Pre-order · In development · Not yet released
Your instrument gives you a number
you cannot question.
CqVerify reads your qPCR instrument's own file on your computer, recomputes Cq with three independent methods, and shows you exactly how each number was produced — which baseline, which threshold, which points.
Nothing is uploaded. There is no account. The file never leaves your machine.
In development. No delivery date until we hit the order threshold.
The problem is not that you can't get a Cq value
It is that the Cq value arrives as a finished number with no visible derivation, and the software that produced it is closed. Reviewers ask how you got it. You can only restate the vendor's number. When you switch instruments, or when a colleague in another lab runs the same assay, the numbers do not agree — and there is no way to find out which one is right, or whether either is.
This is not speculation. It is in the vendors' own documentation.
Thermo Fisher, Design & Analysis 2.5.1 Release Notes:
"IMPORTANT: this may impact the Cq value for legacy data."
"Obsolete analysis result if the results come from an non-compatible software version."
Opening an old experiment in a newer build can silently change your Cq. The software tells you the result is obsolete. It does not tell you the old number, or the new one.
Applied Biosystems, official documentation:
"we cannot guarantee the performance of the software or provide support for the analyses"
…for data imported from versions the software no longer supports.
LinRegPCR training material, written by the algorithm's own author:
"Keep in mind that also the RDML export of the qPCR machine should contain raw, not baseline-corrected, data."
Note the word "should". Export shape is routinely wrong for the tool it is meant to feed. Users hit this as
list index out of bounds, or have to re-export from the instrument by hand.
What it does
1. Reads the vendor file, not a converted CSV
Bio-Rad .pcrd · Thermo .eds/.edt ·
Roche .ixo + .xml · QIAGEN .rex/.qrex.
We parse the original container so nothing is lost in an export step.
2. Tells you what shape the data is in, before an algorithm breaks on it
Baseline-corrected or raw? Contains negative values? Amplification count consistent with the stated chemistry? If a given Cq method cannot legally run on this file, we say so and say why — instead of returning a number or a stack trace.
Note: this is vendor-file-level inspection. It is not an RDML conformance check.
3. Recomputes Cq three ways, side by side
Single-threshold · Second-derivative maximum · LinRegPCR (efficiency-corrected regression). Reported together with the spread between them.
If all three land within a fraction of a cycle, your conclusion is not an artifact of one threshold choice. If they diverge, you need to know before a reviewer does.
4. Produces a report a reviewer can check
Every parameter used, every point fed to the fit, the imported vendor Cq next to each recomputed value, and an explicit statement of what the tool does not do. Built around the reporting fields MIQE 2.0 asks for.
5. RDML in, RDML out
Read and write RDML, so you can drop into the free ecosystem (rdml-python, RDML-Tools, qPCRDataMethods) for geNorm, normalisation and benchmarking. We do not reimplement those.
What this will not do
A verification tool that overstates itself is worse than no tool, because you will trust it. So, plainly:
- It will not reproduce your instrument's Cq exactly, and we will not claim it will. Vendors do not publish their baseline and threshold strategy. We guarantee reproducibility under stated parameters, not agreement with a black box.
- Three methods agreeing is not proof of correctness. A 2% random baseline error alone can swing a fold-change estimate between 0.7 and 9.5. Common-mode error is real, and we do not pretend three algorithms rule it out.
- No clinical interpretation. Research use only.
- No experiment design, no primer design, no melt-curve analysis.
- No geNorm or normalisation maths — free implementations already exist and do it well.
- No cloud sync, no account, no team collaboration.
- Encrypted runs are out of scope for v1.
Who this is for
Built for
- Researchers who built their normalisation workflow on qbase+ and lost it when the company was acquired and the software was retired.
- Anyone whose reviewer's methods section asked something the vendor's report could not answer.
- Groups comparing the same assay across two instruments, two labs, or two builds of the same software.
- People handling unpublished, patient or pre-patent data that cannot go to a vendor's server.
Probably not for you if
- You want a Ct number and nothing else. Your instrument already gives you that.
