About | Buying | Downloading | Licencing | Installing | How to
Stata release 17 was released in Australia on 21 April 2021. Stata 17 brings advanced data analytics techniques into a single integrated package. Stata 17 users have access to even more Bayesian Analysis techniques, have access to new features for creating and exporting tables and can make use of a range of integrations such as H2O, Java, JDBC, Jupyter Notebook and PyStata. Learn more here.
The different editions of Stata mean that Stata can be affordable for students and powerful enough to meet the computing and data demands of today's data scientists working with big data. To read about the different editions of Stata visit here.
Stata is a complete, integrated software package that provides all your data science needs—data manipulation, visualisation, statistics, and automated reporting supported by a strong user community. Stata can be used for teaching statistics, academic research or solving the business problems today's data scientists in organisations face. Some users choose Stata for its powerful data management features, some choose Stata for its reproducible research capabilities, others choose Stata for its powerful reporting features, while others choose it for its graphics features. All of them have access to the same set of fast, tested statistical functions from Bayesian to survival analysis. You can read the features here. Or why not request a trial licence by clicking the button below.
Stata is used by students, academics, researchers, professionals, data scientist and analysts in many different fields. They choose Stata because it is fast and easy to use, it is very well supported and it is affordable. To read how people in your field may be using Stata see here. Alternatively, see this page to see a list of research fields using Stata.
Stata comes in three editions: Stata/BE which is compact and fast; Stata/SE which handles big data sets and is fast; and then there is Stata/MP (multi-processor) which handles the biggest of datasets and is fastest using the multiple cores on your computer. Read about the speed tests on Stata here. Or you can compare the editions on our comparison table.
When you buy a single user Stata licence you install it on up to three computers, that means that you can have the one licence to run on your Mac, on your Linux computer and your Windows computer. There is no need to buy a special licence for your choice of operating system, just download the install files specific to your operating system and you are ready to go. The Stata commands and menus are the same regardless of the operating system you use. See the supported operating system here.
You can read some case studies about the use of Stata in different organisations on our case studies page. It includes a study on the role Stata plays with the World Bank; a recent paper in the American Economists Association Journal which suggests that 73% of economists submitting papers to the journal rely on Stata; and an article about the implementation of Stata at the Health Policy Institute of Ohio.
While anyone can buy a Stata licence the pricing you receive depends on your academic status. Verified students in Australia, Indonesia and New Zealand are eligible for student pricing, which provides significant discounts on the academic and business pricing. Academic researchers at approved universities in Australia, Indonesia and New Zealand are also able to access the Stata Prof+ Plan pricing. This is special discounted pricing for staff at approved universities. If you are not at one of the approved universities, do not fear, as an academic you are still eligible for academic pricing which is also significantly discounted from business, government and not-for-profit pricing.
Students can buy a 6-month Stata/BE licence at a very affordable price. Stata/SE is more expensive than Stata/BE and Stata/MP is more expensive than Stata/SE. Annual licences are an effective and affordable way to make sure that you always have the latest release of Stata. Another way to buy Stata is to purchase (or upgrade to) a perpetual licence with maintenance. To obtain a quote send us a message via our page or buy your single licence through our Stata purchase page. Place your order now and we will have the licence to you either the same business day or the next business day (depending on the time of day).
SDAS is based in Australia servicing Australia, Indonesia and New Zealand. We can provide pricing in AUD, IDR, NZD or USD and give you various payment options including direct deposit into a bank account in your country, electronic payment options using credit card or PayPal and for institutional customers we can negotiate purchase orders. We pride ourselves on our customer service, providing prompt friendly customer service. We receive great customer feedback with customers pleased to work with our friendly team of sales consultants. Whether it is your first purchase or your hundredth we are here to support you through the purchasing process, download and activation, and then using Stata.
While we support thousands of students each year, you don't have to be a student to use Stata or to buy Stata. Stata is used in leading organisations around the world to advance their data science, statistics, data management, and reporting. If you are a student and you need Stata for your studies you can purchase a Stata licence at significantly discounted prices. Even if you are not a student, you will find that Stata is an affordable software that can get you achieving greater insights from your data quicker.
