Benchling Notebook: public-source profile

Product: Benchling Notebook, the electronic lab notebook application inside the Benchling R&D platform. Benchling also sells Registry, Inventory, Workflows, Molecular Biology, Bioresearch, Bioprocess, Insights, Automation, In Vivo, Validated Cloud, and Benchling AI. Those are not this profile. Vendor: Benchling, Inc., a Delaware corporation, 680 Folsom Street, 8th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94107. The March 2026 terms use that name and address for the free offering. Paid enterprise use runs under a Main Services Agreement or a signed services agreement. Category: Life-sciences electronic lab notebook (ELN) and adjacent R&D data workspace. Adjacent. Benchling also markets the wider platform as a LIMS and sells Bioprocess batch execution for process development. Notebook itself is neither a QC LIMS nor a plant-wide pharmaceutical MES. Verification date: 2026-10-03. Scope: Public sources only.

1. Overview

Benchling Notebook is the cloud ELN at the center of Benchling's R&D platform, where biotech and biopharma scientists record experiments and link them to registered samples, inventory, and results. It is adjacent because it is a research notebook, not a QC LIMS or an MES (Benchling sells batch execution separately as Bioprocess for process development), and its buyers run from free academic labs and startups to large biopharma R&D groups, with enterprise pricing quote-only.

Benchling's Notebook page: "Capture, access, and share work with a tool designed for modern science." It calls Benchling "more than just an ELN" because it models biomolecules, small molecules, cell lines, animals, and reagents, and lists templates, co-editing, role-based permissions, audit-ready electronic records and signatures, and 21 CFR Part 11 compliance. The footer claims "over 1,300 biotechnology companies." (Notebook, retrieved 2026-10-03.)

The about page cites more than 1,300 organizations, "from emerging startups to global enterprises," in biopharma, agriculture, and materials. (About.) Notebook centralizes spreadsheets, images, sequences, protocols, and notes, with automatic timestamps and version history. (Startups.)

Boundaries:

Not a QC LIMS. The Notebook FAQ says an ELN "may be a stand alone or more effectively be part of a LIMS or LES platform" and calls Notebook "part of a LIMS productivity hub." The LIMS page lists Notebook as one module: "Notebook (ELN), Molecular Biology, Registry, Inventory, Workflows, Lab Automation, and Studies." Benchling publishes no GMP QC LIMS with stability, specification management, or certificate-of-analysis workflows. (LIMS for pharma; Notebook page.)
Not Bioprocess, and not an MES. Bioprocess is a separate product: recipe design, experiment planning, guided batch execution, and ISA-88-compatible recipe data for process development and tech transfer, built for process-development scientists, engineers, and manufacturing teams "from recipe design through tech transfer to manufacturing." Guided batch execution in process development is not a plant-wide GMP MES. (Bioprocess.)
Not Registry or Inventory. Registry is the sample and molecule catalog. Inventory and Registry "were built for industry requirements, not academic," and the free academic plan includes only Notebook and Molecular Biology. (Academic; Registry.)
Not an ERP, QMS, CDS, or serialization system.
Current product. On 3 June 2026 co-founder Ashu Singhal wrote that Benchling AI was rebuilt inside the notebook and that the notebook remains the interface. (Blog, 3 Jun 2026.)

2. Company and product identity

Point	Fact	Source
Free terms	Benchling, Inc., Delaware corporation, 680 Folsom Street, 8th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94107. Effective 27 March 2026. Cover site visitors and the free offering; enterprise tenant accounts excluded.	Terms of Service
Paid contract	Main Services Agreement or another written services agreement. Payment terms (updated 15 September 2026) name Benchling, Inc. and point to the MSA.	Payment terms; agreements index
Founding	Founders worked in academic labs and built "the first cloud platform designed for modern life sciences R&D." Academic access "Since 2012." Sajith Wickramasekara is CEO and co-founder; Ashu Singhal is co-founder and president.	About; Academic; Series F; AI blog
Series E	14 April 2021: $200 million led by Sequoia Capital Global Equities, with Altimeter, Byers Capital, Elad Gil, and existing investors.	Series E news
Series F	18 November 2021, San Francisco: $100 million at a $6.1 billion valuation, co-led by Franklin Templeton and Altimeter, with Tiger Global and Lone Pine. Proceeds for product and EMEA. Company claims triple-digit year-over-year revenue growth, a 70% increase in customer count, and a 169% dollar-based net expansion rate.	Series F page
Later rounds	No round after 2021 in the sources.	—
Address on site	680 Folsom St., 8th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94107; copyright 2026.	Product page footers
U.S. federal recipient	BENCHLING, INC., UEI UWAHPBL1VJA6; place of performance San Francisco, CA.	USAspending award
2026 navigation	Bioresearch, Biologics, Bioprocess, Automation, In Vivo, AI, Insights, PipeBio Antibodies, Validated Cloud, Platform. "PipeBio Antibodies" is a navigation label; no acquisition detail is published there.	Notebook footer

