MG-RAST (metagenomics, Argonne National Laboratory)
- Free allowance
- No published per-account byte or sequence-count quota; described as 'an open source, open submission web application server' and 'one of the biggest repositories for metagenomic data'.
- Verdict
- caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- institution?placeholder, not evidence; card unknown, phone unknown
- Binding limit
- retention-clampeddelete non-public data sets after 120 days
- Evidence
- reported2 sources; a third party said so
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-05checked 2026-10-21 (inherited); stale on 2026-11-05
| Free tier | No published per-account byte or sequence-count quota; described as 'an open source, open submission web application server' and 'one of the biggest repositories for metagenomic data'. unit mixed; metered on unstated |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
Retention is the trap: 'We reserve the right to delete non-public data sets after 120 days' — only PUBLIC deposits persist. |
| Identity | institution (placeholder) inferred from the category 'academic'; the source record states no identity cost, so this is a class assumption, not evidence |
| Egress | Free. 'Data publicly available in MG-RAST is available without restrictions', with an API site at api.mg-rast.org for programmatic access. |
| Per-object cap | not stated |
| Retention | not stated |
| Interface | rest rest |
| Tooling | Documented REST API (api.mg-rast.org/api.html) for submission and retrieval; web upload; standard metagenome formats (FASTA/FASTQ) with automatic phylogenetic/functional annotation. |
| Composes with | Unlimited public datasets per account; no published aggregate cap, so the unit is the dataset. |
| Reliability | Best-effort service with an explicit no-guarantee clause ('we cannot guarantee correctness of results, integrity of data, or privacy') and a 120-day deletion right on private data; funded by NIH/NSF grants, so continuity tracks grant cycles. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 2
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-21 | www.mg-rast.org/legal.html | 'We reserve the right to delete non-public data sets after 120 days'; 'Data publicly available in MG-RAST is available without restrictions' |
| 2026-10-21 | www.mg-rast.org/ | 'open source, open submission web application server'; API at api.mg-rast.org |
Unknown values 4
- per object cap notes: the field may be stated in a source that was not read
- per object cap stated: the field may be stated in a source that was not read
- retention notes: the field may be stated in a source that was not read
- retention stated: the field may be stated in a source that was not read