Benchling Notebook vs Phoenix ELN

Benchling Notebook is a cloud-based electronic lab notebook for capturing, accessing, and sharing scientific work. It keeps experiments, metadata, collaboration, and analysis together, with search, templates, and schemas for organizing records. Teams can share and co-edit entries using tags, comments, task assignments, and role-based permissions. Entries can link results to samples and experimental data, while the product describes LIMS integration for connecting samples and results. Benchling says the notebook supports 21 CFR Part 11 requirements through audit-ready electronic records and signatures. Listed ecosystem integrations include AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Jupyter, Snowflake, and Titian Mosaic, with instrument connections through Benchling Automation. Developer tools include REST APIs, a Python SDK, webhooks, an application framework, and a Postgres SQL data warehouse. Benchling states that data is encrypted at rest with AES 256-bit encryption and in transit with TLS 1.2 or higher, and that it maintains SOC 2 Type 2 attestation and ISO 27001:2022 certification. The free academic plan includes Notebook and Molecular Biology; industry pricing is customized.

Phoenix ELN is a free, open-source electronic lab notebook for Windows, designed for organic, organometallic and peptide chemistry. Experiment protocols can place reactants, reagents, solvents, comments, products, images and files in workflow order. Adding materials supplies stoichiometric information such as equivalents and millimoles. The self-learning materials database contains nearly 200 commonly used reagents, solvents and auxiliaries, with cross-checked molecular weights and densities. An integrated drawing editor supports organic, organometallic, peptide and resin-bound structures. Reaction substructure searches work across local experiments; an optional server extends searches to finalized experiments across an organization. Phoenix ELN runs without a server connection and supports offline access. The optional in-house server adds continuous backup, experiment sharing and organization-wide searches, with an installation script for MySQL or MariaDB. Protocols export to PDF compliant with PDF/A-3b, embedding inserted documents as PDF attachments; ZIP, JPEG, PNG and TIF are also listed. Support is directed to GitHub Issues and Discussions.