Flow cytometry analysis without a desktop license
Kaluza vs. Conspecta
A feature-by-feature comparison.
Kaluza is Beckman Coulter's desktop flow cytometry software, common in core facilities and often bundled with its instruments, with fast interactive gating and compensation, licensed per seat on Windows. Conspecta runs gating, compensation, t-SNE, and FlowSOM-style and PhenoGraph-style clustering in any browser, ties every FCS file to the sample it came from, and includes flow cytometry free for you and one collaborator.
| Capability | Conspecta | Kaluza |
|---|---|---|
| Platform | Runs in any modern browser. Nothing to install and no license service. | Desktop app for Windows, licensed per seat. No macOS or in-browser version. |
| License & cost | Flow cytometry is free for you and one collaborator. Academic teams pay a flat per-lab rate rather than per seat. | Per-seat license, often bundled with Beckman Coulter instruments. No free tier. |
| Gating | Rectangle, polygon, ellipse, quadrant, range, and boolean gates with reusable, shareable hierarchies. | Fast interactive gating with real-time updates across plots. |
| Compensation | Matrix compensation from embedded spillover, imported CSV, or auto-computed from your data. | Compensation built in. |
| Dim. reduction & clustering | UMAP, t-SNE, and PCA, plus SOM and graph clustering (FlowSOM-style and PhenoGraph-style), K-means, and DBSCAN, all in the browser with no plugins. | Interactive plots and radar views, with limited dimensionality reduction and clustering. |
| File formats | Imports standard FCS files, plus FlowJo 10 .wsp workspaces and ISAC Gating-ML 2.0 for gating. Exports gated populations as FCS 3.1, gating strategies as .wsp or Gating-ML 2.0, and statistics to Excel and CSV. | Reads FCS and LMD. Exports statistics and its own analysis files. |
| Sample context | Every FCS file links to the sample it came from, with timepoint, condition, and genotype metadata. | Files only. Sample and metadata management lives in another tool. |
| Figures | Multi-panel publication figures built from live flow plots and stat charts. | Plots and reports within the tool. |
| Collaboration | Shared, reusable gating templates your whole team works from. | Single-user desktop. Sharing means passing files around. |
| Extras | Cell-cycle, proliferation, kinetics, MFI comparison, and QC time-gating built in. | Tight integration with Beckman Coulter instruments and their acquisition workflow. |
How the workflows differ
Why labs look for a Kaluza alternative
Kaluza is a capable desktop tool, and its gating feels fast because everything updates live. The friction usually isn't the analysis, it's everything around it. It runs on Windows only, holds a per-seat license, and keeps analysis in files handed from one person to the next. A lab on Macs, or one that wants an analysis a collaborator can open without the software, ends up working around those constraints.
The same analysis, on any device
Conspecta moves the everyday flow workflow into the browser. You open an FCS file, draw gates, apply a compensation matrix, and run t-SNE or SOM clustering without installing anything or holding a seat. Because it's a browser tool, the researcher on a Mac, the student on a Chromebook, and the PI reviewing on a laptop all open the same link and see the same analysis.
Flow data that stays connected to the rest of your work
The clearest difference isn't the gating, it's what happens after. Kaluza analyzes the FCS file in front of it and leaves the rest to you. The sample it came from, the timepoint, the genotype, and the figure it ends up in all live in other tools. In Conspecta, a gated population stays attached to the sample it was measured from, so its timepoint, condition, and genotype travel with it, and a figure you build pulls straight from that analysis.
In practice that means less of the manual bookkeeping that causes mistakes. You aren't exporting statistics into a spreadsheet, relabeling wells, and pasting plots into a separate figure tool, so there's less chance of a mislabeled condition or a figure built from a stale export.
What switching actually looks like
Moving over is mostly a one-time step. You upload your FCS files and rebuild your gating strategy once, then save it as a template the whole team gates from, rather than passing a file around. If any of that gating already exists as a FlowJo 10 workspace or a Gating-ML 2.0 file, the format FlowJo, Cytobank, and the R CytoML packages write, it imports directly instead, and a workspace is checked against your own files population by population before you keep it. Your results export back out as FCS and Excel or CSV, and the strategy itself as .wsp or Gating-ML, so nothing you do is locked into the tool.
Kaluza vs. Conspecta: the bottom line
Switch to Conspecta if
- You want to gate, compensate, and cluster (FlowSOM-style SOM, PhenoGraph-style graph, t-SNE) in the browser with nothing to install
- You want flow cytometry free for you and one collaborator, since Kaluza has no free tier
- You want every FCS file tied to its sample, timepoint, and genotype
- You work on a Mac or need collaborators to open an analysis without the software
- Your team should share one gating template instead of passing files around
Stay on Kaluza if
- You're standardized on Beckman Coulter instruments and want the software that ships with them
- You unmix spectral data in your analysis software rather than on the instrument, since Conspecta reads unmixed files but cannot unmix raw detector channels itself
- You need a fully offline desktop tool that works without a network connection
- Your instruments write LMD files, which Kaluza reads natively and Conspecta does not read at all
Or read the flow cytometry guide.
Kaluza and all other product names and trademarks on this page belong to their respective owners. Conspecta is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by them. This comparison is written by Conspecta, and we have tried to be fair, including where Kaluza does things we do not. Pricing, packaging, and feature details about Kaluza were last checked in July 2026 and may have changed since — check their site for current details.
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