ResearchOS vs LabArchives
An honest side-by-side. LabArchives is the incumbent most academic labs are leaving, so it is the right thing to measure against. ResearchOS wins decisively on data ownership and cost. LabArchives is still ahead on a few specific things, and this page says so plainly.
Who each one is for
LabArchives is a hosted, cloud ELN sold per seat. You trade money and data custody for managed backups, security certifications, and turnkey institutional administration. It suits labs that want a vendor to hold the data and an IT department that wants a certified cloud contract.
ResearchOS is a free, open-source, local-first ELN. Your data is a folder of open files on your own disk, shared across a lab through whatever cloud drive you already pay for. It suits labs that want to own their data outright, avoid per-seat fees, and keep unpublished work off a vendor server.
| Capability | ResearchOS | LabArchives (Professional) |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Yes. Free and open source. | Free tier (2 notebooks, 1 GB). Professional is $330 academic or $575 corporate, per user per year. |
| Where data lives | A folder on your own machine. No vendor database ever holds it. | On LabArchives' cloud servers. |
| File formats | Plain JSON, markdown, and your original image and PDF files, all open. Readable without ResearchOS. | Proprietary cloud store. You read it through their app or via export. |
| Data ownership / lock-in | Yes. You own the folder outright. Nothing to escape. | You can export, but the live copy is theirs while you pay. |
| Audit trail | Yes. Append-only PI audit log plus soft-delete Trash with a recovery window. | Yes. Complete activity and revision history. |
| Per-entry edit history with revert | Partial. Ships on notes, tasks, experiments (Lab Notes and Results), projects, and sequences, each with a restore button. Standalone library methods are not separately versioned yet. | Yes. Full revision history on every entry. |
| Sharing and permissions | Yes. Per-record read or edit, whole-lab option, PI view-all. | Yes. Notebook and folder-level roles and permissions. |
| Export | Yes. PDF, self-contained HTML, and raw re-importable ZIP. Single or bulk. | Yes. PDF and offline-notebook export. |
| Repository deposit and DOI | Partial. Guided deposit prefills the metadata, bundles the data, and opens the repository's upload page, where the repository mints the DOI.Coming soon | Yes. Built-in Figshare export and direct DOI publishing. |
| Structured grant / ORCID metadata | Yes. Dedicated ORCID + funder/award fields. | Yes. Dedicated metadata fields. |
| Security certifications | No. None; local-first by design, with a published security audit instead. | Yes. FedRAMP, SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, 21 CFR Part 11. |
| Managed backups | You rely on your own cloud drive or backup routine. | Yes. Vendor-managed backup and record retention. |
| Browser support | Chrome or Edge (needs the File System Access API). | Yes. Any modern browser. |
| Lab-specialized tools | Yes. Visual PCR editor, LC gradients, plate layouts, cell-culture schedules, Gantt, purchasing and funding. | Widgets and third-party integrations (SnapGene, GraphPad Prism). |
| Migrating in | Yes. Imports a LabArchives Offline Notebook ZIP directly. | Not applicable. |
Where ResearchOS wins
- You own your data, in open formats, forever. The single biggest difference. Your work is plain files on your disk, not rows in a vendor database. NIH's repository guidance prizes exactly this kind of portability and non-proprietary format.
- No per-seat fees. A ten-person lab on LabArchives Professional is several thousand dollars a year, every year. ResearchOS has no fixed per-seat license and no paywalled local features. Every local feature is free, and the cloud services are pay-for-what-you-use, a base fee plus usage at a fair markup, with storage at roughly cost. Self-hosting is always free.
- Unpublished research never leaves your control. No vendor server holds your pre-publication data. For sensitive or competitive work, that is a real advantage, not a checkbox.
- Built for bench work. The visual PCR editor, plate layouts, LC gradients, cell-culture schedules, Gantt scheduling, and lab purchasing are first-class, not bolt-ons.
- Switching in is easy. ResearchOS imports your LabArchives Offline Notebook ZIP directly, so you are not retyping years of notebooks.
Where LabArchives is still ahead
Saying otherwise would not survive a demo, so here it is straight.
- Fully automated one-click deposit. Built-in Figshare export and direct DOI minting from inside the app. ResearchOS has a guided deposit today (it prefills the metadata, bundles the data, and opens the repository's upload page where the DOI is minted), and the fully automated one-click publish is coming. See Depositing to a repository.
- Complete per-entry revision history. ResearchOS now ships per-entry version history with a restore button on notes, tasks, experiments (both Lab Notes and Results), projects, and sequences, and an experiment also tracks per-method protocol deviations as it changes, so the gap here is narrow. LabArchives still covers every record type, while ResearchOS does not yet version standalone library method records.
- Security certifications. FedRAMP, SOC 2, ISO 27001, and 21 CFR Part 11. If your institution mandates a certified cloud vendor, this is decisive, and ResearchOS does not compete here by design.
- Managed backups and any-browser access. The vendor handles redundancy, and there is no File System Access API browser requirement.