FarmLogs earned its reputation by making field records easier for grain farmers. Rainfall tracking, field maps, and satellite crop health views were a big step up from a binder in the truck. But if you grow 40 varieties on two acres and sell at Saturday markets and through a CSA, you have probably felt the mismatch. The tool assumes big fields, a few crops, and a reliable data connection. Your farm has none of those. This guide covers five free FarmLogs alternatives, what each one does well, where each one falls short, and how to move your records without losing a season of history.

Why People Switch From FarmLogs

Most market farmers who leave FarmLogs aren't unhappy with the software. It just wasn't built for them. These are the complaints we hear most:

  • Built for row crops, not beds. FarmLogs thinks in fields and acres. Market gardeners think in beds, rows, and succession plantings. Logging four plantings of lettuce in one 100-foot bed feels like forcing a square peg into a round hole.
  • Too few crops to manage. A grain operation might track three or four crops. A diversified vegetable farm can easily track 50 or more, each with its own days to maturity, spacing, and harvest window.
  • The best features cost money. The free tier covers the basics, but the most useful planning and analytics tools have historically sat behind paid plans. For a small farm on thin margins, another subscription is hard to justify.
  • It needs a connection. Cloud-first tools struggle in a back field with one bar of signal. If an app won't save until it syncs, you end up writing notes on your hand and typing them in later, or more often never.
  • The company changed hands. FarmLogs is now part of Bushel, and its features have been moving into Bushel's platform. Some growers would rather pick a tool on purpose than get migrated into one.
  • Account and data worries. Many small growers don't love the idea of their planting and yield data sitting on someone else's servers, tied to an account they have to keep active.

If two or more of those apply to you, read on.

1. CropsBook (Free)

Best for: Market farmers, homesteaders, and serious vegetable gardeners who want simple crop records on their phone.

CropsBook was built for diversified vegetable growing. Instead of field-level grain records, it focuses on what a market farmer actually needs to remember: what you planted, where, when, how it did, and what you harvested. It runs 100% offline on your iPhone, so it works the same in a greenhouse, a back field, or a barn with no signal.

What it does well:

  • Completely free. No trial, no paid tier, no features held back behind a paywall.
  • No account required. Open the app and start logging. No email, password, or sign-up form.
  • Fully offline. Your data lives on your device. Nothing waits on a sync, and you never lose an entry because the cell signal dropped.
  • Crop-level detail. Track plantings, varieties, dates, and harvests at the scale of beds and rows, not hundred-acre fields.
  • Fast entry. Built to log something in seconds with dirty hands, which is the only way records actually get kept in July.

Honest limitations:

  • iPhone only. There is no Android version or web dashboard right now.
  • Offline-first means no built-in team sync. If several crew members log on different phones, you will need a process for combining records.
  • No satellite imagery or precision-ag features. If you farm hundreds of acres of commodity crops, a tool like Bushel Farm fits better.

Bottom line: For a market farmer who wants FarmLogs-style record keeping without the subscription, the account, or the connection requirement, CropsBook is the most direct free replacement.

Try CropsBook free today. Download CropsBook on the App Store — no subscription, no account, works 100% offline.

2. Bushel Farm (Free)

Best for: Grain and row-crop operations, especially those already selling to Bushel-connected elevators.

Bushel Farm is the natural next step for many FarmLogs users, since FarmLogs is now part of Bushel. It handles field records, activity logging, and grain marketing, and it connects with the elevators and grain buyers that use Bushel's network.

Pros:

  • Free to use, with a mature, well-funded platform behind it.
  • Strong field mapping and activity records for large acreage.
  • Grain contract and delivery tracking, which really matters if you sell commodity crops.
  • The most familiar experience for longtime FarmLogs users.

Cons:

  • Built around grain. Bed-level vegetable planning and succession planting aren't its focus.
  • Requires an account and works best with a solid connection.
  • Much of its value comes from the grain marketing network, which a CSA or farmers market grower won't use.

Bottom line: If you grow corn and soybeans alongside a few acres of vegetables, Bushel Farm can handle the grain side well. For a pure market garden, it's more tool than you need, in the wrong shape.

3. Seedsheet ($30–100 per kit)

Best for: Beginner gardeners who want a guided, physical starting point.

We're being upfront here: Seedsheet isn't free, and it isn't really a record-keeping tool. It sells pre-planned seed kits, sheets of fabric with seeds embedded in a set layout, built to fit raised beds and containers. People often bring it up as an alternative because it solves part of the same problem: deciding what to plant and where.

Pros:

  • Takes the guesswork out of spacing and layout for small beds.
  • Very beginner friendly, with almost no planning needed.
  • A good gift or first-season project.

