# Benchling Reviews 2026. Verified Reviews, Pros & Cons | Capterra > Is Benchling the right Electronic Lab Notebook solution for you? Explore 20 verified user reviews from people in industries like yours to make a confident choice. Source: https://www.capterra.com/p/182464/Benchling/reviews --- Benchling 4.9 (20) [View alternatives](https://www.capterra.com/p/182464/Benchling/alternatives/) Provider data verified by our Software Research team, and reviews moderated by our Reviews Verification team. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/our-story/) * * * Last updated March 13th, 2026 # Reviews of Benchling Ease of use 4.5 Customer Service 4.4 ## Pros and Cons in Reviews SR Saba R PhD STUDENTBiotechnology, 10,001+ employeesUsed the software for: 6-12 months. “I am very satisfied and recommend to new labs or established lab to keep you data secure an trackable.“ September 22, 2022 JJ Janelle J Biomanufacturing LeadBiotechnology, 11 - 50 employeesUsed the software for: 6-12 months. “It is not intuitive for first time users and takes some practice to learn all the features.“ November 9, 2023 SM Shabnam M Graduate StudentResearch, 2 - 10 employeesUsed the software for: 1-2 years. “Also, if I had any questions, the customer service providers were always helpful and accessible.“ August 3, 2020 ## Showing most helpful reviews Showing 1-20 of 20 Reviews Sort by: Most Helpful Rating Company Size Reviewer's Role Length of Use Frequency of Use Jennifer B. Post Doctoral Research Fellow Higher Education Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Lab friendly online notebook and so much more" November 9, 2019 5.0 Having all the laboratory notes online in an issue to use format allows for quick sharing of protocols and real-time collaboration on the same projects. Pros Benchling is easy to use, great for everyday notes and protocol design. It makes sharing experimental details and lab notes simple. In addition, easy to search for keywords throughout all the notebooks, never lose data or key pieces of information again. The molecular biology suite is the best, easy cloning and sequences alignments. Cons Would love to have access to sample repository and tracking but need the paid version. Better integration with storage options for big data. Review Source JJ Janelle J. Biomanufacturing Lead Biotechnology Used the software for: 6-12 months ### "Functional and Customizable " November 9, 2023 4.0 Pros How customizable all features are for your specific process and how willing and available customer support is to help. Cons It is not intuitive for first time users and takes some practice to learn all the features. Review Source SS Stephanie S. Research Associate Biotechnology Used the software for: 6-12 months ### "Benchling Implementation at Tenaya" November 16, 2019 4.0 Overall, Benchling has hugely helped our company to come together to decide what the important pieces of our work are that we need to capture, and how to efficiently pass information off team to team. The implementation team has been incredibly helpful in the process. Pros I am thrilled to be able to easily tailor the software to the individual needs of scientists as everyone plays incredibly different roles, but we all come together to look at the data as a whole to make large company decisions. We have not been using the software as an entire company just yet, but we have liked the implementation process with Benchling's support to create the platform our company needs to be successful. Cons One of the challenges we have found as we've begun to use Benchling more is that there are some features we've gotten used to using and rely on, but then they will disappear. We understand Benchling is constantly changing and tweaking to better help R&D, but some changes come out of nowhere and mess some of our plans up. Most changes are minor here or there, but when needing to count on a software for easier day-to-day use you need the simple things to work. Review Source SR Saba R. PhD STUDENT Biotechnology Used the software for: 6-12 months ### "Cheap and Best R&D Cloud platform for start-ups /labs" September 22, 2022 5.0 I am very satisfied and recommend to new labs or established lab to keep you data secure an trackable. Pros Inventory building is very useful in this software. Cons Sometimes, copying data or exporting data from benchhling to external folders are difficult Reason for choosing Benchling I am very confidents using benchling and its easy, simple an meet the requirements. Review Source MM Megan M. PhD Candidate Research Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Our lab loves this website" January 20, 2022 5.0 Overall I'd highly recommend this for any academic lab planning to use an ELN. Pros This is a great way to have a collaborative electronic lab notebook among a lab. Easy to