Flow cytometer fleets are aging. A new spectral sorter runs around $570,000 to $760,000.

In 2023, David Leclerc, technical director of the University of Chicago’s Cytometry and Antibody Technology core facility, wrote about a retirement that came early. The facility had bought a BD FACSAria II cell sorter in 2009. Its operating system, Windows XP, was older still, having debuted in 2001. When the computer’s motherboard failed, no modern computer could take the sorter’s video card. The facility pulled the instrument in 2022. “Long story short, the AriaII was a victim of computer obsolescence,” Leclerc wrote. “So this perfectly functional cell sorter was dismissed because we couldn’t connect a computer to it.” He called it “a sad ending for that instrument,” which is “stuck in a closet now.”

The story is not be an anomaly as many labs with flow cytometers have had them for several years. A June 2020 survey of 146 flow cytometry core facilities, published in 2023 in the Journal of Biomolecular Techniques, found the average analyzer then was 9 years old and the average sorter 8.5 years old. Asked what would push them to replace a sorter, 31.5% of respondents cited the manufacturer ending service. Changing user needs and chronic breakdowns each drew 21.3%.

Some core facilities are retiring their filter-based cell sorters in favor of spectral ones. Rockefeller University’s Flow Cytometry Resource Center, for instance, scheduled its BD FACSAria sorters to be phased out in January and February 2026, leaving three spectral sorters (one BD FACSDiscover S8 and two Cytek Aurora CS) and one conventional sorter. Cytek reported an installed base of 3,933 instruments after adding 142 units in the second quarter of 2026.

Replacing a sorter today often means buying a spectral instrument, and comparison-shopping remains difficult. Vendors, of course, do not tend to post U.S. list prices, configurations vary, and the service contract is usually sold separately. Public records fill in part of the picture: NIH shared-instrumentation grants, federal purchase orders and European tenders, although, if anything, they only provide a rough sense of pricing. Across those sources, the middle half of recorded prices for the three spectral sorters with enough records runs from about $570,000 to $760,000, compared with $410,000 to $536,000 for BD’s conventional high-speed cell sorters. The aforementioned survey put a sorter’s average annual maintenance at about $25,000.

The flow cytometer lineup has also changed quickly over the years. Since May 2024:

• Agilent launched the NovoCyte Opteon (May 2024).
• Beckman Coulter Life Sciences began selling the CytoFLEX mosaic (March 2025), a spectral detection module that attaches to certain existing CytoFLEX analyzers.
• BD launched the FACSDiscover A8 (May 2025), which adds real-time cell imaging to spectral analysis.
• Thermo Fisher’s Attune Xenith and Cytek’s Aurora Evo both launched on May 29, 2025.
• Cytek showed the Borealis at CYTO 2026 in June, with seven lasers and 110 fluorescence detectors, sold for now only through an early access program.
• Waters launched the BD FACSDiscover A7 on Sept. 14, 2026.

BD remains the legal manufacturer of the instruments after Waters completed its combination with the former’s Biosciences and Diagnostic Solutions unit.

What public buyers paid for spectral cytometers

Public records put spectral analyzers on a wide ladder with compact three-laser systems often landing near $110,000–$150,000. Meanwhile, five-laser workhorses such as the Cytek Aurora commonly fall in the mid-$200,000s to low-$400,000s, and high-detector Sony and BD platforms can surpass $500,000. Spectral sorters sit a tier higher. Prices below come (methodology note below the table) from public purchase records and are rough context. Configurations vary, and about a quarter of the records bundle service, warranty or accessories.

Prices are nominal and span 2016 to 2026 For rough scale of inflation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ producer price index for analytical laboratory instrument manufacturing rose about 31% from mid-2018 to August 2026, so a 2018 purchase would be roughly a third higher in today’s dollars.

