Use case ·
Sample tracking for academic labs, where the samples outlive the students.
tinysamples is sample tracking for research groups of 1–20: register a sample, log every action, search the history from a phone at the bench. Free for 100 samples with no card; the whole lab is $29/month flat, not per seat. No procurement cycle, no IT review, no sales call — a rotation student can start it this afternoon.
What actually goes wrong in academic labs?
People leave. That is the whole failure mode. A PhD student graduates and their samples become archaeology: cryptic tube labels, a box map that was true two years ago, a freezer spreadsheet last edited by someone who now works in industry. The label says good one. Nobody knows what is in box 7. And when a grant report needs the history of what was done to what, someone spends a day of funded time reconstructing it from margins of paper notebooks.
The record has to outlive the person who made it. That is the one thing a lab tracker has to do, and it is the thing tinysamples is built around: every sample keeps a timeline of who did what and when, and the timeline stays when the student goes.
Why not a LIMS?
Because the LIMS purchase never happens in a six-person group, and everyone in the room knows it: it is a budget line, an IT review and a rollout measured in months, for a lab that needs to know where the tubes are by Friday. If your work is regulated — 21 CFR Part 11, ISO 17025, CLIA — you genuinely need the LIMS, and we say so plainly: does your lab actually need a LIMS? For everyone else, the choice is a disciplined spreadsheet or a lightweight tracker, and both options are argued honestly at spreadsheets vs sample tracking software.
What does it cost a university lab?
Every price is public, in grant-friendly numbers. Free is a real plan — one user, 100 samples, no time limit — which means a rotation student can pilot it without asking anyone. Team is $29/month flat for up to 20 people: a student who joins in October costs nothing, and one who graduates in May saves nothing, because counting seats in a lab that turns over every year is a tax on doing science.
Free
1 workspace · 100 samples · 1 user
$0
Pro
Unlimited samples · custom fields · batches · CSV export
$12/mo
Team
Up to 20 users · shared workspace · audit export
$29/mo
When is tinysamples the wrong choice?
Regulated or clinical work needs a validated LIMS — not this. Ordering and reagent stock is procurement software (Quartzy’s territory, compared honestly at tinysamples vs Quartzy). Protocols and experiment write-ups need an ELN — tinysamples does not store them. And if the lab folds or we do, the exit is in writing: CSV export and 30 days of read-only access.
Free for 100 samples. No card.