3. Pharma and biotech relevance

Benchling's pharma fit is R&D and process development, not commercial batch release.

21 CFR Part 11 and Annex 11 claims. Notebook page: "Meet 21 CFR Part11 compliance requirements with audit-ready electronic records and signatures." Trust page: built "for compliance with FDA 21 CFR Part 11, Annex 11 and EPA regulations" in a GxP environment. Validated Cloud: e-signature controls "per 21 CFR Part 11 and Annex 11," timestamps, and a complete audit trail. Vendor claims; no FDA clearance. (Trust; Validated Cloud.)
Outdated FAQ text. The Notebook FAQ cites "ISO/IEC 26001:2013," "EU-US Privacy Shield," and "21 CRF part 11." The Trust page lists ISO/IEC 27001:2022 (with one sentence still saying 27001:2013), the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, and 21 CFR Part 11. The Trust page is the current list.
GxP runs in a separate tenant. Validated Cloud is a dedicated tenant that separates GxP from non-GxP work, with controlled quarterly releases, IQ/OQ documentation, quarterly change packages, and risk assessments. Nermin Avdispahic, Quality Control Manager at New England Biolabs, is quoted on carrying insights into controlled development. (Validated Cloud page.)
Gilead process development. Gilead's Biologics team used Benchling for cell-line development, purification, and formulations, replacing email, Excel, and an on-premise ELN, and reports a 63% reduction in time spent on data capture, search, and collection, plus faster study review. Vendor story; no commercial GMP batch execution. (Gilead story.)
Sanofi discovery and translational R&D. More than 1,500 scientists across 30 global teams, including precision oncology, mRNA, and translational teams; sequences registered in Benchling. The quoted speaker is an mRNA data-analytics lead. Platform use, not Notebook alone. (Sanofi story.)

An FDA warning-letter search on 3 Oct 2026 found none naming Benchling as the inspected system.

4. Capabilities

Capability	Status	Fact	Source
Experiment entries	Notebook	Spreadsheets, images, sequences, protocols, notes; templates; automatic timestamps and version history.	Startups page
Collaboration	Notebook	Co-editing, tagging, comments, task assignments, role-based permissions.	Notebook page
Structured capture	Notebook	Templates and schemas; results linked to samples (requires Registry or another registration function).	Notebook page
Review and e-signature	Compliance pages	Part 11 and Annex 11 e-signature controls, timestamps, audit trail, user access management. The Notebook page says "audit-ready electronic records and signatures" without describing the signing steps.	Notebook; Validated Cloud
AI in the notebook	Notebook, June 2026	Upload raw data; the entry is generated with protocol, structured results, and linked samples; Skills for report writing, analysis, and import; connectors to SharePoint, Notion, Snowflake, and custom MCP. "Available to all customers"; an admin activates it. Academic AI is free to try on verified accounts and does not "generate new hypotheses."	Singhal blog; Academic
Molecular biology	Separate product, bundled	CRISPR, cloning, alignments, primer design. In the free academic plan and the startup package.	Academic; Startups
Registry and inventory	Separate products	Uniqueness rules, lineage, locations, amounts. In the startup package, not the academic plan.	Registry; Startups; Academic
Bioprocess batch execution	Separate product	Drag-and-drop unit operations, experiment plans, guided batch execution from the recipe, ISA-88-compatible recipe model, Benchling Connect for instruments.	Bioprocess page
Studies	Named once	Listed among LIMS-for-pharma modules.	LIMS for pharma
Mobile ELN	Not stated	The FAQ says mobile access "is very dependent on the electronic laboratory notebook selected." No Benchling iOS or Android client is named.	Notebook FAQ
Open source	No	The free academic plan is vendor-hosted, not open-source.	Notebook FAQ; Academic

