Looking for a Reaxys alternative?
Find millions of compounds, reactions, properties, and documents
Starting at just $40/month
Quick summary
- Saguaro Chem provides reaction search and structure lookup from $40/month without an institutional subscription
- If you need deep substance and property data or reaction conditioning tools, Reaxys may still be the better choice
- Self-serve signup, no Elsevier account or institutional contract required
What is Saguaro Chem?
Saguaro Chem is a web-based chemical reaction database built for independent researchers, students, and small labs. Search synthetic procedures, reaction conditions, yields, and source documents by chemical structure, substructure, similarity, or bibliographic metadata — without an institutional subscription.
About Reaxys
Reaxys is Elsevier's chemistry database, successor to the CrossFire Beilstein and Gmelin databases, and it shares a lot of the same strengths and limitations as SciFinder. The reaction search is powerful, the substance and property data is deep, and the indexing is professionally curated. It is widely used in academic and pharmaceutical research — and like SciFinder, it is behind an institutional subscription that requires a university or corporate Elsevier contract.
The frustration is familiar. You need to look up a reaction, you know Reaxys has the data, but you cannot get to it without going through your library or your procurement team. Saguaro Chem was built to solve that specific problem. Reaction search, structure lookup, and synthetic procedures from the literature, available to anyone with an email address and a credit card.
Is Saguaro Chem a good fit for you?
- Independent researchers who need reaction search but lack an Elsevier contract
- Small labs and startups priced out of enterprise database subscriptions
- Researchers who want reaction search without VPN or IP restrictions
- Teams evaluating alternatives before their Reaxys renewal comes up
Access and pricing
Reaxys is sold through institutional subscriptions negotiated with Elsevier. Pricing is not publicly listed and varies by institution size and existing Elsevier agreements. For independent researchers or small organizations, there is no straightforward way to purchase individual access. Saguaro Chem is built around individual access. You sign up online, choose between a $40/month individual plan or a $120/month team plan (3 seats), and start searching immediately. A 7-day free trial requires no payment information upfront.
Reaction data and search
Reaxys provides validated reaction data with deep substance and property information, including reaction conditioning tools that help filter and refine searches. Saguaro Chem takes a different approach to the same problem. Instead of a curated substance-property database, it focuses on extracting reaction data directly from the source literature. When you search for a reaction, you get stepwise synthetic procedures, reaction conditions, yields, and characterization data from the paper or patent where the reaction was reported. Both tools help you find reactions. The difference is in how the data is organized and what you get back.
When Reaxys is still the right choice
If your institution has a Reaxys subscription and your workflow depends on its validated substance-property data, reaction conditioning tools, or integration with other Elsevier products, sticking with Reaxys makes sense. Reaxys has decades of curated Beilstein and Gmelin data behind it, and its property search capabilities go beyond what Saguaro Chem currently offers. Saguaro Chem is designed for researchers who cannot access Reaxys and need a practical alternative for reaction search.
What Saguaro Chem brings to the table
- Search by structure, substructure, or similarity using SMILES, InChI, or the built-in Ketcher drawing tool
- Reaction and bibliographic metadata search by DOI, title, author, or journal
- Results from peer-reviewed journals and patents with full experimental context
- Stepwise synthetic procedures, reaction conditions, yields, and source passages
- No institutional license required. Sign up individually in under two minutes
- Transparent pricing starting at $40/month with a 7-day free trial
A custom chemistry database from 30+ journals and patents
6M+
Compounds
13M+
Reaction passages indexed
15M+
Characterization details
Extracted directly from 30+ top peer-reviewed journals and patent offices including:
- Nat. Chem.
- Organic Letters
- J. Org. Chem.
- Angew. Chem.
- Adv. Synth. Catal.
- Green Chem.
- Chem. Sci.
- USPTO Patents
Coverage is selective but spans a significant portion of each source's reaction literature.
Ready to try Saguaro Chem?
