elabftw/elabftw

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

1406 stars · 324 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

eLabFTW is a free, open source electronic lab notebook (ELN) and laboratory inventory management system for research teams, accessed via the browser and self-hosted with Docker. It supports experiment tracking, resource databases, equipment booking, trusted timestamping, multi-team hosting, and a public REST API.

Use cases

• keep an electronic lab notebook for research experiments
• manage laboratory inventory of reagents, antibodies, and cell lines
• book and schedule shared lab equipment
• timestamp experiments for legal traceability
• self-host an ELN for multiple research teams
• export lab records as PDF or .eln archives
• feed instrument data into a lab notebook via API

When to choose

• a research lab or institute needs a free, self-hosted ELN with multi-team support
• you need integrated sample/reagent inventory alongside your notebook
• regulatory traceability like signing and trusted timestamping matters
• you want open formats, FAIR data, and a REST API for automation

When to avoid

• you need a lightweight personal note-taking app rather than a full ELN server
• you cannot run a PHP/MySQL/Docker server environment
• you need offline-first desktop note software

Facets

application · maturity stable

web-framework search-engine pdf api-framework auth authorization self-hosted documentation self-hosted healthcare education data-science web-development apis files pdf self-hosted php cross-platform electronic-lab-notebook eln lims laboratory-information-management research inventory-management timestamping fair-data open-science rest-api web-server docker linux

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="elabftw/elabftw")