5. Architecture and deployment

Cloud only. Notebook is "secure cloud-based software" in a "single, cloud-native environment that's always up-to-date." Benchling publishes no on-premises Notebook option. Gilead's previous on-premise ELN was a different system. (Notebook; LIMS page; Gilead story.)
Subprocessors (9 April 2026). Amazon Web Services for infrastructure, storage, and Bedrock model services, processing "primarily" in the United States, Germany, and Ireland. Google for infrastructure and Vertex AI, primarily the United States, UK, EU multi-region, and Australia for temporary storage for customers there. AI inference "may be processed in any" AWS or Google region that supports the models. OpenAI for model services, primarily the United States, with global routing except realtime audio. Snowflake for data storage and warehousing in the United States. (Subprocessors.)
SLA (11 October 2022). Monthly uptime at least 99.5% (no more than 219 minutes of unavailability). Unavailability is ten consecutive minutes with no external connectivity and no data access. Scheduled maintenance is excluded with 72 hours' notice, capped at an average of four hours per month, 48 hours per year, and seven hours in a month. Storage: up to 1 TB; overages "at-cost, as published by Amazon Web Services for S3." No RPO or RTO. (SLA.)
GxP tenant. Validated Cloud is a dedicated tenant with quarterly releases; the page does not say whether it is a separate AWS account.
Free terms. Free services are "as is" and "as available," with no uptime warranty beyond what is expressly stated (section 6.2). Enterprise accounts fall outside those terms.

Security: SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 with AI in scope, aligned to ISO/IEC 27017:2015 and ISO/IEC 27018:2025 (Trust page, which also carries one sentence citing ISO/IEC 27001:2013). Not published: the transactional database (the developer page's "Postgres SQL data warehouse" is an analytics access path), a data-region menu beyond the subprocessor list, backup RPO/RTO.

6. Integrations

Kind	Fact	Weight
REST API	Developer Platform: REST APIs, webhooks, Python SDK, App Canvas, events, shareable apps. Trust: "Open REST APIs, fully documented."	Native interfaces. Not every instrument is connected.
SQL access	"Postgres SQL data warehouse" for third-party visualization tools, and "SQL database connection."	Data-access product, separate from REST.
Pre-built connectors	"pre-built connections to common R&D instruments and software," Benchling Connect, and AI Connectors for MCP. No instrument model list.	Named connector program.
AI connectors	June 2026: SharePoint, Notion, Snowflake, custom MCP, from inside the notebook.	2026 AI feature.
LIMS	One bullet: "Integrate with your LIMS to connect samples and results." No third-party LIMS named.	Marketing bullet.
Operational subprocessors	Datadog, Segment, Sentry, Zendesk, plus the model hosts.	Not R&D connectors.

7. Pricing and commercial model

Price: quote-only for enterprise. The pricing page shows no dollar amount. Benchling configures a product suite, add-ons, accelerators, an upgrade path for connectivity, storage, and validation support, and services for implementation, training, and optimization. (Pricing.)

Academic: free. "Completely free for academics," covering Notebook and Molecular Biology, not Inventory or Registry. AI is "free to try" on verified academic accounts. (Academic.)
Free terms. Use under the Terms of Service is free unless a written agreement says otherwise (section 5.1, 27 March 2026).
Startups. 15 or fewer scientists, under $25 million in funding, new customer. The package "isn't free" and costs "a fraction of standard enterprise pricing," covering notebook, molecular biology, registry, and inventory. No dollar figure. (Startups.)
Enterprise terms. Payment terms (15 September 2026) cover a subscription, Included Credits, Purchased Credits, and optional overage. Overage rates are "displayed for the Tenant in the Application Services," not on the public site. Currency is U.S. dollars unless the sales order says otherwise. Maximum Overage Amount: US$10,000 per tenant per billing period unless the sales order sets a higher ceiling. Default late interest: 1.5% per month. Payment processor: Stripe. (Payment terms.)
Storage overage is billed at Amazon's published S3 price. (SLA, 11 October 2022.)

Marketplace

AWS Marketplace lists "Benchling Platform," sold by Benchling, with "Contact your AE or cloudmarketplace@benchling.com for private offer." The table displays $0.01 next to that instruction: a private-offer placeholder, not a Notebook price. (AWS Marketplace listing.)

Public money that is not a list price

NIH NIAID purchase order 75N93021P00864.

