List of electronic laboratory notebook software packages


An electronic lab notebook is a computer program designed to replace paper laboratory notebooks. Lab notebooks in general are used by scientists, engineers, and technicians to document research, experiments, and procedures performed in a laboratory. A lab notebook is often maintained to be a legal document and may be used in a court of law as evidence. Similar to an inventor's notebook, the lab notebook is also often referred to in patent prosecution and intellectual property litigation.
Electronic lab notebooks are a fairly new technology and offer many benefits to the user as well as organizations. For example: electronic lab notebooks are easier to search upon, simplify data copying and backups, and support collaboration amongst many users.
ELNs can have fine-grained access controls, and can be more secure than their paper counterparts. They also allow the direct incorporation of data from instruments, replacing the practice of printing out data to be stapled into a paper notebook.
This is a list of ELN software packages. It is incomplete, as a recent review listed 96 active & 76 inactive ELN products. Notably, this review and other lists of ELN software often do not include widely used generic notetaking software like Onenote, Notion, Jupyter etc, due to their lack ELN nominal features like time-stamping and append-only editing. Some ELNs are web-based; others are used on premise and a few are available for both environments.

ELN">Electronic lab notebook">ELN Software

NameDeveloperInitial releaseCountry of originTitle [21 CFR Part 11|21 CFR Part 11] Compliance Information
IDBS2020United Kingdom21 CFR Part 11
IDBS2017United Kingdom21 CFR Part 11
Wildfell Software, LLC2020United States21 CFR Part 11
Lab-Ally LLC2006United States21 CFR Part 11
ResearchSpace2012United Kingdom21 CFR Part 11
Biodata Ltd2011United States21 CFR Part 11
2021United States21 CFR Part 11
2018United States21 CFR Part 11
2016India
2003India
2002France
Labii Inc.2016United States
Colabra Inc.2021United StatesPaid plans
Scispot.io Inc.2021Canada
Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc.2018United States
Uncountable Inc.2018United States
Revvity2017United States
Pillar Science2017Canada
2015Spain
By SciNote LLC and BioSistemika LLC, based on a later published scientific study2015United States
Labstep2015United Kingdom
RND NOTECyberline Co., Ltd.2015South Korea
Open Science Framework Center for Open Science2013United States
Labforward GmbH2012Germany
ResearchSpace2012United States
Benchling, Inc.2012United States
Scilligence2011United States
Arxspan ELNBruker, Inc.2011United States
eLabNext2010The Netherlands
LabArchivesLabArchives LLC2009United States
LabWare2010United States
Sapio Sciences LLC2007United States-
LabVantage 8LabVantage Solutions, Inc.2007United States
Yokogawa Electric2023Japan
2023Czech Republic
KYLI SAS2019France

Open-source ELN">Electronic lab notebook">ELN software

ELN softwareLanguage baseLicenseHosted onOther info
OpenWetWarePHPGNU [General Public License|GPL v2]MIT
elabFTWPHPGNU AGPLv3Personal computer or serverDeveloped at Curie Institute, Paris
PHPGNU General Public LicensePersonal computer or serverUses WordPress, developed at University of Houston
Java, PythonApache License 2.0Personal computer or serverDeveloped at ETH Zürich
Python, VueJSApache License 2.0Personal computer or serverDeveloped at KIT Karlsruhe
Ruby on RailsGNU AGPLv3Personal computer or serverDeveloped at KIT Karlsruhe