For biotech startups, setting up a new lab is both exciting and daunting. Lab equipment alone can consume hundreds of thousands of dollars before the first experiment begins—and that’s before factoring in consumables, reagents, warranties, and maintenance. Without a careful startup budget, it’s easy to overspend on lab setup and run out of runway before reaching critical milestones.
This challenge resonates with founders, lab managers, and postdocs alike. Whether you’re buying pipettes and centrifuges or evaluating automation and analyzers, every purchase decision shapes cash flow, workflow efficiency, and investor confidence. A well-structured lab budget can mean the difference between proving your science in-house and being forced to delay R&D because funds are tied up in equipment.
Budgeting isn’t just accounting—it’s strategic planning. By understanding true costs, using benchmarks from the life science community, and building a step-by-step budget, biotech startups can optimize expenditures, save money, and set up labs that are cost-effective, flexible, and ready to scale.
This guide walks you through exactly how to budget for lab equipment as a startup—covering everything from upfront prices and consumables to preventive maintenance, procurement strategies, and smart allocation by milestone.
Step 1: Understand True Costs
Beyond sticker prices
One of the first surprises for startup founders is how quickly lab costs add up beyond the sticker price of equipment. A pipette might be a few hundred dollars, but once you factor in pipette tips, calibration, and replacements, the expense becomes recurring. The same goes for reagents and consumables—often overlooked in early budgets yet consistently one of the largest line items.
Bigger-ticket instruments like centrifuges, freezers, or automation platforms make the stakes higher. A centrifuge might cost $10,000–$20,000 upfront, but warranties, preventive maintenance, and software upgrades add ongoing obligations. In our experience, these recurring costs often rival the purchase itself over the life of the equipment.
Hidden expenditures in a new lab
Budgeting gets even trickier when you’re setting up a new lab. The list price rarely covers the full picture. You’ll need to think about:
- Procurement and installation: Shipping fees, setup services, and validation steps.
- Infrastructure upgrades: Extra HVAC, electrical systems, or safety certifications to support certain types of laboratory equipment.
- Maintenance and insurance: Service contracts and coverage for high-value instruments.
- Compliance needs: Calibration and documentation if your workflows touch regulated areas.
Talking to lab managers, technicians, or peers in incubators can give you a clearer sense of what these hidden expenditures look like in practice. We’ve seen first-time founders underestimate startup budgets by 20–30% because these items weren’t built in from the start.
This isn’t about scaring you off—it’s about seeing the whole picture so you’re not caught off guard. If we were budgeting for a new lab today, we’d assume sticker prices only tell part of the story and layer in buffers for these less obvious costs.
Step 2: Define Your Lab’s Needs
Match budget to workflow
Every startup lab looks different, so your budget should reflect your immediate workflows rather than an ideal end state. If you’re validating a diagnostic assay, for example, you might prioritize analyzers and consumables over automation. If you’re running exploratory research, core facilities or incubators may cover major instrumentation needs, letting you focus on essential items like pipettes, centrifuges, or freezers.
In our experience, the most efficient biotech startup budgets don’t try to build the “perfect lab” up front. They focus on what’s needed to reach the next milestone, then layer in new equipment or upgrades later.
Involve your team
Lab managers, postdocs, and technicians often have the clearest sense of what’s essential for day-to-day work. Bringing them into budget planning early can prevent overspending on tools that won’t be fully utilized. Partnerships with incubators, universities, or neighboring labs also create opportunities to share equipment, saving money on high-cost instruments you may only need occasionally.
If we were building a new lab today, we’d start with the core workflows, ask our team what they can’t live without, and look for shared resources before making big-ticket purchases. That approach keeps the lab startup budget lean without slowing progress.
Step 3: Build Your Budget
Create a detailed spreadsheet
Once you’ve mapped out your lab’s needs, the next step is turning that into a working budget. Most startups begin with a spreadsheet—Excel, Google Sheets, or management software—where every piece of equipment and supply is listed with its associated costs. A good starting template might include:
- Equipment name: Pipettes, centrifuges, analyzers, freezers, etc.
- Category: Major instruments, consumables, reagents, lab supplies.
- Upfront costs: Purchase price or initial lease payments.
- Ongoing costs: Preventive maintenance, warranties, consumables like pipette tips or reagents.
- Replacement cycle: How often the item needs upgrades or service.
- Notes: Providers, procurement timelines, or warranty coverage.