share protocols and lab notes, and it's also easy to update the notebook by date and topic. Overall it will be hard to go back to a printed lab notebook after using Benchling. I also like the sequence feature, I refuse to use anything else (ex. Geneious, ApE) for sequence analysis. Cons Sometimes it can be slow, especially when uploading files to the notebook pages. Also, it would be nice to have photos in a grid form rather than one per line in the notebook. It can make the entries lengthy if there are so many pictures (ex. plate pictures). Review Source JL Jessica L. Life Science Research Professional 1 Research Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Wonderful digital lab notebook" February 11, 2021 5.0 Overall, Benchling has been wonderful for switching from an archaic experiment documentation system to a well organized, collaborate online system. Pros Benchling is a very useful tool for organizing and collaborating on scientific data online. Online notebooks make it very easy to record and find previous data, which you will always have to cross reference much later after your experiment. The different folders and entries are very easy to organize, and you can create shared collaborative documents as well as your own private notebooks. Cons One small Con is that adding figures/images to the entries takes up a lot of space in the notebook, since text and other images/tables/figures cannot wrap around each other. This means that if you're including many images, your entry will be very long, and you can't include too many images together. Review Source VR Verified Reviewer Postdoc Biotechnology Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Benchling is a nice tool for molecular biology" March 3, 2020 5.0 I have been using Benchling for a few years and I am always happy with it. It has been continuously improving and they really care about the needs of their users. Pros The user interface is very intuitive and friendly. The functions are very powerful. It is a very nice replacement of many expensive commercial softwares. Cons Some functions are limited to company users. Review Source SA Suomia A. Graduate Student Hospital & Health Care Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Ease of Use" August 14, 2020 5.0 Over all, I honestly love benchling. Its so useful when it comes to cloning and helps visualize the plasmids so easily for me, and students that I teach. I love how I can edit and work on my projects easily, and there is so much easy ways to edits and write notes for reference. I will continue to use benchling in the future b/c i love it so much! Pros Because I work with plasmids, the primer creation and alignment tool are my favorite parts of Benchling. I often need to create primers to double check my plasmid is correct and they have been so easy to make! Especially since benchling remembers the primers that I make, and logs them in by name and location on the plasmid for future reference. The alignment tool has also saved me alot of time when it comes to double checking my plasmid size and inserts. Cons While i get the location and placement of the Projects tab, that has been a frequent headache to me. It brings up issues when projects are shared by other people in the lab and they only allow me to just see the project and not edit it. I feel like there should be a tool where we can take a project someone shares with us, and edit it and save it easily to our own files. Constantly copying and pasting plasmids from one location to another gets annoying after the 30th plasmid. Review Source SH Sefanne H. Laboratory coordinator Research Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Perfect for designing, storing and sharing sequences" April 19, 2023 5.0 Pros Easy to use. Perfect for importing/exporting, modifying and analyzing DNA sequences. It's an essential tool for us when doing any cloning work and it visualizes everything nicely. Cons Some functionalities take a little bit of figuring out but overall it's easy to use. Once you know some of the tips and tricks it's quick and instinctive to use Review Source DD Douglas D. Student Biotechnology Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Best software for DNA sequences analysis" December 13, 2021 5.0 Pros Its interface is really friendly, it is easy to use, and has lots of analysis options for DNA sequences. Cons When you open a saved sequence, the tab does not closes automatically, leaving many tabs open. Review Source TK Thomas K. Sr research assistant Pharmaceuticals Used the software for: 2+ years ### "The best molecular biology software I ever used in 10years+ of research" February 26, 2021 5.0 I use it almost everyday when I have cloning to do or protein analysis and I love it. I used a lot of different software in the past and this one is the best by far. Pros