Field	Value
Recipient	BENCHLING, INC., UEI UWAHPBL1VJA6 (parent: same)
Buyer	Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health NIAID
Description	"FOR COVID 19 RESEARCH, NOTEBOOK REGISTRY INVENTORY- LICENSE QUANTITY 2 EA.; PROFESSIONAL SERVICES, QUANTITY 1 EA. POP JUN 25, 2021-JUN 24 2022"
Amount	USD 20,000 total obligation and outlay
Signed	2021-06-24
Period	2021-06-24 to 2022-06-24. Record last modified 2023-05-23.
Place of performance	San Francisco, CA
Pricing type	Firm fixed price; not competed under SAP.
Classification	NAICS 541519 Other Computer Related Services. PSC AJ11 (general science and technology basic research).
Unit price	None. Two license units and one services unit are bundled, so $20,000 does not divide into a per-license price.

(USAspending award.) It is the only contract award naming Benchling on USAspending.

EU TED: six full-text hits for the Technical University of Denmark and ISAR Bioscience GmbH; no value in those notices (DKK 5,391,000, USD 317,000, USD 440,000, EUR 0.01) is attributed to Benchling. SAM.gov on 3 Oct 2026: no Benchling opportunities. UK Contracts Finder's keyword filter returned only unrelated notices, so no UK result is reported.

Questions a buyer should ask

Is Notebook priced alone, or only inside Bioresearch or another suite?
What is the license metric: scientist, tenant, module? The NIAID order says "license quantity 2" without defining it.
Which of Registry, Inventory, Molecular Biology, Workflows, Studies, and Bioprocess are in the quote?
Are Validated Cloud, IQ/OQ, and the quarterly change package included or extra?
What do Included Credits buy, and what is the in-app overage rate?
Is US$10,000 the overage cap, or has the sales order raised it?
Data region: United States, Germany, Ireland, or elsewhere, and does AI inference leave it?
Is 1 TB still the included storage, and are S3 overages still passed through?
If a team starts on free terms and moves to the MSA, which data-use license applies? The free terms include a public-view data license that does not govern enterprise tenants.
What does the AWS Marketplace private offer leave out compared with a direct sales order?

8. Implementation and validation support

The startup program is a pre-packaged, fixed-scope implementation "built from best practices across more than 700 implementations," taking "weeks, not months." No day count or rate. (Startups page.)

The Notebook FAQ says setup time "will vary" with training depth and whether inventory or registration is in scope. (Notebook page.)

Validated Cloud provides "expert guidance and documentation for the full validation process, including IQ/OQ, with quarterly change packages and risk assessments," and links a GxP white paper. Benchling publishes no completed IQ/OQ/PQ set.

The Trust page cites annual third-party penetration testing, SSO / OIDC, and data portability, without naming the tester or attaching the report.

The free terms disclaim fitness for a particular purpose. GxP commitments sit in the MSA and Validated Cloud scope, and validation remains the customer's.

9. Customer evidence

Account	What is public	Limit
NIAID	2021 purchase order for Notebook, Registry, and Inventory licenses plus professional services, COVID-19 research, USD 20,000.	No outcome study. Not manufacturing.
Gilead Biologics	Process development (cell line, purification, formulations); 63% less time on data capture, search, and collection; audit trails and review. The Bioprocess page quotes Peter Huang, Executive Director, Pharmaceutical Development and Manufacturing IS.	Vendor story; full case study gated. Not an MES.
Sanofi	1,500 scientists, 30 global teams, discovery through translational, including mRNA sequence registration. Quotes from Emma Labrot McIntosh and CEO Wickramasekara.	Vendor story. Platform, not Notebook only.
AstraZeneca	DNA assembly framework "integrated into Benchling"; "3 weeks"; cost savings "from 50 to 90%." David Öling, Associate Principal Scientist, quoted on automating Excel and in-house tools.	Vendor teaser. The customers page's "63%" tile is Gilead's figure, not AstraZeneca's.
New England Biolabs	One QC-manager sentence on the Validated Cloud page.	No scope or year.
Caltech, Frances Arnold lab	Dr. Christina Boville on sharing notebooks, sequencing data, plasmids, and protocols.	Academic free tier. Not GxP.
Series F list, 18 Nov 2021	"Over 600 companies," "22 of the 50 largest global biopharma companies," with Cutiss AG, Sanofi, Selexis SA, and Syngenta in Europe. Gilead's Frantz Gabeau quoted with the 63% figure.	Funding press. "Largest" undefined.
Oobli	Founder Jason Ryder on the startups page.	Startup testimonial.