While you can't sell your Stata licence if you have purchased a perpetual licence as a student you can hold onto it for future use. This also means that if you choose to upgrade or renew your licence in the future, you will be eligible for upgrade pricing. Stata comes with so many powerful features that you may find that you need some of the other features for another course or another project. Check out the advanced features.
Stata pricing is based in USD and we provide competitive pricing in AUD, IDR, NZD and USD. If you see the price of Stata change periodically it is because the AUD/USD exchange rate has moved. We review pricing each month based on movements between the currencies we accept and the USD. We price Stata so that you get the best pricing available through SDAS. If you compare our price to the USD price, remember Australian customers need to include 10% goods and services tax (GST). If you buy directly from StataCorp you will still pay the GST when you get to the check-out. Our AUD prices are inclusive of Australian GST.
You are in the right place to buy Stata. We operate online retail sales of Stata through this website and dedicated Stata websites for Australia (www.stata-au.com), Indonesia (www.stata-id.com) and New Zealand (www.stata-nz.com). In Indonesia we have two authorised resellers. If someone else (other than StataCorp or us) is trying to sell you Stata in any of these countries, then it is more than likely a pirated edition and is no longer supported.
The Stata licence agreement is an important agreement. By activating your Stata licence you agree to adhere to the licence agreement and all of the terms and conditions therein. The licence agreement for Stata 17 can be found here.
Stata annual licences are an affordable way to always have the current release of Stata. We will contact you about a month before your licence is about to expire and we will give you the opportunity to renew your licence. To proceed with an annual licence, visit our buy page.
You can buy a Stata licence as an annual licence or as a perpetual licence. Perpetual licences include one year of maintenance to help you maintain access to the latest features and updates. You will receive a convenient reminder to renew the maintenance prior to the one-year expiration. If you decide not to renew your maintenance, upgrades to new releases of Stata must be purchased separately.
When you buy a Stata licence you have the option to purchase a 6-month licence (if you are a student), a 12-month licence, a perpetual licence or a perpetual licence with annual maintenance. If you buy an expiring licence (i.e. a 6-month or 12-month), then at the end of the period the licence expires. We will contact you about a month before the end of the licence to see if you are interested in renewing the licence. We will not charge your credit card or invoice you automatically. If you purchase a perpetual licence you have no annual fees unless you decided to also purchase maintenance when you purchased your licence. If you decided to buy maintenance with your licence then we will let you know when the 12 months are up and you have the choice of renewing your maintenance or not. If you decide to not renew your maintenance your maintenance will expire at the end of the maintenance period and you will no longer receive automatic upgrades on Stata.
When you purchase a perpetual licence of Stata you have the choice of also buying maintenance. When you have maintenance on your licence it means that if Stata releases an upgrade to a new release of Stata, then you automatically receive the latest release of Stata. In the long term, this is the most cost effective way to stay on the current release of Stata.
Your Stata licence number is important information. When you call us for technical support, to renew or to upgrade your licence you will need to have your licence number available. To find your Stata licence number you will need to open Stata. At the command line type the command:
about
Your Stata licence number and other information about your licence will be displayed in the Results pane. To learn about other tips and tricks on Stata you can visit our TechTips website which provides useful tips on using Stata.
There are several differences between a network licence and a single user licence. These differences relate to the user and the deployment of the licences.
Single user licences:
Network licences:
Network licences can be deployed using Citrix or other virtualisation software which allows remote users to connect into a centralised server. The network licence can also be deployed in a way that the executable files are stored on the client computer while the licence file is stored on the centralised server.
It is the responsibility of the Stata network licence administrator to ensure that the number of users making use of the Stata licence, at any one time, is not exceeded.
If you believe that you may need to increase your network licence size, message us or call us and we can arrange an expansion of your network, or help you with ways that you may be able to manage your user count.
Many Stata users love Stata and they would love to see more of their friends using Stata. A great way to show your love of Stata is to buy a Stata T-shirt, Stata mug, Stata sweater, Stata laptop bag or Stata cap. Sharing your single user licence is not an appropriate way to share your love of Stata. If your friend, colleague or peer would like to use Stata we have various cost effective ways that we can get Stata to them. Perhaps they could start with a Stata evaluation licence, or a low cost student licence (if they are a student). Alternatively, we could upgrade your single user licence from a single user licence into a network licence.