Instrument	Type	Launched	Lasers / detectors (max)	Public purchase prices (USD; configurations vary)
Spectral analyzers
Cytek Northern Lights Cytek Biosciences	Full spectrum	2018	3 / 38	3 records, 2021–2022: $112K, $125K, $152K
Cytek Aurora Cytek Biosciences	Full spectrum	2017	5 / 64	41 records, 2018–2026. Middle half: $[TK]–$427K
Cytek Aurora Evo Cytek Biosciences	Full spectrum	2025	5 / 64	2 records, 2026: $200K, $532K. GSA ceiling: $749K
Sony ID7000 Sony Biotechnology	Full spectrum	2019	7 / 184 3- to 7-laser configurations	13 records, 2020–2026. Middle half: $[TK]–$543K
BD FACSymphony A5 SE Waters (BD brand)	Spectral mode, conventional design	2021	5 / 48	8 records, 2022–2025. Middle half: $[TK]–$638K
BD FACSDiscover A8 Waters (BD brand)	Spectral with imaging	2025	5 / 78	3 records (all European), 2025–2026: $517K, $556K, $643K
Invitrogen Attune Xenith Thermo Fisher Scientific	Spectral mode, conventional design	2025	6 / 51	1 record, 2026: $350K
BD FACSDiscover A7 Waters (BD brand)	Full spectrum	2026	5 / 78 Not yet CE marked	None yet
Agilent NovoCyte Opteon Agilent Technologies	Full spectrum	2024	5 / 73	None found
CytoFLEX with mosaic module Beckman Coulter Life Sciences	Spectral mode, conventional design	2025	6 / 81 mosaic 88 on a CytoFLEX LX	None for a full system; one NIH order for the module alone: $153K (2026)
Cytek Borealis Cytek Biosciences	Full spectrum	2026	7 / 110 Early access; preliminary specs	None found
Spectral cell sorters
Cytek Aurora CS Cytek Biosciences	Full spectrum	2021	5 / 64	13 records, 2021–2026. Middle half: $567K–$633K. GSA ceiling: $900K
Invitrogen Bigfoot Spectral Thermo Fisher Scientific	Spectral mode, conventional design	By 2021	9 / 55	10 records, 2020–2023. Middle half: $[TK]–$745K
BD FACSymphony S6 SE Waters (BD brand)	Spectral mode, conventional design	By 2023	Up to 9 / 48 From base S6 sheet	3 records, 2023–2025: $644K, $680K, $689K
BD FACSDiscover S8 Waters (BD brand)	Spectral with imaging	2023	5 / 78	17 records, 2023–2026. Middle half: $[TK]–$761K
Sony FP7000 Sony Biotechnology	Full spectrum	2023	5 / 182 Shipping status unclear	None found
Conventional benchmarks
Invitrogen Attune NxT Thermo Fisher Scientific	Analyzer		4 / 14	18 records, 2016–2026. Middle half: $[TK]–$164K
Agilent NovoCyte Penteon Agilent Technologies	Analyzer		5 / 30	GSA ceiling only: $322K
Sony MA900 Sony Biotechnology	Sorter		4 / 12	12 records, 2019–2024. Middle half: $[TK]–$392K
Beckman CytoFLEX SRT Beckman Coulter Life Sciences	Sorter	2021	4 / 15	5 records, 2022–2024. Middle half: $[TK]–$406K
BD FACSAria Fusion Waters (BD brand)	Sorter		5 / 18	17 records, 2017–2026. Middle half: $410K–$536K

Methodology and caveats

Prices come from U.S. federal orders on USAspending.gov, NIH S10 grants in NIH RePORTER, European and UK tenders (TED, Contracts Finder and Find a Tender) and GSA Advantage schedule listings, searched through Sept. 23, 2026. Of about 2,400 records reviewed, 166 awards and grants name a model in the table; records that only implied a model were left out. Figures are per unit where a record states a count and the whole order otherwise. Specifications are vendor-stated maximums. “Middle half” is the 25th-to-75th percentile of recorded prices.

Individual records can swing widely. GSA figures are schedule ceilings that include five-year service packages. A USDA order for a FACSDiscover S8 with imaging came in at $304,769 in July 2026, about half of other S8 orders, and the record does not explain why. The Borealis and FP7000 appear only in European notices listing a €1 placeholder value (Leiden, Amsterdam). Public procurement is also only one slice of the market: industrial buyers, framework contracts and volume deals do not show up in these records.