Concepts for smaller, cheaper, better FELs. C. Pellegrini UCLA Department of Physics and Astronomy The success of LCLS in reaching, and in fact going beyond, the design specifications, is a landmark achievement, reached after many years of R&D work. The beam parameters, like the pulse length and emittance, achieved at LCLS, open the way to new developments, for both hard and soft X-ray FELs. These results, when coupled to other advances in accelerator physics and technology and new undulator designs, might also allow a reduction of the overall cost of future X-ray FELs, making them more widely available to a larger scientific community. In this paper we outline and discuss some of the concepts that might lead to “smaller, cheaper, better FELs”, and try to identify some areas for future R&D.