eLabFTW
Electronic lab notebook and lab inventory management for research teams
1.4k stars 313 forks last commit first released AGPL-3.0
Actively maintained
Last commit 27 Jul 2026.
eLabFTW is an open source electronic lab notebook (ELN) designed for research teams to document experiments and protocols in a structured, searchable way. It also includes a flexible database for managing lab resources and supports multi-team deployments on a single instance.
Key Features
- Experiment and protocol notebook with tags, categories, and full-text search
- Inventory/database for lab resources (e.g., plasmids, antibodies, cell lines, chemicals, equipment)
- Equipment and resource booking via a built-in scheduler/calendar
- Multi-team support with advanced permissions and team-based access control
- Trusted timestamping and optional blockchain timestamping for traceability
- Import/export in multiple formats to support interoperability and FAIR data practices
- Public REST API for integrations and automation
- Internationalized interface (20+ languages) and responsive web UI
Use Cases
- Centralized experiment documentation and reproducibility tracking for academic labs
- Lab inventory and reagent/equipment traceability for shared facilities
- Organization-wide ELN platform hosting multiple research groups with controlled access
Limitations and Considerations
- Intended to be deployed and maintained on a server by an administrator (commonly via containers)
eLabFTW is a strong fit for labs and organizations needing a secure, auditable ELN with integrated inventory and scheduling. Its permissions model, export options, and API make it suitable for both daily lab work and institution-level deployments.
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