It is great to use, super easy to go from DNA to protein. Easy to visualize everything and to align sequences. I just can't do without anymore. Cons I would like the restriction enzyme sites to be better highlighted on the sequence sometime, but it is really minor. Review Source ZH Zachary H. Postdoctoral Scholar Higher Education Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Intuitive, Effective, Impactful" April 11, 2020 5.0 Pros Benchling lets me organize all of my cloning projects and plasmid maps easily and rapidly. It has been an essential tool to both my graduate and post-graduate careers as an academic. Cons As an educator, I work with a number of undergrads training them to clone. The one major problem I've had with Benchling is how easy the cloning wizards make designing constructs. Students come to me with the right primers and right strategy, but when pressed often admit to using the cloning wizard to come to the answer -- not the best moments for me as an educator when I want to challenge them, but certainly a testament to how easy (and powerful!) the software package is! Review Source AV Aurore-Cecile V. Research Assistant Research Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Essential tool for Molecular Biology projects" June 29, 2021 5.0 This tool is a must have when doinv molecular biology to get organized, save sequncing result and share projects. Much more easy to use than many other softwares. Pros Easy to visualize nuckeotude sequence and translation in amino acid. Possibility to save protein sequence as well. Wonderfyl tool for seqyence alignment and anylyze sequancing results. Essential tool for lab database and sharing map. Cons The only thing I don't like is the restriction enzyme tool. I found this tool and the management list not easy to use. Review Source SM Shabnam M. Graduate Student Research Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Benchling Review - Satisfactory " August 3, 2020 5.0 Overall, I have been very pleased with Benchling, and it has made cloning and sequencing alignment so much easier. I have recommended this software to my colleagues since it has been very helpful for my cloning work. Pros I found Benchling to be very user-friendly, and easy to upload sequences. Additionally, I am able to keep my sequences and primers very organized by putting detailed descriptions/sections. Also, the assembly tools make cloning more clear and less room for error. Also, if I had any questions, the customer service providers were always helpful and accessible. Cons Thus far, I have not found any missing features or any areas of improvement. Review Source GZ Guofeng Z. Postdoc Biotechnology Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Michael lin lab ASAP team" March 3, 2020 5.0 User friendly and productive. Pros I can easily use sharing folder to share the maps to my labmates. Cons It's complicated to delete a file and inconvienent to undo my modification on my maps if i mistakenly delete or revised my sequence. Review Source WA Wyatt A. Research Assistant Higher Education Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Great tool for molecular biology" February 13, 2020 5.0 Benchling has allowed us to maintain lab records and find old plasmids with ease. It satisfies all of our molecular biology organization needs. Pros Makes organizing all of our lab plasmids incredibly easily. Simplifies sequencing and allows me to easily look at sequences at a glance. Cons I don't understand why I can't just delete sequences without having to archive them first. Review Source BB Bryan B. Lab Assistant Research Used the software for: 6-12 months ### "BENCHLINGTASTIC!" February 13, 2020 5.0 Great interface to use! Pros Benchling makes it easier to keep track of my experiments and stay organized with DNA templates, plasmids, etc. Cons Sometimes hard to manipulate trash/archived files Review Source KG Kristine G. Assistant Professor Research Used the software for: 6-12 months ### "Great ELN and sequencing software " July 14, 2020 5.0 Pros Very easy to use, integrates with other software Cons It took a little time to get used to it but once I did it was great. No complaints Review Source MM Meghan M. Graduate student Biotechnology Used the software for: 6-12 months ### "Great Product" August 3, 2020 5.0 Pros I think Benchling is easy to use and visually appealing. Great product! Cons The product met all of my needs. So, there was nothing I disliked about it. Review Source AK Amina K. lab tech Research Used the software for: Less than 6 months ### "Great Software! " August 26, 2020 5.0 Pros There are so many things that can be done and at no cost! This software is user-friendly and easy to work with. Cons So far I have not experienced any troubles with this software. 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