P.S. If you would like to buy a T-shirt, mug or other Stata merchandise, give us a call and we can let you know what we have in stock or when we can get some in for you.
If you have a single user licence, and you are the named user, and you have not installed the licence in more than two other places, then yes you could, if you company approves it, install your Stata single user onto your home computer.
If you have a network licence then no you would not be allowed to install Stata onto your home computer.
If you use a network licence at work and you want to be able to access your network licence remotely, you will need to speak with your IT people to see how they can provide you remote access to Stata. We have helped many universities, departments and organisations implement Stata so that they can access Stata remotely, while complying with the licence agreement. Why not give us a call and we can discuss these options with you.
Network licences start from as small as two users. When you have a two user network on your server or computer, then any two people with approved access to that computer may use the licence, provided there are not more than two people using the licence at any one time. A big advantage of the network licence is that any two people from the organisation can use the licence. So even if your organisation has 10,000 people in it (all in the one location), then any two people from the organisation could use that particular Stata licence at any one time.
There is no maximum to the size of a network licence, however, once your network licence is around 100 people we really should be discussing site licence options. Site licences are an unlimited access licence which can be deployed on network or off network, specific to student access or specific to academic access or general user access. If you have more than 100 Stata users in your department, faculty, school, agency or organisation then lets chat.
There are a few different ways to install a Stata network licence:
We have prepared several detailed techtips on installing Stata. Follow these links for instructions:
We also have some guidance for installing Stata on a Windows server. If you are installing on a server you may also be interested in reading the guidance on installing a network licence.
If you still need help, give us a call.
If you already have Stata on your computer and you have been issued with a new Stata licence number because you have changed company or renewed your licence, then follow these simple steps.
There are several options to move from Stata 16 to Stata 17. These are:
When you upgrade we will provide you with detailed information on the process to upgrade. It is similar to the new install process. Remember, you can keep your Stata 16 executable files on your computer and use your Stata 17 licence file to run Stata 16. This also works for older releases, so if you are an avid Stata user you can have Stata 11, Stata 12, Stata 13, Stata 14, Stata 15, Stata 16 and Stata 17 on your computer, all using the same Stata 17 licence number.
To install Stata on Linux you will need to download the appropriate download files and you will need administrator privileges on your computer.
We have prepared a set of detailed steps on our TechTips site.
From Stata 16 forwards Stata will only run on 64-bit computers. If you have an older computer on which you would like to run Stata, you will need to install the 32-bit instance from earlier release. Your Stata 17 licence can be used to also run the older releases. If you are on a macOS computer Stata 17 only runs on the 64-bit models.
If you are experiencing difficulties installing Stata you can contact SDAS for assistance. Email sales@surveydesign.com.au or call us on 02 6247 0177. We can help you install Stata.
When we provide you with your Stata licence we also provide you with download codes so that you can download Stata directly from StataCorp. The codes that we provide only have a limited number of log-on attempts. Sometimes, for a variety of reasons people can exceed these download codes. If you find yourself in the position of having exceeded your log-on attempts to download Stata, just call us or email us and we will be happy to arrange some additional codes for you. Please keep in mind that you should not share your download codes, in the same way that you should not share your licence number.
Once you have installed Stata you will need to start Stata to initialise the licence. The first time you run Stata it will ask for your serial number, code and authorisation. You can find this information from the Stata licence PDF file attached in the email from us when we send you your licence. When entering the codes, please copy and paste to avoid mistyping. Please note, these are different from the Username and Password included in the body of the email to access the download site. If you still can't find them...
To activate your licence you need three key pieces of information:
We recommend that you copy and paste these numbers from the licence and activation key PDF that we send to you. If you decide to type the activation code you do not need to use the spaces, but you can as it may help you check for any errors that may occur in the typing.
If you are experiencing difficulties activating your licence even after you have tried using copy and paste to insert the activation and authorisation code, then give us a call and we can help you resolve the issue.
What this means is that the licence code (serial number) doesn't match with the edition of Stata you have installed on your computer.