This isn’t just bookkeeping—it’s how you get visibility into where your lab budget is going. We’ve seen lab managers use this as a living document, updating it weekly as invoices come in or procurement timelines shift.
Benchmark against similar labs
Even the best spreadsheet is only as good as the assumptions behind it. That’s why benchmarking is key. Talk to peers at incubators, lean on core facilities, and connect with other biotech startups on LinkedIn to understand how they’ve allocated budgets. Healthcare and life science communities often share rough benchmarks for what percentage of startup budget typically goes to lab equipment versus consumables, personnel, or real estate.
If we were building a new lab today, we’d ask three questions to reality-check our allocations:
- How much of our budget is tied up in one piece of equipment?
- Are we overspending on upfront purchases where leasing or sharing might be smarter?
- Do our consumables and reagents budget line up with real-world use?
These conversations won’t give you exact numbers, but they’ll help you spot gaps or over-allocations before they become problems.
Factor in buffers and scenarios
No budget survives first contact with reality. Shipping delays, supply chain hiccups, and experimental pivots can all change your spending needs overnight. Building in a buffer—10–20% of total lab expenditures—is a common practice among experienced lab managers. Some founders also model two or three scenarios in their spreadsheets: a lean setup, a realistic setup, and an ideal setup. This helps guide decisions if fundraising comes in higher or lower than expected.
Use tools beyond spreadsheets
Spreadsheets are flexible, but management software can add accountability. Lab budget tools, procurement platforms, and even simple shared templates in Excel or Google Sheets can keep everyone—from lab technicians to finance leads—on the same page. Some startups also tag expenses to milestones, linking budget categories directly to R&D progress. This keeps spending aligned with the scientific story you’ll need to share with investors.
Step 4: Optimize and Allocate
Prioritize cost-effective decisions
A startup budget isn’t just about capturing costs—it’s about deciding where every dollar goes. That means weighing cost-effective options without sacrificing quality. Leasing equipment instead of buying outright can preserve cash for R&D. Sharing a piece of equipment through an incubator or core facility can save thousands. Refurbished instruments, bulk orders of consumables, and vendor partnerships can also stretch your budget further.
Automation is another area where startups often overspend too soon. While automation can streamline workflows, it’s rarely the most urgent need for a new lab. If we were in your shoes, we’d invest first where automation directly removes bottlenecks or reduces labor costs, then expand gradually as workflows mature.
Build in flexibility
Science rarely follows a straight path, and your budget shouldn’t either. Plan for upgrades as programs evolve and allocate a portion of your lab budget for unexpected needs, like new reagents or unplanned maintenance. Many experienced lab managers allocate funds milestone by milestone rather than by calendar year—keeping expenditures tied directly to scientific progress.
Step 5: Review and Adjust Regularly
Track real expenditures
Budgets aren’t static. The spreadsheet you built in Step 3 becomes far more powerful when it’s used as a real-time tracker. Compare planned vs. actual spending every month, and pay close attention to consumables like pipette tips and reagents that creep upward over time. These smaller costs are often where labs drift furthest from their original startup budget.
Lab managers and technicians can help identify trends early, flagging overuse of certain consumables or underutilized equipment. These insights give founders and finance teams a clearer picture of where to reallocate funds.
Update with each milestone
Each round of fundraising, new partnership, or lab expansion is a chance to revisit the budget. Some biotech startups treat this as a formal exercise—revising allocations and workflows with every milestone. Others do it more informally, adjusting quarterly based on burn rate. Either way, keeping the budget fresh builds credibility with investors, who want to see disciplined management of limited resources.
If we were running a new lab today, we’d build a habit of reviewing expenditures monthly and aligning budget revisions with major milestones. That cadence keeps your financial plan as adaptive as your science.
Final Thought
Budgeting for lab equipment is one of the earliest and most important financial exercises for a biotech startup. It’s not about getting every line item perfect—it’s about creating a flexible, transparent plan that helps you preserve runway, avoid surprises, and reach milestones with confidence.
By understanding true costs, defining needs clearly, and building a budget that adjusts with your science, you give your lab the foundation it needs to grow. Treat your budget less as a static document and more as a strategic tool. Done well, it’s as important as the experiments themselves.
Need lab equipment without draining your startup budget? Excedr helps biotech startups access cutting-edge laboratory equipment through flexible leasing options—so you can preserve capital and focus on science.