If you run a market garden, a small vegetable operation, or a diversified crop farm, you have probably searched for software to keep your planting records straight. Two names that come up are CropsBook and Bushel Farm. They both help you track what happens on your land, but they were built for very different kinds of farmers. Bushel Farm grew up serving row-crop and commodity grain operations. CropsBook was designed from the start for solo operators and small businesses growing vegetables and specialty crops. This comparison lays out where each one shines so you can pick the right fit without wasting a season on the wrong tool.
Quick Comparison
Here is the fast version. If you only read one section, read this table.
| Feature | CropsBook | Bushel Farm |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free tier available, paid features for scale |
| Works Offline | Yes, 100% offline | Cloud-based, needs connection |
| Account Required | No account needed | Yes, sign-up required |
| Best For | Market gardens, solo growers, small farms | Commodity grain and row-crop operations |
| Platform | iOS (App Store) | iOS, Android, web |
| Key Features | Crop tracking, planting records, harvest logs | Field mapping, yield data, grain marketing, contracts |
| Data Privacy | Data stays on your device | Data stored in the cloud |
Pricing
Both apps advertise a free tier, so pricing deserves an honest look. Bushel Farm offers a genuinely useful free plan and does not charge every grower a subscription up front. That is fair, and worth acknowledging. Where costs come in is at scale: as commodity operations layer on grain marketing tools, contract tracking, scale-ticket integration, and larger acreage support, Bushel Farm's business model leans on paid features and partnerships tied to the grain trade. For a big row-crop farm that is reasonable. For a half-acre market garden it is overhead you will never touch.
CropsBook takes a simpler approach: it is free, with no tiers, no upsells, and no subscription clock ticking in the background. What you download is what you get.
| Time Period | CropsBook | Bushel Farm |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $0 | $0 free tier, paid for advanced features |
| 1 Year | $0 | $0 free tier, cost rises with scale |
| 3 Years | $0 | $0 free tier, cost rises with scale |
The honest takeaway: if you stay inside Bushel Farm's free tier, you pay nothing there either. But that free tier is built around grain-farming workflows you may never need. CropsBook gives you free forever on features made for vegetable and specialty growers.
Save money. Try CropsBook free today. Download CropsBook on the App Store — no account needed, works 100% offline.
Features
This is where the two apps split hard, because they were built for different farms.
What Bushel Farm does well: Bushel Farm is a serious tool for commodity agriculture. It offers satellite field imagery, yield analysis across large acreage, rainfall tracking, and a set of grain-marketing features that let farmers track contracts, monitor cash bids, and manage the selling side of a grain operation. If you are moving thousands of bushels of corn or soybeans and need to know your break-even against the futures market, that toolset is genuinely valuable. It integrates with the wider grain trade in ways a small-farm app simply does not.
What CropsBook does well: CropsBook focuses on the daily reality of a market gardener or small grower. You track individual crops and varieties, log planting dates, record harvests, and keep notes on what worked bed by bed. It is built around succession plantings, diverse crops, and the tight rotations that define small-scale vegetable growing rather than single-commodity fields. There is no yield-per-thousand-acres dashboard because that is not the problem a market gardener has. The problem is remembering which lettuce variety bolted early and when to seed the next round.
If your operation spans more than vegetables, the same simple approach carries across a family of apps. Growers running livestock alongside their crops use Barnsbook for herd and barn records, and anyone keeping bees for pollination or honey can track hives with HiveBook. Each app stays focused on doing one thing well instead of bolting every farm type into a single crowded interface.
Want to try CropsBook for free? Download CropsBook on the App Store — no subscription required.
Offline & Privacy
This is CropsBook's clearest advantage, and it matters more than it sounds. Most farm software is cloud-first: your records live on someone else's server, and the app needs a connection to work. Out in a field, in a hoophouse with thick plastic, or at the back of a rural property, cell signal is often the first thing to fail. When your record-keeping app freezes because it cannot reach the internet, you stop logging, and gaps in your records are how a season's worth of data quietly disappears.
CropsBook works 100% offline. Every planting date, harvest note, and crop record is stored on your device and available whether or not you have a bar of signal. You open the app, you log the work, you move on.
Privacy follows from the same design. Because CropsBook does not require an account and keeps your data on your phone, there is no cloud profile of your farm, no sign-up harvesting your email, and no question about who else can see your yields. Bushel Farm, by contrast, stores data in the cloud and ties into the grain-marketing ecosystem, which is part of what makes its commodity features work. That is a reasonable trade for a large operation that wants market integration. For a solo grower who just wants private records that never leave their pocket, CropsBook's model fits better.
If your app stops working the moment you lose signal, it will stop working exactly when you are standing in the field with dirt on your hands. Offline is not a luxury for small farms. It is the baseline.
Who Should Use Bushel Farm
Bushel Farm is the right call for a specific and important kind of farmer. Choose it if you:
- Grow commodity crops like corn, soybeans, or wheat at meaningful acreage.
- Need grain-marketing tools to track contracts, cash bids, and break-even against the futures market.
- Want satellite field imagery and yield analysis across large, uniform fields.
- Run an operation where cloud access and team sharing across a web and mobile setup are worth more than offline reliability.
- Already sell into grain channels and want software that speaks that language.
For that grower, Bushel Farm is a capable, well-built tool, and its free tier is a fair place to start. Using a market-garden app for a 2,000-acre grain operation would be the wrong tool just as surely as the reverse.
Who Should Use CropsBook
CropsBook is built for the grower Bushel Farm was not designed around. Choose it if you:
- Run a market garden, CSA, or small diversified vegetable farm.
- Grow many crops and varieties rather than one commodity, and need to track succession plantings and rotations.
- Work in the field without reliable signal and need records that log every time, offline.
- Want a free app with no account, no subscription, and no upsell path.
- Care about keeping your farm data private and on your own device.
- Are a solo operator or small business that values simple over sprawling.
This is the sweet spot. If you have ever opened farm software and felt like nine-tenths of it was built for someone with a combine and a grain contract, CropsBook is the app that leaves that part out and keeps the part you actually use.
The Bottom Line
Bushel Farm and CropsBook are both good software aimed at different farms. Bushel Farm is the stronger choice for commodity grain operations that need field imagery, yield analytics, and grain-marketing tools, and its free tier makes it easy to try. If that describes your farm, use it with confidence.
But if you grow vegetables and specialty crops on a small or mid-size operation, the commodity-farm feature set is weight you carry without benefit. CropsBook gives you crop tracking built for market gardening, works 100% offline so your records never depend on signal, keeps your data private on your device, requires no account, and costs nothing. For solo operators and small businesses, that combination is hard to beat. The best way to know is to try it on your own beds for a week and see how it fits your workflow.
Ready to switch? Download CropsBook on the App Store — it takes 30 seconds and costs nothing.