There are three different editions of Stata, namely Stata/BE (for which serial numbers begin with 3017); Stata/SE (for which serial numbers begin with (4017); and Stata/MP (for which serial numbers begin with 5017). If you have previously had Stata on your computer e.g. from an evaluation licence or from prior expiring licence, then if you changed down from Stata/MP or Stata/SE down to either Stata/SE or Stata/BE, then the executable files you have installed may be the incorrect edition for your installation.
To fix this problem you will need to run the install again and select the appropriate edition that matches your licence. If you have deleted the download files you can use your download userID and password to log on to the StataCorp download page and download them again.
Default Windows permission settings might prevent the Stata licence file to be written to disk, even if you are an Administrator user.
To solve the problem, right-click the Stata executable in the Stata install directory, and click "Run as Administrator" to open Stata; enter your authorization information, etc., and Stata will create the proper licence file. This method is required once only to set the licence file.
The Stata interface is designed around the commands and the results. Here is a presentation by Chuck Huber.
Stata can be driven completely by menu or completely by commands or by using a mix of both. In fact many advanced Stata users will use a mix of both commands and menus. When you use the menus it builds the command and stores the command in your history, that means that you can use the menus to learn the commands and also use the menus to create your own do files to run as a job later.
StataCorp have designed the menus around the three main components of Stata: Data; Graphics; and Statistics. They also have a special menu called User, where you can store your own commands as menu items.
To learn more neat tricks on Stata, why not check out the Stata YouTube channel or visit our TechTips site which has useful guidance on performing everyday functions in Stata.
Some nice people at the US Agency for International Development (namely Tim Essam and Laura Hughes) developed a series of "cheat sheets" for Stata. The cheat sheets contain the common commands that you may need to use in Stata and provide the details of the options that can be applied for the commands. You can check them out here.
If you are working with dates in Stata and you need some help, Laura from our team developed a date and time cheat sheet. It is available here.
Sometimes the datasets that you need to access may have too many variables for the edition of Stata that you have purchased. This often results in people calling us and wanting to upgrade their Stata from BE to SE or SE to MP. While we welcome the additional sale, there is a way that Stata allows you to only use the variables that you need from a dataset instead of bringing the entire dataset into Stata. This is often the case with the HILDA dataset.
Stata/BE has a maximum of 2,048 variables in any one dataset, and while 2,048 variables seems like a lot, apparently that is still not enough to hold the entire HILDA dataset. HILDA is such a big dataset because it is a longitudinal dataset with all the variables stored for each year for each of the observations, and so when you have 300 variables each year, as soon as you have more than 7 years of data you are now dealing with more variables than Stata IC can handle. BUT DO NOT FEAR!. When you download the HILDA dataset as a Stata .dta file you can use the Stata command:
use [varlist] [if] [in] using filename
This allows you to bring in just the variables you want. Learn more on this at this TechTip.
To import data from Excel you can use the Stata menu:
File->Import->Excel spreadsheet (*.xls; *.xlsx)
Check out this TechTip which walks you through the steps.
Help is never far away for Stata. Here are a few of the options.
The "auto" dataset is quite famous in Stata circles. It has been the sample dataset shipped with Stata for many years. It is a small dataset with only 74 observations of car sales and repair records for cars sold in the US in 1978. It is a good training and sample dataset because it has a range of different data types and the variables allow a user to demonstrate a variety of diffent Stata functions. Many of the examples we use in TechTips use the auto dataset, but it is not the only sample dataset for Stata. You can access more Stata sample datasets by following the menu:
File->Example datasets...
Then clicking on either "Example datasets installed with Stata" or "Stata 17 manual datasets".
Then click on either "use" to start using the dataset or "describe" to obtain information about the variables in the dataset
The Stata Press text books also come with example datasets. The instructions to access these are at the start of each book.
Stata is available in several different languages including Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Swedish. You can change between languages without needing to download or install different packages. Check out this TechTip on running Stata in Chinese.
When activating Stata, you need to enter your Stata serial number, the activation code and the activation authorisation. You also need to enter and name and an organisation. If there any of the entered data is incorrect the Next button will remain greyed out. Some things to check:
If you are still experiencing problems, give us a call on 02 6247 0177.