Benchling's counts shift by page and year: "1,300+" organizations, "200,000+ scientists," "7,500+ universities" (2026); 600 companies and 200,000 scientists at more than 7,000 institutions (2021); 200,000+ scientists across 1,200+ biotechs alongside 1,300+ organizations (customers page). The figures are vendor counts and do not add up.

10. Competitive and third-party context

The Notebook FAQ names Microsoft OneNote, Excel, Labguru, eLabJournal, LabArchives, and SciNote as "low-cost" or point solutions. That is Benchling's own comparison. No independent evaluation or analyst quadrant of Benchling Notebook is public.

11. Changes and renames

2012: free academic access begins ("since 2012").
2020-05-28: Series D, $50 million (release title).
2021-04-14: Series E, $200 million.
2021-06-24: NIAID purchase order.
2021-11-18: Series F, $100 million, $6.1 billion valuation.
2022-10-11: SLA updated (99.5% uptime, 1 TB storage).
2026-03-27: free-offering terms updated.
2026-04-09: subprocessor list with AWS, Google, OpenAI, and global AI routing.
2026-06-03: Benchling AI rebuilt inside the notebook.
2026-09-15: enterprise payment terms for credits and overage.

The June 2026 headline "the ELN is dead" argues for an AI layer inside the same notebook, not a withdrawal.

12. Source library

Full URL list, discovery method, and procurement notes: ../sources/benchling-notebook-sources.md.

Claim-level records: ../evidence/benchling-notebook.evidence.jsonl.

Primary pages:

1. Overview

Boundaries:

Not a QC LIMS. The Notebook FAQ says an ELN "may be a stand alone or more effectively be part of a LIMS or LES platform" and calls Notebook "part of a LIMS productivity hub." The LIMS page lists Notebook as one module: "Notebook (ELN), Molecular Biology, Registry, Inventory, Workflows, Lab Automation, and Studies." Benchling publishes no GMP QC LIMS with stability, specification management, or certificate-of-analysis workflows. (LIMS for pharma; Notebook page.)
Not Bioprocess, and not an MES. Bioprocess is a separate product: recipe design, experiment planning, guided batch execution, and ISA-88-compatible recipe data for process development and tech transfer, built for process-development scientists, engineers, and manufacturing teams "from recipe design through tech transfer to manufacturing." Guided batch execution in process development is not a plant-wide GMP MES. (Bioprocess.)
Not Registry or Inventory. Registry is the sample and molecule catalog. Inventory and Registry "were built for industry requirements, not academic," and the free academic plan includes only Notebook and Molecular Biology. (Academic; Registry.)
Not an ERP, QMS, CDS, or serialization system.
Current product. On 3 June 2026 co-founder Ashu Singhal wrote that Benchling AI was rebuilt inside the notebook and that the notebook remains the interface. (Blog, 3 Jun 2026.)

2. Company and product identity

Point	Fact	Source
Free terms	Benchling, Inc., Delaware corporation, 680 Folsom Street, 8th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94107. Effective 27 March 2026. Cover site visitors and the free offering; enterprise tenant accounts excluded.	Terms of Service
Paid contract	Main Services Agreement or another written services agreement. Payment terms (updated 15 September 2026) name Benchling, Inc. and point to the MSA.	Payment terms; agreements index
Founding	Founders worked in academic labs and built "the first cloud platform designed for modern life sciences R&D." Academic access "Since 2012." Sajith Wickramasekara is CEO and co-founder; Ashu Singhal is co-founder and president.	About; Academic; Series F; AI blog
Series E	14 April 2021: $200 million led by Sequoia Capital Global Equities, with Altimeter, Byers Capital, Elad Gil, and existing investors.	Series E news
Series F	18 November 2021, San Francisco: $100 million at a $6.1 billion valuation, co-led by Franklin Templeton and Altimeter, with Tiger Global and Lone Pine. Proceeds for product and EMEA. Company claims triple-digit year-over-year revenue growth, a 70% increase in customer count, and a 169% dollar-based net expansion rate.	Series F page
Later rounds	No round after 2021 in the sources.	—
Address on site	680 Folsom St., 8th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94107; copyright 2026.	Product page footers
U.S. federal recipient	BENCHLING, INC., UEI UWAHPBL1VJA6; place of performance San Francisco, CA.	USAspending award
2026 navigation	Bioresearch, Biologics, Bioprocess, Automation, In Vivo, AI, Insights, PipeBio Antibodies, Validated Cloud, Platform. "PipeBio Antibodies" is a navigation label; no acquisition detail is published there.	Notebook footer

3. Pharma and biotech relevance

Benchling's pharma fit is R&D and process development, not commercial batch release.

