ChemCollective Virtual Lab vs MolView
ChemCollective Virtual Lab
chemcollective.orgMolView
molview.comSide by side
| Figure | ChemCollective Virtual Lab | MolView |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $0.75/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 7 |
| Spec score · Chemistry Simulation Software | 9.0 (#2) | 8.7 (#4) |
| Audience | The project aims to help high school and college students approach chemistry more like practicing scientists. | The maker presents MolView for students, teachers, authors, and developers. |
| Documentation | Official help includes an introductory video, titration walkthrough and feature-by-feature user guide. | The help center page says it is under construction, while the site links tutorials, a user manual and API references. |
| Founded | 2000 | LinkedIn lists MolView as founded in 2012. |
| Purpose | The Virtual Lab is an online chemistry lab simulation designed to connect chemical computations with authentic laboratory chemistry. | MolView is a web app for sketching and viewing small molecules. |
| Support | The instructor guide invites users to contact the team for technical help, curriculum support, questions, and comments. | The help center page says it is under construction; the contact page lists [email protected] for questions and ideas. |
| What it does | ChemCollective provides virtual chemistry labs, scenario activities, tutorials and concept tests for teaching and learning. | MolView is a browser-based chemical sketcher and 3D viewer focused on small molecules. |
Plans
ChemCollective Virtual Lab
- ChemCollective Virtual LabFree
- Free accessFree
MolView
- FreeFree
- Student$9 a year
- Academic$49 a year
- Standard$99 a year
- Publisher$250 a year
- EnterprisePriced on request
- InstitutionPriced on request
In their own words
ChemCollective Virtual Lab
ChemCollective Virtual Lab is an online chemistry simulation that connects calculations with laboratory-style experiments. Students and educators can use its web activities without licensing requirements, including experiments with hundreds of standard aqueous reagents across acid-base chemistry, thermochemistry, solubility, and redox topics. Teaching resources include prepared lab problems, tutorials, courses, real-world scenarios, visualizations, simulations, and concept tests. Autograded activities randomize unknowns and check answers, with hints and feedback. Teachers can make free classroom pages that collect activity links, instructions, and handouts, and track attempts on autograded problems. Instructors may modify activities or request custom ones. Downloadable versions for Windows and Mac are available, though Java may be needed. The project aims to help high school and college students approach chemistry like practicing scientists. Its current scope is aqueous reactions. The Virtual Lab is free for educators and students; the site and its contents are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 NonCommercial-NoDerivs.
MolView
MolView is a web application for sketching and viewing small molecules, with API access and molecular modeling support. Its canvas handles structural formulas, reaction arrows, electron-pushing arrows, configurable styles, and keyboard shortcuts. A 3D viewer updates automatically as you edit a molecule. Chemical searches accept common names, IUPAC names, SMILES, InChI, InChIKey, and molecular formulas. Depending on the plan, you can save and load sketcher or viewer content, create shareable links, export structural data or SVG files, use transparent backgrounds, and set image resolution. Developers can embed the sketcher web component in vanilla JavaScript or React and customize its toolbar and diagram style. The free plan needs no sign-up and supports searching, sketching, and viewing, but cannot save diagrams. Paid plans include Student at $9.00 per year, Publisher at $250.00 per year, Academic at $4919.00 per year, and Standard at $9919.00 per year.