- Your institution already pays for Clarida and you are happy with it — Clarida is genuinely good, built by people who wrote geNorm and MIQE. Read the comparison below before choosing us over them.
- You need clinical-grade certification. We cannot provide it and will not pretend to.
How this differs from what exists
| Instrument software | Clarida | Free R tools | CqVerify | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Your data leaves the machine | No | Yes (EU-hosted) | No | No — stated as a promise |
| Reads vendor file directly | Own format only | Yes (4 vendors) | No | Yes (4 vendors) |
| Shows threshold/baseline choice | No | Partial | Partial | Yes, all parameters |
| Several Cq methods together | One | Yes | One per run | Yes, with spread reported |
| Checks vendor export shape | No | RDML level (free tier) | No | Vendor-file level |
| Pricing | Free with instrument | €15/experiment, Lab €4,800–9,600/yr | Free | €39 once |
Competitor figures checked against vendor pricing pages and release notes, October 2026. Paid tools listed for comparison, not endorsement.
Pricing
One-time payment, not per-experiment. Per-experiment billing makes you re-decide every time you analyse something, which is exactly the friction that stops people paying for software they need. You install it; you use it.
- One vendor file at a time
- Single-threshold method
- Data-shape inspection
- RDML export
- All four vendors, unlimited files
- All three Cq methods, compared
- Full parameter disclosure
- MIQE-oriented report
- RDML in and out
- Up to 5 seats
- Batch processing
- Command-line interface
Reservations are non-binding. If we do not ship, you are not charged.
Questions worth asking first
Why should I trust a tool built by someone outside the field?
Don't take our word for it — check the basis. Our claim is narrower than "correct". First, parsing is separated from algorithm: we publish a golden-file regression where our parse of each vendor file matches the vendor's own export, well under a tenth of a cycle, so you can see parsing errors and method errors independently. Second, our implementations are checked against the nine published methods compared in qPCRDataMethods — we report where our result falls in that distribution, not that we won. Third, every parameter of every calculation is written into the report, so the work can be redone by hand or by another tool. If a number cannot be reproduced from what we print, that is a bug worth reporting to us.
Why not just use Clarida?
For many labs, use Clarida. It is well built, and its authors wrote geNorm and MIQE — that is not a claim we can undercut. Two reasons you might pick us instead. First, Clarida processes data on their servers; if your data is unpublished, patient-derived, or pre-patent, "your file went to a vendor's cloud" is a sentence you may not be able to write in your methods section. Second, per-experiment billing means deciding to pay every single time you analyse something. If the deciding factor is neither of those, Clarida is probably the right answer.
Will the recomputed Cq match my instrument's?
Not necessarily, and we will not tell you it will. Vendors do not publish their baseline-subtraction windows or threshold rules, so there is nothing to match against. What we guarantee is that under stated parameters you get the same number every time, and that the number can be traced back to specific amplification points. When our value and the instrument's differ, the report tells you which step accounts for it.
What formats and instruments, concretely?
v1 targets .pcrd (Bio-Rad CFX Manager), .eds/.edt
(Applied Biosystems QuantStudio / Design & Analysis), .ixo with its
.xml sidecar (Roche LightCycler), and .rex/.qrex
(QIAGEN Rotor-Gene). Domestic Chinese instruments are a priority, not an afterthought —
none of them document RDML support, and their exports are XLS/CSV at best.
When will it ship?
No date, because we have not earned one. We will ship when the reservation list tells us there is something to ship for. If you need a guaranteed date today, that is a reason to buy from an established vendor instead, and we would rather you did that than waited on us.
Is this open source?
The format parsers and algorithm implementations will be open, with a test suite and documented limitations. MIQE 2.0 asks for analysis code to be available, and a verification tool with a closed black box would be a poor advertisement for itself.
If this is the tool you were looking for
Leave an email. If we ship, you hear it first, and the free tier is yours either way. If after reading the section above you think Clarida suits you better, that outcome is fine with us — we would rather be right about your situation than win the signup.