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 |
|---|---|---|
| Runs on | Any browser, any device. Nothing to install. | Windows desktop app. |
| Price | Flow cytometry is free for you and one collaborator. Academic teams pay a flat per-lab rate. | Per-seat license, often bundled with Beckman Coulter instruments. No free tier. |
| Gate shapes | Rectangle, polygon, ellipse, quadrant, range, and boolean. | Rectangle, polygon, ellipse, quadrant, range, and boolean. |
| Reusing a gating strategy | One strategy applies to every file in the analysis. Save it as a template the whole project shares. | A protocol re-applies to new files. |
| Compensation | From the file's spillover matrix, a CSV you import, or computed from single-stain controls. No spectral unmixing. | From the file's matrix, edited by hand, or computed from single-stain controls. |
| Dimensionality reduction | UMAP, t-SNE, PCA. | Radar plots, and t-SNE through tSNE-CUDA. |
| Clustering | SOM (FlowSOM-style), graph (PhenoGraph-style), K-means, DBSCAN. | Not available. |
| Reads | FCS 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2. Gating from FlowJo 10 .wsp and Gating-ML 2.0. | FCS and LMD. |
| Export formats | Gated populations as FCS 3.1. Gating as .wsp or Gating-ML 2.0. Statistics as Excel or CSV. Plots as PNG or SVG. | Statistics to Excel. Analysis and protocol files in its own formats. |
| Sample metadata | Each file links to a sample record with condition, timepoint, and genotype. | Keywords read from the file. |
| Acquisition software | None. Acquire with your cytometer's software and import the FCS. | Kaluza Acquisition, a separate product for Beckman Coulter instruments. |
| Publication figures | Figure editor for multi-panel figures from live plots and charts. | Report layouts in the tool. |
| Who can open it | Everyone on the project, in the browser, at the same time. | One person at a time, by passing the analysis file. |
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 comes 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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