About

Most lists of AI protein-design tools tell you what a tool does. Few tell you whether a company is allowed to use it. This one does, with the source.

Who runs this

FoldScout is built and maintained by Dr. Zhiqiang Chen, founder of Seq2Study.

Disclosure: the Seq2Study connection

Seq2Study is a pre-launch service that coordinates wet-lab validation of AI-designed antibodies and proteins — expression, SPR/BLI, SEC and nanoDSF. People who use the tools listed here sometimes need that kind of service, so this directory is also a way for Seq2Study to become known. That is the whole commercial relationship:

• No tool maker has paid to be listed, and no listing is ranked or worded to favour anyone.
• Seq2Study does not make, sell or license any of the tools listed.
• Seq2Study appears only as a small “By Seq2Study” mark in the header, a short wet-lab validation module on tool pages, the footer credit and this page. It never affects a listing, status or order.

How each status is decided

• Licences are read, never recalled. Each status comes from a page fetched on the date shown — usually the repository's LICENSE file, otherwise the official licensing or terms page. Those URLs are listed as sources on every tool page.
• No guessing. If a statement could not be found, the field says unverified rather than a best guess.
• Code is not weights. Many projects ship permissive code with differently licensed, or unlicensed, model parameters. Where they differ, both are stated.
• Rights and price are two fields. “Commercial use” says whether a company is allowed to use the tool; “Is commercial use free of charge?” says what that costs. They often disagree — AlphaFold 3's weights cost nothing and still forbid commercial use, while BindCraft is MIT but needs a paid PyRosetta licence.
• What it does, concretely. Every entry states its inputs and outputs — what you feed it and what comes back — instead of a marketing line.
• Dependencies count. If a permissive tool installs a restricted dependency, the tool is marked accordingly (BindCraft → PyRosetta, for example).
• Nothing invented. The “when to use it” notes are qualitative judgement; no benchmark numbers are quoted.

The full dataset is public: tools.json.

Corrections

If a licence has changed or a status is wrong, please get in touch with the link that shows it. Corrections are re-verified at the source and dated on the Updated page.

Sponsorship

FoldScout has one clearly labelled sponsor slot, shown beside the tool directory and on each tool page. It is open now.

• Who reads this site. People choosing AI tools for protein and antibody design — researchers and engineers in academic labs and biotech companies who need to know which tools they can actually use.
• What a sponsor gets. Your name, a one-line message and a link in the sponsor slot on the home page and the tool pages, marked “Sponsor slot”.
• What a sponsor does not get. Sponsors cannot buy, change or soften a licence status, ranking or note. A sponsor's own tools are listed and judged by exactly the same rules as everyone else's.

Become a sponsor — [email protected] →