If you grow vegetables or run a small market garden, you have probably searched for a tool to keep your planting records straight. Two names come up often: FarmLogs and CropsBook. They look similar on the surface, but they were built for different people. FarmLogs grew up serving commercial row-crop operations — corn, soybeans, wheat — across hundreds or thousands of acres. CropsBook was built for the solo grower and the small business working a handful of beds, plots, or a few acres of mixed vegetables. This comparison is meant to be fair. FarmLogs is a capable platform, and for the right farm it earns its keep. But if you are a vegetable grower who wants something free, private, and dead simple, the honest answer is usually CropsBook. Here is the detailed breakdown.
Quick Comparison
| Feature | CropsBook | FarmLogs |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, forever | Free tier + paid plans |
| Works Offline | Yes, 100% offline | No, requires internet |
| Account Required | No account needed | Yes, sign-up required |
| Best For | Vegetable & market gardeners, solo operators | Commercial row-crop farms |
| Platform | iOS (iPhone & iPad) | Web & mobile |
| Key Features | Crop tracking, planting logs, harvest records, notes | Field mapping, yield analysis, satellite imagery, machinery data |
| Data Privacy | Stays on your device | Stored in the cloud |
Pricing
This is where the two apps diverge most sharply. FarmLogs offers a free tier that covers basic record-keeping, but the features most growers actually want — advanced yield analysis, detailed field intelligence, and full mapping — sit behind paid plans. Pricing has historically been quoted per acre or as an annual subscription, which makes sense when you farm thousands of acres and the software pays for itself in input savings. For a grower with a quarter-acre of mixed vegetables, that math rarely works out.
CropsBook takes the opposite approach: it is free, with no paid tier, no upsell, and no "premium" wall between you and your own records. You download it and everything is unlocked. To make the difference concrete, here is a rough side-by-side. FarmLogs paid plans vary by acreage and region, so treat these as representative rather than exact quotes.
| Cost Over Time | CropsBook | FarmLogs (Paid Plan) |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $0 | ~$30+/month (plan dependent) |
| 1 Year | $0 | ~$360+ |
| 3 Years | $0 | ~$1,080+ |
Over three years, a paid FarmLogs subscription can cost more than a thousand dollars. CropsBook costs nothing over the same span. For a hobby grower or a small business watching every dollar, that gap is the whole story.
Save money. Try CropsBook free today. Download CropsBook on the App Store — no account needed, works 100% offline.
Features
It would be dishonest to pretend FarmLogs is not feature-rich, because it is. FarmLogs shines at the things big farms need:
- Field mapping and satellite imagery — visualize large fields, track variability across acreage, and spot problem zones from above.
- Yield and profitability analysis — tie inputs and outputs together to understand margin per field.
- Machinery and activity data — integrations that pull in equipment and operational data automatically.
- Rainfall and weather tracking — field-level weather history useful across wide geographies.
If you run commodity crops at scale, those tools are genuinely valuable. The catch is that almost none of them map cleanly onto how a vegetable or market grower actually works. You are not managing one variety across a thousand acres; you are juggling forty different crops, succession plantings, transplant dates, and harvest windows across small beds.
CropsBook is built around that reality:
- Crop tracking by bed or plot — record what is planted where without forcing your garden into a row-crop model.
- Planting and harvest logs — capture sowing dates, transplant dates, and harvest timing so you can repeat what worked next season.
- Notes and observations — jot pest pressure, weather effects, or variety performance in the field, on your phone, with no signal.
- Simple, fast entry — the kind of logging you will actually keep up with because it takes seconds, not minutes.
If your operation spans more than vegetables, CropsBook is part of a small family of focused apps worth knowing about. Raising animals alongside your crops? Barnsbook handles livestock farming, ranching, and barn management. Keeping bees to pollinate the garden or sell honey on the side? HiveBook covers apiary management and honey production. Each app stays narrow on purpose, so you get a tool that fits the job instead of a sprawling platform you only half use.
Want to try CropsBook for free? Download CropsBook on the App Store — no subscription required.
Offline & Privacy
This is CropsBook's biggest practical advantage, and it is not a small one. FarmLogs is a cloud platform — it needs an internet connection to do most of what it does, and your records live on its servers. On a connected office computer that is fine. Standing in a field at the back of your property where cell coverage drops to nothing, it is a problem.
CropsBook works 100% offline. Every feature functions with your phone in airplane mode. You can log a harvest in a high tunnel, add a planting note in a low spot with no bars, and check what you sowed last spring while standing in the dirt — no loading spinner, no "reconnecting" message. For growers who do their real work outdoors and away from Wi-Fi, this changes whether the app gets used at all.
Privacy follows from the same design. Because CropsBook needs no account and no cloud, your data stays on your device. There is no sign-up form, no email harvesting, no profile of your operation building up on someone else's server. You are not the product. Your planting records, yields, and notes are yours, full stop.
The best record-keeping tool is the one you actually use. An app that works in the field, with no login and no signal, gets used. One that stalls without a connection gets abandoned by July.
Who Should Use FarmLogs
FarmLogs is the right call for a specific kind of operation, and it would be unfair to suggest otherwise. Choose FarmLogs if:
- You farm large acreage of row or commodity crops — corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton — where field-level variability matters.
- You want satellite imagery and mapping to manage big fields you cannot walk end to end.
- You need yield and profitability analytics tied to inputs across many acres.
- You already work primarily from a connected office or cab and reliable internet is not a constraint.
- The subscription cost is small relative to your operation's revenue, so paying for the platform is an easy decision.
For that grower, FarmLogs offers depth CropsBook does not try to match. Different tool, different job.
Who Should Use CropsBook
CropsBook is built for the grower FarmLogs was never really aimed at. Choose CropsBook if:
- You grow vegetables, herbs, or mixed crops on beds, plots, or a few acres rather than vast monoculture fields.
- You are a solo operator or small business and want to spend money on seed and soil, not software.
- You work where there is no signal and need an app that runs offline every time.
- You care about privacy and would rather keep your records on your own device than in a company's cloud.
- You want something simple enough to actually maintain through a busy season — quick to open, quick to log, no training required.
This is the sweet spot: market gardeners, homesteaders, CSA growers, and serious hobbyists who need reliable records without the overhead and cost of a commercial farm platform.
The Bottom Line
FarmLogs and CropsBook are both good at what they were built for — the trick is matching the tool to your farm. If you manage large fields of commodity crops and want satellite imagery, yield analytics, and machinery data, FarmLogs is a serious platform and worth its subscription. But if you grow vegetables, run a small market garden, or work a plot on your own, that power is overkill, the price is hard to justify, and the cloud-only design fails you the moment you lose signal in the field.
For the solo grower and the small operation, CropsBook wins on the things that matter most day to day: it is free, it works 100% offline, it needs no account, and it keeps your data private and on your device. It is simple enough that you will still be logging harvests in August, which is the real test of any record-keeping app. You can keep your money, keep your privacy, and keep your records straight — all at once.
Ready to switch? Download CropsBook on the App Store — it takes 30 seconds and costs nothing.