Hi marie,
the cost for cadence depends upon what licenses you want to buy. Spectre circuit simulator has different licenses and costs for different analysis. For eg you may get to do AC,DC,Transient and Parametric analysis for one license but if you want to do corner simulation and Monte carlo simulation then it is a seperate license. U will have to pay extra for it. And moreover cadence has different rates for institutions and different for private organizations. It even depends upon the geography u r living and how many licenses u want to buy. A typical spectre license without monte carlo analysis may cost u around USD 12,000. HSPICE is cheaper than spectre.