Colony.care vs Cayuse — Full Comparison for 2026
Summary
Cayuse is a cloud-based research administration platform. Its products span award management (sponsored projects, proposals, fund management), compliance (human ethics, animal oversight, hazard safety, outside interests), vivarium management and technology transfer. Cayuse Vivarium Operations handles animal orders, inventory with bar-coded cage cards, census by mobile cage card scanning, and billing. Colony.care does one thing, colony and vivarium management, and goes further into it: breeding, pedigree, 25 species, clinical records, per diem billing and CCAC and IACUC reports, with a free Starter plan and published pricing. If your research office wants grants, compliance committees and the vivarium under one vendor, look at Cayuse. If your priority is the colony itself, look at Colony.care.
At a Glance
| Dimension | Colony.care | Cayuse |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Colony and vivarium management | Research administration: awards, compliance, vivarium management, technology transfer |
| Access | Cloud, in the browser, installable as a web app | Cloud-based platform |
| Cage cards and census | QR code cards printed from the browser, scanned with a phone | Bar-coded cage cards, census by mobile cage card scanning |
| Animal orders | Orders, receiving, quarantine, vendor management | Order requests and approvals, recurring orders, orders emailed to vendors, receiving |
| Billing | Automated per diem, multiple rates, chargeback reports | Animal purchases, services and care days, with invoice generation |
| Animal protocols | Animal-to-protocol linking, expiry tracking, annual report export | Animal Oversight product; Vivarium Operations integrates directly with protocols |
| Veterinary care | Clinical cases, observations, treatments, surgery, necropsy | Vet Care product |
| Grants and awards | Not in scope | Sponsored Projects, Proposals (S2S), Fund Manager |
| Human ethics and outside interests | Not in scope | Human Ethics, Outside Interests |
| Technology transfer | Not in scope | Inventions |
Cayuse details are taken from cayuse.com (October 2026).
Scope: One Job vs a Whole Suite
The biggest difference is scope. Cayuse covers the administrative life of a research project, from proposal submission and funding management to protocol compliance, vivarium management and inventions. It is designed for the research office that wants one platform across those functions.
Colony.care does one thing: colony and vivarium management. It does not handle grants, human ethics protocols, conflict of interest disclosures or technology transfer. Inside its scope it goes deep, as the list below shows.
What You Get with Colony.care
- 25 species, each with its reproduction model: litters for rodents and rabbits, single-offspring gestation for NHP, clutches for zebrafish, amphibians and birds, and caste-tracked colonies for ants and termites
- Breeding calendar, interactive multi-generation pedigree with genotype overlay, and consanguinity checks
- QR code cage cards scanned with a phone camera, in a web app that installs on any phone
- Automated per diem billing with multiple rates and grant-ready chargeback reports
- Clinical cases, surgery records, necropsy, pharmacy inventory with a controlled substance log
- Environmental monitoring and training and competency records
- An audit trail on every record, kept indefinitely, with user attribution, before and after values, and exports for inspections
- SSO/SAML, SCIM provisioning and a REST API in the Lab plan
- A fully bilingual interface, in English and French
Colony.care Pricing
The Starter plan is free: 1 project and up to 100 animals. The Lab plan is CA$549.99/month, or CA$439.99/month billed yearly, with unlimited animals and members and 10 projects included. Additional projects are CA$34.99/month each. The Lab plan starts with a 14-day trial, no credit card required. You can sign up and start working in about two minutes without talking to anyone.
Compliance: Protocols and Audit
Colony.care's protocol features are built for the facility side: linking animals to approved protocols, tracking approval and expiry dates, flagging animals on expired protocols, and generating CCAC and IACUC annual reports. Colony.care does not handle protocol submission or committee review. That is the work Cayuse Animal Oversight is for, so the two can sit side by side: a committee system for protocol administration, Colony.care for day-to-day protocol-to-animal tracking.
When to Choose Colony.care
- You need depth in colony management: breeding calendar, pedigree, genotype tracking, 25 species.
- Your staff work at the cage with their phones.
- You want published pricing in Canadian dollars and a free plan to evaluate before buying.
- You need pharmacy inventory, surgery records, environmental monitoring or training records next to your animal records.
- Your team works in both English and French.
- You want to start today.
- You do not need grants, human ethics or conflict of interest modules from the same vendor.
When Cayuse May Fit Better
- Your institution already uses Cayuse for awards or compliance, and procurement prefers a single vendor.
- You need committee-side protocol management (submission, review and approval) from the same vendor as your vivarium software.
- Your research office wants one platform from funding through compliance to the vivarium and inventions.
- Your animal management needs centre on orders, census and billing, and the wider suite matters more to you than breeding and pedigree tools.
FAQ
Can Colony.care and Cayuse be used together?
Yes. They cover different work: grants and committee-side protocol administration on one side, the vivarium on the other (breeding, pedigree, cage cards, billing, clinical records, procurement and pharmacy). Colony.care's REST API gives your team programmatic access to animal data for integrations. Colony.care does not ship a pre-built Cayuse connector.
Which species does Colony.care support?
Colony.care supports 25 species with the right reproduction model for each: litters for rodents and rabbits, single-offspring gestation for NHP, clutches for zebrafish, amphibians and birds, and caste-tracked colonies for ants and termites. If your facility manages species beyond mice and rats, they all live in the same account.
How does Colony.care work on a phone?
Colony.care is a web app you can install on any phone. Scan a QR code cage card with the camera, record an observation, check the breeding calendar. It needs a connection; scans captured without one are queued and sent when the connection returns.