Licensing overview

You can buy Matrix Science products from a number of regional distributors and marketing partners. Alternatively, Get a quote by contacting us directly. Sales enquiries for all products may be directed to one of the Matrix Science offices listed on our Contact page.

Mascot Server

Mascot Server is a powerful search engine for identifying proteins from mass spectrometry data. It is available for Microsoft Windows and Linux on Intel and AMD processors.

Entry level is a single processor (1 CPU) licence. There are no restrictions on the number of users submitting searches to the Mascot server or the size of the searches. If you require greater speed or throughput, you will want to run Mascot on additional processors. The hardware can be a single, multi-processor system or a cluster of systems connected by a standard LAN.

For licensing purposes, 1 CPU equals 4 cores. For example, a 1-CPU licence will use the first four cores in a system with 1 x 6-core processor or 2 x 4-core processors. If the system has more cores than are covered by the licence, the surplus cores are used for generating reports and web server/operating system overhead. A licence can be upgraded to use additional processors at any time.

The licence is perpetual, not an annual fee, and includes 1 year warranty covering technical support and all updates. After the first year, if you wish to continue receiving technical support and updates, you have the option of purchasing a support contract for 20% of the licence fee per year. Alternatively, you can buy a single version update for 25% of the licence fee.

When choosing hardware, choose a system with one or two fast processors; 64-bit OS; 16GB RAM or more; maybe 1 TB of storage; no great benefit to using RAID. There are more detailed notes in PC hardware for Mascot Server.

Mascot Daemon

Mascot Daemon, a Windows client for automating search submission, is bundled with Mascot Server. It can be installed as required without additional licence fees.

Mascot Distiller

Mascot Distiller is a Windows workstation application, for installation on a single PC. Distiller offers a single, intuitive interface to a wide range of mass spectrometry data files and a unique peak picking algorithm. The basic functionality can be enhanced by adding optional Toolboxes. Multiple users can share a single installation by logging in to Windows as different users via Windows Remote Desktop or similar (requires a server edition of Windows). We recommend installing on a PC with fast multi-core processor(s), 64-bit Windows, and at least 32GB of RAM. When processing a multi-file project, Distiller can use all of the available processing capacity.

Mascot Parser

Mascot Parser is a toolkit providing an object oriented interface to Mascot Server result files and Mascot Distiller project files. Mascot Parser makes it easy for programs written in C++, C#, Python, Java or Perl to access Mascot results. It is free for all purposes except redistribution as part of a commercial software package.