The transport and trafficking of metabolites are critical for the correct functioning of live cells. However, insitu metabolic imaging studies are hampered by the lack of fluorescent chemical structures that allow direct monitoring of small metabolites under physiological conditions with high spatial and temporal resolution. Herein, we describe SCOTfluors as novel small-sized multi-colored fluorophores for real-time tracking of essential metabolites in live cells and invivo and for the acquisition of metabolic profiles from human cancer cells of variable origin.