Lab Laps vs BenchBuddy
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Lab Laps
This app assists lab work with timed protocols, AI-assisted colony counting, dilution calculations, and other essential bench tools. It helps scientists and students organize experiments, manage materials, and document results efficiently, even offline.
- AI-assisted colony counting
- Timed experiment protocols
- Dilution calculator
- Medium/buffer builder
- Plate and gel annotation
- Offline functionality
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Lab Laps is your lab companion for timed protocols, colony counting, dilutions, and everyday bench calculations — all in one app. RUN EXPERIMENTS WITH CLARITY Build projects with steps, groups, materials, notes, and tables. Attach multiple timers to any step and see what is running, finished, or up next. On iPhone, active timers can stay visible with Live Activities. THE LAB TOOLS YOU USE MOST Colony Counter — AI-assisted counting from plate photos, manual refinement, and exportable results Dilution Calculator — fast single and serial dilutions Medium / Buffer Builder — multi-component recipes with automatic mass and volume math Plate Labelling — well maps with notes and color coding Gel / Blot Annotator — lane-level documentation Cell Counter, Master Mix, Cell Culture — plus calibration curves, unit conversion, molarity, notes, and more AI PROTOCOL SCANNING Turn a photo, PDF, or file into a structured project with materials and timed steps — fully editable before use. BUILT FOR THE BENCH Works offline-first with sync when signed in. Share projects via link. Reliable timer notifications. Optimized for iPhone and iPad. GREAT FOR bench scientists, students, and teams who want fewer missed steps and less app-switching at the bench. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://www.lablaps.com/app/privacy
BenchBuddy
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BenchBuddy bundles the calculations you reach for every day at the molecular-biology and biochemistry bench — from reagent weighing to PCR, gels, and pipetting steps — fast, in one place. Tools included • Reagent mass — how much to weigh from concentration × volume × molecular weight, with optional solvent correction from the actual mass weighed. • Dilution — the volumes you need from stock concentration, target concentration, and final volume. Supports multi-component mixes. • Serial dilution — build a serial dilution series from a stock; see per-tube transfer and diluent volumes, with a warning when transfers get too small to pipette accurately. • PCR master mix — build a master mix from reaction volume, reaction count, and overage, including per-tube additions. • Tm (melting temperature) — compute Tm and a suggested annealing temperature from a primer sequence, via the basic rule or the nearest-neighbor (NN, SantaLucia) method, with Na⁺ and oligo concentration. • OD260 → nucleic-acid concentration — concentration from A260 and nucleic-acid type (dsDNA/ssDNA/ssRNA), with A260/A280 purity. • Mass ↔ moles — convert amount (pmol) ↔ mass (µg) and copy number from length (bp/nt) or molecular weight. • Ligation ratio — insert amount (ng) needed for a target molar ratio (1:1–5:1) from vector/insert lengths and vector mass. • Hemocytometer — from your cell counts, compute cell concentration, viability (trypan blue), and seeding volume. Pick the chamber type (Neubauer improved / Bürker-Türk / Fuchs-Rosenthal / Thoma / custom) to auto-set the chamber factor. • OD600 → cell density — estimate density from OD600 with an organism preset (E. coli / yeast / custom) and dilution; editable factor; reverse to the OD600 for a target density. • Doubling time — doubling time, population doublings, and specific growth rate from initial/final counts and elapsed time (hours or days). • Confluency → cell number — estimate cell number from confluency (%) and vessel area (T25–T175, 6–96-well). • Passage planner — toggle seeding-density / split-ratio; computes suspension volume, medium to add, and the number of new vessels. • Gel predictor — preview how bands migrate from your ladder, agarose percentage, and sample band sizes. • Plate layouts — design 6–384-well (6/12/24/48/96/384) plate maps: group samples/conditions, set per-well concentrations and serial-dilution gradients down columns, and export as an image, CSV, or Markdown. • Bench steps — create pipetting steps over well ranges (e.g. A1:A12) and track progress in row- or column-major order. • Recipe saving & sharing — save the calculations you use often and recall them with one tap; export/import recipes as .benchbuddy.json files to share with labmates. • Result sharing — copy or share any calculation result as text, ready to paste into Notion, Slack, or your ELN. All calculations run on your device. The app is free and supported by ads.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: BenchBuddy at none against Lab Laps's 2. BenchBuddy also leads on iOS requirement (13.0 vs 16.4). Lab Laps's advantage is ads (none vs shown). On price, update cadence and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Lab Laps sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. BenchBuddy asks for nothing beyond the download.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 3 days. The most recent releases landed on October 25, 2026 and October 5, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Lab Laps | BenchBuddy |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (125 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 94.4% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 125 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 3 days | Every 3 days |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Freemium | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 16.4 | 13.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 91 MB | 32 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Lenard Szabo | HKraft Labs |
In-app purchases
Lab Laps
- Lab Laps Pro Monthly$4.991 Month
- Lab Laps Pro Yearly$29.991 Year
BenchBuddy
No in-app purchases









