual integrators and computer resellers all appear.
Big State Electric, Utah Yamas Controls, CMC Network Solutions, ByteSpeed and C&R Electric are all in that group. Each was the named payee on a vape detection award.
Why this matters if you sell detectors
Your product can be specified and still not be the line item on the purchase order. The district’s relationship is with the installer.
That changes where a sales motion has to land. Watching only for awards in your own company name will miss most of the market.
Why this matters if you are buying
The integrator sets the final price. In the Judson quote the markup was 10% on materials, applied on top of freight.
Ask for the sensor line and the labor line separately. One $63,400 bid for a 2025 vape detector project was set aside. The bidder had left out required references and a familial-relationship statement. Process errors cost time on both sides.
What is in the contract besides the hardware
Sensors are rarely the whole purchase. Here is how often each line item appears across the 1,225 awards.
| Line item | Awards naming it | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Installation | 426 | 35% |
| Monitoring | 247 | 20% |
| Software or subscription | 204 | 17% |
| Maintenance | 54 | 4% |
| Warranty | 41 | 3% |
One caveat matters here. These counts reflect what the award document names, and many awards are short purchase orders that list nothing. Treat them as a floor.
The recurring cost districts underestimate
Software and subscription appear in 204 awards, and several of the cheapest per-unit figures in the dataset are license renewals rather than purchases. One district paid $1,248 to renew licenses on 32 units, which is $39 each per year.
That is small on its own and easy to miss at budget time. Multiply it across a district-wide install and it becomes a permanent line nobody voted for twice.
How districts paid for them
Most awards name no funding source. Of those that do, the mix is settlement money, one-time relief funds and ordinary district budgets.
Juul settlement money
Seventeen awards name Juul settlement funds. EdWeek reported roughly $1.2 billion across about 10,000 suits in December 2022. Detectors were an early destination for that money.
The scale varies a lot. NPR reported $1 million to Lincoln, $5.4 million to Orlando and $8.8 million to Suffolk County. One award here used settlement money for a $1,246,048 buy of detectors and people-counting cameras.
ESSER money is gone
Thirty-four awards name ESSER. That route is now closed. The Education Department set March 28, 2026 as the final late-liquidation date. It said it would grant no more extensions.
Every published buying guide still lists ESSER as an option. It is not one. Districts that built a program on relief money now carry the subscription in the general fund. That is the same squeeze covered in our look at the ESSER budget cliff in K-12 technology.
What is replacing it
Eighteen awards name Title IV-A. That block covers safe and healthy students. Sixty-three name the general fund outright. Ninety-three name a grant without saying which.
State tobacco settlement funds are one other route. SAMHSA prevention grants are another. Both take longer to secure than the money districts just lost.
How buying has changed since 2019
Award volume tracks the money almost exactly. Seventeen awards in 2019 became 229 in 2022, the year settlement funds and relief dollars landed together.
| Year | Awards |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 17 |
| 2020 | 45 |
| 2021 | 73 |
| 2022 | 229 |
| 2023 | 249 |
| 2024 | 251 |
| 2025 | 262 |
| 2026 (partial) | 98 |
Volume has been flat near 250 a year since 2022. That plateau is the interesting part. Buying did not collapse when relief money ran out, which suggests districts moved the cost into recurring budgets rather than abandoning the programs.
The 2026 count is partial because the year is not finished. Do not read it as a decline.
How districts actually buy detectors
Most vape detector purchases never go out to bid. That is the single most useful thing a vendor can know about this market.
| Route | Awards | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Competitive bid or RFP | 123 | 10% |
| Quote | 114 | 9% |
| Cooperative or state contract | 73 | 6% |
| Consent agenda | 25 | 2% |
| Sole source | 7 | 1% |
| No route stated | 888 | 72% |
Only one award in ten shows a competitive bid. Most of these purchases are small enough to sit under a district’s bid threshold, so they clear as a quote or a purchase order.
Cooperative contracts do a lot of the work
Seventy-three awards reference a cooperative or state contract. The named vehicles include TIPS in ten awards, state contracts in seven, OMNIA Partners in three and an interlocal agreement in three.
Granite School District’s $1,246,048 rollout ran on state contract MA4372. That is a seven-figure purchase with no district bid process attached to it.