21 CFR Part 11 and Annex 11 claims. Notebook page: "Meet 21 CFR Part11 compliance requirements with audit-ready electronic records and signatures." Trust page: built "for compliance with FDA 21 CFR Part 11, Annex 11 and EPA regulations" in a GxP environment. Validated Cloud: e-signature controls "per 21 CFR Part 11 and Annex 11," timestamps, and a complete audit trail. Vendor claims; no FDA clearance. (Trust; Validated Cloud.)
Outdated FAQ text. The Notebook FAQ cites "ISO/IEC 26001:2013," "EU-US Privacy Shield," and "21 CRF part 11." The Trust page lists ISO/IEC 27001:2022 (with one sentence still saying 27001:2013), the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, and 21 CFR Part 11. The Trust page is the current list.
GxP runs in a separate tenant. Validated Cloud is a dedicated tenant that separates GxP from non-GxP work, with controlled quarterly releases, IQ/OQ documentation, quarterly change packages, and risk assessments. Nermin Avdispahic, Quality Control Manager at New England Biolabs, is quoted on carrying insights into controlled development. (Validated Cloud page.)
Gilead process development. Gilead's Biologics team used Benchling for cell-line development, purification, and formulations, replacing email, Excel, and an on-premise ELN, and reports a 63% reduction in time spent on data capture, search, and collection, plus faster study review. Vendor story; no commercial GMP batch execution. (Gilead story.)
Sanofi discovery and translational R&D. More than 1,500 scientists across 30 global teams, including precision oncology, mRNA, and translational teams; sequences registered in Benchling. The quoted speaker is an mRNA data-analytics lead. Platform use, not Notebook alone. (Sanofi story.)

An FDA warning-letter search on 3 Oct 2026 found none naming Benchling as the inspected system.

4. Capabilities

Capability	Status	Fact	Source
Experiment entries	Notebook	Spreadsheets, images, sequences, protocols, notes; templates; automatic timestamps and version history.	Startups page
Collaboration	Notebook	Co-editing, tagging, comments, task assignments, role-based permissions.	Notebook page
Structured capture	Notebook	Templates and schemas; results linked to samples (requires Registry or another registration function).	Notebook page
Review and e-signature	Compliance pages	Part 11 and Annex 11 e-signature controls, timestamps, audit trail, user access management. The Notebook page says "audit-ready electronic records and signatures" without describing the signing steps.	Notebook; Validated Cloud
AI in the notebook	Notebook, June 2026	Upload raw data; the entry is generated with protocol, structured results, and linked samples; Skills for report writing, analysis, and import; connectors to SharePoint, Notion, Snowflake, and custom MCP. "Available to all customers"; an admin activates it. Academic AI is free to try on verified accounts and does not "generate new hypotheses."	Singhal blog; Academic
Molecular biology	Separate product, bundled	CRISPR, cloning, alignments, primer design. In the free academic plan and the startup package.	Academic; Startups
Registry and inventory	Separate products	Uniqueness rules, lineage, locations, amounts. In the startup package, not the academic plan.	Registry; Startups; Academic
Bioprocess batch execution	Separate product	Drag-and-drop unit operations, experiment plans, guided batch execution from the recipe, ISA-88-compatible recipe model, Benchling Connect for instruments.	Bioprocess page
Studies	Named once	Listed among LIMS-for-pharma modules.	LIMS for pharma
Mobile ELN	Not stated	The FAQ says mobile access "is very dependent on the electronic laboratory notebook selected." No Benchling iOS or Android client is named.	Notebook FAQ
Open source	No	The free academic plan is vendor-hosted, not open-source.	Notebook FAQ; Academic

