The Quad Cortex is the modeler that finally made second-hand buyers nervous in a useful way: the hardware is robust, but part of what you are paying for is attached to an account, not to the box. Buy one well and it is the best value in modeling; buy one carelessly and you inherit someone else's problems.
Live market snapshot — Neural DSP Quad Cortex
Most sell between €1,202 and €1,331. 2 for sale right now from €1,000.
Why these numbers?
| Typical price | €1,267 | median of 191 sales, last 90 days |
| Middle half of sales | €1,202–€1,331 | 25th–75th percentile, same window |
| Sales on record | 2,504 | all-time, all platforms, in EUR |
| 90-day change | −2% | vs the 90 days before |
| Time to sell | — | only counted from listings we watch start to finish; not enough yet |
Outliers beyond 10× the product’s own median (bundles, parts, typos) are excluded before anything is computed. As of 2 September 2026. Full method
The licence trap, first
Neural DSP plugin licences — including plugins bought to run on the unit — do not transfer with the hardware. What transfers is the unit and whatever is natively on it after a factory reset and a proper account handover. Before money moves: the seller performs a factory reset, removes the device from their Cortex Cloud account, and you register it to yours on the spot. A unit still bound to another account cannot take CorOS updates properly, and "I'll unlink it later" is how that stays forever.
What to check on the hardware
- The screen. It is the interface. Look for scratches under light at an angle and dead zones by dragging a block across the whole grid. Screen replacements are expensive relative to the price of the unit.
- The stem knobs. The combined footswitch-encoders take the abuse of both jobs. Press and twist all eleven; any that register inconsistently will only get worse.
- CorOS version. Have the seller update to current CorOS in front of you or before collection. An update that fails is diagnostic gold.
- Captures included? Captures made on the unit stay on the unit and do transfer. A seller's capture library is worth something; confirm they are not wiping it out of spite during the reset, or accept that they will.
The market
The Quad Cortex sold new at €1,850 and the used market has settled well below that since the Mini and the plugin-compatibility era arrived — the snapshot above is the live answer, with the sample size next to it. Supply is deep for a unit this expensive, which keeps sellers honest and makes patience a strategy: the listings below are ranked by how far under the sold median each one sits.
OLX Portugal