For a district, this is the fastest legal route to a signed contract. For a vendor, being on the right cooperative is worth more than a better price.
Renewals clear quietly
Forty-eight awards use renewal or extension language. Twenty-five passed on a consent agenda, which is the part of a board meeting that moves without discussion.
Waxahachie’s five-year, $59,400 licence renewal went through exactly that way. Nobody debated it, because renewals rarely get debated.
Has the price gone up?
Not much. The median contract has moved within a fairly narrow band for seven years.
| Year | Awards | Median contract |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 17 | $10,846 |
| 2020 | 45 | $15,240 |
| 2021 | 73 | $11,280 |
| 2022 | 229 | $14,800 |
| 2023 | 249 | $11,895 |
| 2024 | 251 | $14,949 |
| 2025 | 262 | $16,985 |
| 2026 (partial) | 98 | $12,305 |
The 2025 median of $16,985 is the highest in the series. It is about 57% above 2019, which is roughly what general construction and labour inflation did over the same period.
The more interesting number is the volume. Awards have held near 250 a year since 2022, straight through the end of relief funding.
What the plateau means
A market propped up entirely by one-time money would have fallen off after 2024. This one did not.
Districts moved the cost into recurring budgets instead. That is a harder sale, because an operating line competes with staffing every year. It is also a more durable one.
Read the 2026 figures with care. The year is not over, so both the count and the median will move.
Methodology
The dataset is 1,225 vape detection contract records. They were awarded between 2019 and 2026. Sources are board agendas, purchase orders, bid tabs and award notices from US school districts and the bodies that buy for them.
A record was kept if it named vape detection or a vape sensor product. It also had to carry an amount of $100 or more. Records were deduplicated on vendor, description, date and amount.
Sixty-four records were dropped. In each, vape detection was one line inside a bigger job, such as a construction contract or a district-wide camera package. Keeping them moved the 90th percentile by more than $18,000. It pushed the maximum to $10.3 million. That would misstate what a detector program costs.
Per-unit prices come from 33 awards only. Each stated both an amount and a unit count. Nothing was inferred. District names were parsed from award text. That gives 284 named districts, so the real count is higher.
Two limits are worth stating plainly. Award text rarely splits hardware from labor, so most figures are totals. And these records carry no contract identifier. That means the data cannot show whether a district renewed.
Data is current as of September 2026. Named districts here include Judson ISD, Waxahachie ISD, Lincoln Public Schools, Montgomery County Public Schools and Granite School District.
Frequently asked questions about vape detector costs
How much does a vape detector cost for a school?
The median contract in this dataset is $14,204. Half of districts signed for between $4,350 and $43,951. Where unit counts were disclosed, the median came to $925 per detector installed.
How many vape detectors does a high school need?
Disclosed unit counts run from 8 to 480 per award. Most single-school purchases fall between 8 and 32 units. Districts generally cover restrooms and locker rooms first, which is what sets the number.
Are vape detectors covered by Juul settlement money?
In some districts, yes. Seventeen awards here name Juul settlement funds. One district put settlement money toward a $1,246,048 purchase of detectors and people-counting cameras across its junior high schools.
Can districts still use ESSER funds for vape detectors?
No. The final late-liquidation deadline was March 28, 2026, with no further extensions granted. Thirty-four awards in this dataset named ESSER, and that option has now closed.
What is the cheapest vape detector for schools?
The lowest per-unit figures, near $39 to $47, are annual software renewals rather than hardware. For hardware and installation together, the bottom quarter of awards starts around $622 per unit.
Do vape detector contracts include installation?
Often. Installation is named in 426 of 1,225 awards. Many contracts go to a cabling or integration firm rather than the sensor maker, which is why 831 awards sit under resellers and installers.
What to do with these numbers
If you are budgeting, start at $14,204 for one secondary school. Adjust from there by building count. If a quote lands far above the $622 to $1,553 per-unit band, ask what else is in it.
If you sell into districts, the relief-funding era is over. The buyers who remain pay from operating budgets. That changes who signs, and how long it takes.
Three neighbours are worth reading. Our analysis of what districts spend on visitor management. Our look at K-12 mental health software pricing. And the state tracker on school phone bans.