5. Architecture and deployment

Cloud only. Notebook is "secure cloud-based software" in a "single, cloud-native environment that's always up-to-date." Benchling publishes no on-premises Notebook option. Gilead's previous on-premise ELN was a different system. (Notebook; LIMS page; Gilead story.)
Subprocessors (9 April 2026). Amazon Web Services for infrastructure, storage, and Bedrock model services, processing "primarily" in the United States, Germany, and Ireland. Google for infrastructure and Vertex AI, primarily the United States, UK, EU multi-region, and Australia for temporary storage for customers there. AI inference "may be processed in any" AWS or Google region that supports the models. OpenAI for model services, primarily the United States, with global routing except realtime audio. Snowflake for data storage and warehousing in the United States. (Subprocessors.)
SLA (11 October 2022). Monthly uptime at least 99.5% (no more than 219 minutes of unavailability). Unavailability is ten consecutive minutes with no external connectivity and no data access. Scheduled maintenance is excluded with 72 hours' notice, capped at an average of four hours per month, 48 hours per year, and seven hours in a month. Storage: up to 1 TB; overages "at-cost, as published by Amazon Web Services for S3." No RPO or RTO. (SLA.)
GxP tenant. Validated Cloud is a dedicated tenant with quarterly releases; the page does not say whether it is a separate AWS account.
Free terms. Free services are "as is" and "as available," with no uptime warranty beyond what is expressly stated (section 6.2). Enterprise accounts fall outside those terms.

6. Integrations

Kind	Fact	Weight
REST API	Developer Platform: REST APIs, webhooks, Python SDK, App Canvas, events, shareable apps. Trust: "Open REST APIs, fully documented."	Native interfaces. Not every instrument is connected.
SQL access	"Postgres SQL data warehouse" for third-party visualization tools, and "SQL database connection."	Data-access product, separate from REST.
Pre-built connectors	"pre-built connections to common R&D instruments and software," Benchling Connect, and AI Connectors for MCP. No instrument model list.	Named connector program.
AI connectors	June 2026: SharePoint, Notion, Snowflake, custom MCP, from inside the notebook.	2026 AI feature.
LIMS	One bullet: "Integrate with your LIMS to connect samples and results." No third-party LIMS named.	Marketing bullet.
Operational subprocessors	Datadog, Segment, Sentry, Zendesk, plus the model hosts.	Not R&D connectors.

7. Pricing and commercial model

Academic: free. "Completely free for academics," covering Notebook and Molecular Biology, not Inventory or Registry. AI is "free to try" on verified academic accounts. (Academic.)
Free terms. Use under the Terms of Service is free unless a written agreement says otherwise (section 5.1, 27 March 2026).
Startups. 15 or fewer scientists, under $25 million in funding, new customer. The package "isn't free" and costs "a fraction of standard enterprise pricing," covering notebook, molecular biology, registry, and inventory. No dollar figure. (Startups.)
Enterprise terms. Payment terms (15 September 2026) cover a subscription, Included Credits, Purchased Credits, and optional overage. Overage rates are "displayed for the Tenant in the Application Services," not on the public site. Currency is U.S. dollars unless the sales order says otherwise. Maximum Overage Amount: US$10,000 per tenant per billing period unless the sales order sets a higher ceiling. Default late interest: 1.5% per month. Payment processor: Stripe. (Payment terms.)
Storage overage is billed at Amazon's published S3 price. (SLA, 11 October 2022.)

Marketplace

Public money that is not a list price

NIH NIAID purchase order 75N93021P00864.

Field	Value
Recipient	BENCHLING, INC., UEI UWAHPBL1VJA6 (parent: same)
Buyer	Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health NIAID
Description	"FOR COVID 19 RESEARCH, NOTEBOOK REGISTRY INVENTORY- LICENSE QUANTITY 2 EA.; PROFESSIONAL SERVICES, QUANTITY 1 EA. POP JUN 25, 2021-JUN 24 2022"
Amount	USD 20,000 total obligation and outlay
Signed	2021-06-24
Period	2021-06-24 to 2022-06-24. Record last modified 2023-05-23.
Place of performance	San Francisco, CA
Pricing type	Firm fixed price; not competed under SAP.
Classification	NAICS 541519 Other Computer Related Services. PSC AJ11 (general science and technology basic research).
Unit price	None. Two license units and one services unit are bundled, so $20,000 does not divide into a per-license price.

(USAspending award.) It is the only contract award naming Benchling on USAspending.

Questions a buyer should ask

Is Notebook priced alone, or only inside Bioresearch or another suite?
What is the license metric: scientist, tenant, module? The NIAID order says "license quantity 2" without defining it.
Which of Registry, Inventory, Molecular Biology, Workflows, Studies, and Bioprocess are in the quote?
Are Validated Cloud, IQ/OQ, and the quarterly change package included or extra?
What do Included Credits buy, and what is the in-app overage rate?
Is US$10,000 the overage cap, or has the sales order raised it?
Data region: United States, Germany, Ireland, or elsewhere, and does AI inference leave it?
Is 1 TB still the included storage, and are S3 overages still passed through?
If a team starts on free terms and moves to the MSA, which data-use license applies? The free terms include a public-view data license that does not govern enterprise tenants.
What does the AWS Marketplace private offer leave out compared with a direct sales order?