Individual
Individual access to Saguaro Chem
- Structure, substructure & similarity search
- Reaction procedures, conditions, yields & characterization data
- Source documents with DOI & patent links
- No VPN required — use from anywhere
Team
Team access to Saguaro Chem
- Everything in the Individual plan
- 3 seats included, up to 10 total
- Additional seats at $30/month each
- Centralized billing & team management
Enterprise
Custom deployment and integration for organizations
Pricing
Custom pricing for your organization
Tailored to your needs
- Everything in the Team plan, scaled to your org
- SSO / SAML & custom authentication
- Isolated or dedicated hosting options
- API access & custom data pipelines
- Dedicated support & onboarding — let's talk
No price increases without 90 days notice · Cancel any time, one click, no retention loops · Subscriptions auto-renew until cancelled.
All prices in USD. Digitally delivered subscription — access begins immediately after account activation. 7-day free trial requires a credit card; cancel before it ends and you won't be charged. All fees are non-refundable except as required by applicable law. View full subscription & billing terms
Have questions? Learn more about Saguaro Chem or contact us
Frequently asked questions
Reaxys pricing is not publicly available and is negotiated at the institutional level. Saguaro Chem individual plans start at $40 per month with a 7-day free trial.
Yes. Saguaro Chem is completely independent of Elsevier. You sign up directly with an email address. No institutional affiliation, Elsevier account, or library access is required.
No. Reaxys includes deep substance and property data inherited from the Beilstein and Gmelin databases. Saguaro Chem focuses on reaction search and synthetic procedures from the literature rather than comprehensive property data.
Yes. Saguaro Chem supports exact-match, substructure, and similarity search. You can enter a SMILES string, InChI, or draw a structure using the built-in Ketcher editor.
Saguaro Chem indexes data from over 13 million reaction passages — individual text segments extracted from source literature that describe a reaction. Not all data types are available for every record. Some entries include the raw source passage, others include annotated procedures, reaction schemes, or characterization data, and some may only contain the extracted compounds and their roles in the reaction. The specific data available depends on the source document and extraction quality.
Saguaro Chem indexes experimental reaction information from 30+ peer-reviewed journals, including: ACS Catalysis, ACS Chemical Neuroscience, ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters, ACS Omega, ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science, Advanced Synthesis & Catalysis, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Asian Journal of Organic Chemistry, Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry, ChemCatChem, ChemMedChem, Chemical Communications, Chemical Science, Chemistry – A European Journal, Chemistry – An Asian Journal, Chinese Journal of Chemistry, European Journal of Organic Chemistry, Green Chemistry, Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, Molbank, Molecules, Nature Chemistry, Nature Synthesis, New Journal of Chemistry, Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry, Organic Chemistry Frontiers, Organic Letters, Synlett, Synthesis, Tetrahedron, Tetrahedron Letters, The Journal of Organic Chemistry.
Yes. Saguaro Chem currently indexes reaction information from USPTO granted patents. We are actively working to expand patent coverage to additional patent offices in future updates.
Yes. Saguaro Chem extracts and indexes stepwise experimental procedures directly from source literature. Each procedure includes reagents, quantities, reaction conditions, and workup steps where reported, presented in a clean, structured format so you can reproduce the synthesis in the lab.
No. For reactions sourced from academic articles, Saguaro Chem does not display the source text or distribute PDFs. Instead, we try to show as much non-passage context as possible in the form of a reaction scheme and an annotated procedure, along with characterization details where available — though the specific data types available may vary by entry and are not necessarily comprehensive. Each entry links back to its original source so you can access the complete publication or supplementary information on the publisher's website.
Yes. Unlike academic articles, Saguaro Chem does display the raw source passages from patents for reactions sourced from patent literature. Each patent-sourced entry includes the relevant excerpt from the original patent text alongside the structured data, so you can read the procedure, conditions, and characterization details exactly as they appear in the patent.
Yes. We never log the contents of your search queries — no SMILES strings, no structure drawings, no text searches are ever recorded. Our infrastructure is hosted on SOC 2 Type II compliant hosting (Railway), accounts support two-factor authentication via Clerk, and IP addresses are truncated and hashed before any storage.
All payments are handled by our authentication provider, Clerk, which uses Stripe as its underlying payment processor. De Novo Chem never sees, stores, or handles your credit card information — the entire payment flow is managed by Clerk and Stripe.