Cons:

  • Costs $30–100 per kit, and you buy again every season.
  • Doesn't scale to market farm production. Nobody plants a 100-foot carrot bed from fabric sheets.
  • No harvest records, yield tracking, or season-to-season history.

Bottom line: Seedsheet is a planting product, not a farm management tool. Some home growers pair a kit with a free tracking app to keep records, but market farmers will outgrow it right away.

4. Google Sheets or Excel (Free)

Best for: Growers who like building their own systems and mostly work at a desk.

Plenty of successful market farms run on a spreadsheet. A good one can hold your crop plan, seeding dates, bed assignments, harvest weights, and sales in one place, and you can shape it to fit exactly how you farm.

Pros:

  • Free and endlessly flexible.
  • Great for crop planning math, like working backward from target harvest dates or estimating bed feet per crop.
  • Easy to share with a business partner or accountant.
  • Many free market farm templates are available from extension services and grower communities.

Cons:

  • Painful to use on a phone in the field. Tiny cells and muddy thumbs don't mix.
  • Google Sheets needs a connection unless you set up offline mode ahead of time.
  • One broken formula or accidental sort can scramble a whole season of data.
  • You are the developer, and every feature is one you have to build.

Bottom line: Spreadsheets are excellent for winter planning and year-end analysis. They are poor at in-season capture. Many growers use a spreadsheet for the plan and a mobile app for daily logging.

5. Paper Farm Journal (Free or Nearly Free)

Best for: Growers who want zero screens and maximum reliability.

Don't dismiss the composition notebook. A waterproof field book in your back pocket has kept farm records for generations, and it never needs charging.

Pros:

  • Costs a few dollars, with no learning curve at all.
  • Works anywhere, in any weather if you buy a waterproof notebook.
  • Sketching bed layouts by hand is fast and satisfying.

Cons:

  • Not searchable. Finding when you seeded that second round of beets three years ago means flipping through pages.
  • Easy to lose, soak, or leave on the tailgate.
  • No totals, trends, or yield comparisons without retyping everything later.
  • Hard to share with crew or turn into records for certification or insurance.

Bottom line: Paper is reliable but stuck in place. It works well as a backup, but most growers eventually want records they can search and total.

What to Look for in an Alternative

Before you pick a replacement, be honest about how you actually farm. These are the questions that matter most:

  1. Does it match your scale? Tools built for acres feel clumsy for beds, and tools built for home gardens may not handle 50 crops and weekly successions. Pick something designed for your kind of operation.
  2. Will you actually use it in the field? The best record-keeping system is the one you use at the moment of planting or harvest. If logging takes more than 15 seconds, it won't happen in peak season.
  3. Does it work offline? Walk your property with your phone and check the signal. If there are dead zones, an offline-first app saves a lot of frustration.
  4. What does it really cost? Free tiers that hold back key features often turn into subscriptions. Over five years, even $10 a month adds up to $600.
  5. Who owns your data? Know where your records live and whether you can get to them if the company changes direction. FarmLogs users have already lived through one ownership change.
  6. Does it fit the rest of your farm? Few small farms grow only vegetables. If you also keep a laying flock, a few goats, or pastured pigs, a dedicated tool like Barnsbook keeps livestock and barn records separate from your crop data. And if you run hives to pollinate your squash and melons, or sell honey at your market stand, HiveBook handles apiary inspections and honey harvests. Specialized, focused apps usually beat one bloated platform that tries to do everything.

Making the Switch

Changing record systems mid-season is how data gets lost. A little planning makes the move painless.

  1. Export everything first. Before you cancel or stop using FarmLogs or Bushel, export your field records, activity logs, and harvest data. Save a copy somewhere you control, like a computer folder or an external drive, not just another cloud account.
  2. Switch in the off-season if you can. Late fall and winter are the best times to change tools. You have time to learn the new system before planting starts.
  3. Don't migrate every detail. You probably don't need to re-enter five years of history. Bring over your crop list, variety notes, and key yield numbers from the past one or two seasons. Keep the old export for reference.
  4. Set up your crop list before spring. Enter the crops and varieties you plan to grow ahead of time so that logging in the field takes a couple of taps.
  5. Build the habit early. Log your very first seeding of the year in the new app, even if it's just onions in flats in February. Habits formed in the slow season hold up in the busy one.
  6. Run a two-week overlap if you're nervous. Keep a paper backup alongside your new app for the first couple of weeks. Once you trust the new system, drop the paper.
  7. Review at the end of the season. Spend an evening in November looking at what you logged. Which crops paid off? Which beds struggled? That review is the whole point of keeping records.
The goal isn't perfect records. It's records good enough that next year's plan is smarter than this year's.

FarmLogs is a capable tool for the farms it was designed for. If you grow vegetables at market farm scale, you deserve a tool designed for you. For most small diversified growers, that means something free, fast, and offline. That's exactly why we built CropsBook.