8. Implementation and validation support

The startup program is a pre-packaged, fixed-scope implementation "built from best practices across more than 700 implementations," taking "weeks, not months." No day count or rate. (Startups page.)

The Notebook FAQ says setup time "will vary" with training depth and whether inventory or registration is in scope. (Notebook page.)

The Trust page cites annual third-party penetration testing, SSO / OIDC, and data portability, without naming the tester or attaching the report.

The free terms disclaim fitness for a particular purpose. GxP commitments sit in the MSA and Validated Cloud scope, and validation remains the customer's.

9. Customer evidence

Account	What is public	Limit
NIAID	2021 purchase order for Notebook, Registry, and Inventory licenses plus professional services, COVID-19 research, USD 20,000.	No outcome study. Not manufacturing.
Gilead Biologics	Process development (cell line, purification, formulations); 63% less time on data capture, search, and collection; audit trails and review. The Bioprocess page quotes Peter Huang, Executive Director, Pharmaceutical Development and Manufacturing IS.	Vendor story; full case study gated. Not an MES.
Sanofi	1,500 scientists, 30 global teams, discovery through translational, including mRNA sequence registration. Quotes from Emma Labrot McIntosh and CEO Wickramasekara.	Vendor story. Platform, not Notebook only.
AstraZeneca	DNA assembly framework "integrated into Benchling"; "3 weeks"; cost savings "from 50 to 90%." David Öling, Associate Principal Scientist, quoted on automating Excel and in-house tools.	Vendor teaser. The customers page's "63%" tile is Gilead's figure, not AstraZeneca's.
New England Biolabs	One QC-manager sentence on the Validated Cloud page.	No scope or year.
Caltech, Frances Arnold lab	Dr. Christina Boville on sharing notebooks, sequencing data, plasmids, and protocols.	Academic free tier. Not GxP.
Series F list, 18 Nov 2021	"Over 600 companies," "22 of the 50 largest global biopharma companies," with Cutiss AG, Sanofi, Selexis SA, and Syngenta in Europe. Gilead's Frantz Gabeau quoted with the 63% figure.	Funding press. "Largest" undefined.
Oobli	Founder Jason Ryder on the startups page.	Startup testimonial.

10. Competitive and third-party context

11. Changes and renames

2012: free academic access begins ("since 2012").
2020-05-28: Series D, $50 million (release title).
2021-04-14: Series E, $200 million.
2021-06-24: NIAID purchase order.
2021-11-18: Series F, $100 million, $6.1 billion valuation.
2022-10-11: SLA updated (99.5% uptime, 1 TB storage).
2026-03-27: free-offering terms updated.
2026-04-09: subprocessor list with AWS, Google, OpenAI, and global AI routing.
2026-06-03: Benchling AI rebuilt inside the notebook.
2026-09-15: enterprise payment terms for credits and overage.

The June 2026 headline "the ELN is dead" argues for an AI layer inside the same notebook, not a withdrawal.

12. Source library

Full URL list, discovery method, and procurement notes: ../sources/benchling-notebook-sources.md.

Claim-level records: ../evidence/benchling-notebook.evidence.jsonl.

Primary pages:

Benchling Notebook

1. Overview

2. Company and product identity

3. Pharma and biotech relevance

4. Capabilities

5. Architecture and deployment

6. Integrations

7. Pricing and commercial model

Marketplace

Public money that is not a list price

Questions a buyer should ask

8. Implementation and validation support

9. Customer evidence

10. Competitive and third-party context

11. Changes and renames

12. Source library

Sources note

Sources: Benchling Notebook

Vendor and company

Procurement

Benchling Notebook

1. Overview

2. Company and product identity

3. Pharma and biotech relevance

4. Capabilities

5. Architecture and deployment

6. Integrations

7. Pricing and commercial model

Marketplace

Public money that is not a list price

Questions a buyer should ask

8. Implementation and validation support

9. Customer evidence

10. Competitive and third-party context

11. Changes and renames

12. Source library

Sources note

Sources: Benchling Notebook

Vendor and company

Procurement