If you grow vegetables, run a market garden, or manage a small mixed operation, you have probably looked at FarmLogs and wondered whether it fits your work. FarmLogs is a legitimate platform with real history in the digital agriculture space, but it was built for a different farmer than the one reading a CropsBook page. This comparison walks through where each app shines, where each falls short, and which one actually matches the way vegetable growers and small market farms operate day to day.
The short version: FarmLogs is a cloud-based digital farming platform aimed primarily at row-crop producers tracking corn, soybeans, wheat, and similar broadacre crops across mapped fields. CropsBook is a free, offline iOS app built for vegetable growers, market gardeners, and small operators who want to track plantings, harvests, and beds without an account, a subscription, or a data connection. Both can be the right answer — it depends on what you grow and how you work.
Quick Comparison
| Feature | CropsBook | FarmLogs |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, no paid tier | Free tier & paid plans |
| Works Offline | Yes, 100% offline | Requires internet for sync & most features |
| Account Required | No account, no email, no signup | Yes, account required |
| Best For | Vegetable growers, market gardens, small farms | Row crops, larger acreage, commodity producers |
| Platform | iOS (iPhone & iPad) | iOS, Android, web |
| Key Features | Crop tracking, bed planning, harvest logs, succession planting | Field mapping, rainfall tracking, scouting, profit tools |
| Data Privacy | All data stays on your device | Data stored in the cloud |
Pricing
FarmLogs uses a freemium model. The free tier covers basic field records and some rainfall tracking, but the features most row-crop farmers actually want — deeper scouting tools, advanced profit and loss tracking, satellite imagery analysis, multi-user access — sit behind paid plans. Pricing has shifted over the years and varies by region and feature bundle, but expect monthly subscriptions in the standard SaaS range for the paid tiers, billed annually for the best rate.
CropsBook is free. There is no paid tier, no upgrade prompt, no “pro” features hidden behind a paywall. Download it, open it, log your beds and plantings. That is the model.
| Cost | CropsBook | FarmLogs (paid tier estimate) |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $0 | ~$20–$50+/month |
| 1 Year | $0 | ~$240–$600+ |
| 3 Years | $0 | ~$720–$1,800+ |
To be fair: FarmLogs paid plans deliver capabilities CropsBook does not try to match — satellite-based field health, multi-user team accounts, integrations with farm management ERPs. If you need that, the cost is justified. If you are tracking thirty beds of mixed vegetables, you are paying for features you will never open.
Save money. Try CropsBook free today. Download CropsBook on the App Store — no account needed, works 100% offline.
Features
FarmLogs does several things well. Its field mapping is mature: you draw or import field boundaries and the app calculates acreage, ties weather and rainfall data to each field, and surfaces satellite imagery to flag emerging issues across hundreds of acres. For a corn-and-soy operator with twelve fields spread over two counties, that view is genuinely useful. Rainfall tracking by field is a standout feature — FarmLogs pulls hyperlocal precipitation estimates so you can see which fields got the storm and which missed it. Scouting notes, input tracking, and yield records round out the platform, and the paid tiers add profit analysis tying input cost to per-acre revenue.
CropsBook is built for a different scale and a different crop mix. Instead of fields and acres, you work in beds, rows, and plantings. The app tracks what you planted, where, when, what variety, when you transplanted, when you started harvesting, and when the bed flipped to the next succession. You can plan crop rotations across beds, track multiple successions of the same crop through a season, and pull up a quick view of what is currently in the ground versus what is harvest-ready. There is no field mapping because market gardeners do not need polygon-drawn boundaries on a satellite view — they need to know that Bed 14 is on its second succession of lettuce and needs flipping next week.
If you also run livestock or keep bees, the same offline-first philosophy applies across the product family. Barnsbook handles livestock and barn records for ranchers, and HiveBook handles hive inspections and honey production for beekeepers — all free, all offline, all designed for solo operators who do not want a cloud subscription tied to their farm records.
Want to try CropsBook for free? Download CropsBook on the App Store — no subscription required.
Offline & Privacy
This is where the two apps part ways most sharply. FarmLogs is fundamentally a cloud platform. Your data lives on their servers, sync requires connectivity, and most of the value — satellite imagery, hyperlocal rainfall, multi-user collaboration — depends on an active internet connection. On a corn field with cell coverage, that is fine. In a high tunnel half a mile from the road with one bar of LTE, it is not.
CropsBook is offline-first. Every feature works without a connection because the app stores all data locally on your iPhone or iPad. You can log a harvest standing in a tunnel, update bed status in a back field, or plan next week’s plantings on the drive home through a dead zone. Nothing syncs to a server because nothing needs to.
Privacy follows the same pattern. CropsBook never sees your data. There is no account, no telemetry tied to your records, no cloud copy of what you planted or what you harvested. For growers who view their planting plans, harvest yields, and customer logs as proprietary — especially direct-market farms whose CSA numbers and farmers’ market revenue are competitive information — that matters. With FarmLogs, your records sit on their infrastructure under their terms of service, which is standard SaaS practice but a different posture than “the data never leaves your phone.”
Who Should Use FarmLogs
FarmLogs is the right pick if your operation looks like this:
- You grow row crops — corn, soybeans, wheat, sorghum, cotton — on mapped fields measured in acres, not beds.
- You want satellite-driven field health imagery and hyperlocal rainfall logged automatically by field.
- You manage a team and need multi-user access with role-based permissions.
- You want profit-per-acre analysis tying input cost to yield, with the records integrated into a broader farm management stack.
- You have reliable connectivity across your operation and are comfortable with cloud-hosted records.
- The cost of a paid subscription is small relative to your operation’s revenue.
For that operation, FarmLogs earns the subscription. It was designed for that grower, and CropsBook would feel underbuilt — no field maps, no rainfall pull, no acreage math.
Who Should Use CropsBook
CropsBook is the right pick if your operation looks like this:
- You grow vegetables — mixed market garden, CSA, farmers’ market, restaurant accounts, or a serious home garden scaling toward sales.
- You think in beds and rows, not fields and acres. A “field” abstraction does not match how you actually plan work.
- You want to track successions: lettuce every two weeks, radishes every ten days, the cucumbers that follow the spring peas in Bed 8.
- You work in places with bad cell coverage — tunnels, back fields, remote leased plots — and need the app to just work.
- You do not want another monthly subscription added to your operating costs.
- You do not want to create an account, hand over an email, or store your planting records on someone else’s server.
- You are a solo operator or small team — one to three people — not a corporate farm with role-based access requirements.
That is the sweet spot. Market gardeners running a quarter acre to five acres of intensive vegetables, mixed-vegetable CSA farms, restaurant-supplier farms, and serious home gardeners tracking enough to sell at a Saturday market — that is who CropsBook was built for, and that is who FarmLogs was not.
The Bottom Line
FarmLogs is not a bad app. It is a well-built platform aimed at a specific kind of grower, and if you match that profile — row crops, mapped fields, cloud-comfortable, subscription-tolerant — it will serve you well. Be honest with yourself about whether you actually match it.
If you grow vegetables, work in beds, want your records on your own device, and would rather spend the subscription money on seed, compost, or row cover, CropsBook is the better fit. Free, offline, simple, private, and designed from the ground up for the way market farmers and vegetable growers actually plan and track their seasons. There is no risk in trying it: no signup, no card, no commitment. Install it, log a few beds, and see whether the workflow fits before you decide. That is the honest pitch — the app either matches how you work or it does not, and you will know within a week.
Ready to switch? Download CropsBook on the App Store — it takes 30 seconds and costs nothing.