If you grow vegetables and you have been shopping for software to keep your records straight, you have probably run into FarmLogs. It is a well-known name in digital farming, and for good reason. But a lot of small-scale growers, market gardeners, and backyard producers come away wondering whether it actually fits the way they work. FarmLogs was built with broadacre row-crop operations in mind — corn, soybeans, wheat — and that shows up everywhere from the feature set to the pricing.
CropsBook takes a different approach. It is a free, offline-first app built specifically for people growing vegetables and running small crop operations, whether that is a half-acre market garden or a dozen raised beds. This comparison is an honest look at where each tool shines and where it falls short, so you can decide which one belongs on your phone.
Quick Comparison
| Feature | CropsBook | FarmLogs |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free tier + paid plans |
| Works Offline | Yes, 100% offline | Requires internet for most features |
| Account Required | No account needed | Yes, sign-up required |
| Best For | Vegetable growers, market gardeners, solo operators | Row-crop and commodity farms |
| Platform | iOS (App Store) | iOS, Android, web |
| Key Features | Crop tracking, planting logs, harvest records, notes | Field mapping, rainfall, satellite imagery, activity logs |
| Data Privacy | Stays on your device | Stored in the cloud |
Pricing
This is where the two apps split most clearly. FarmLogs offers a free tier, but the useful capabilities — deeper field analytics, historical imagery, advanced record-keeping — live behind paid plans. That model makes sense for a commodity operation managing hundreds or thousands of acres, where a subscription is a rounding error against input costs. For a grower working a small plot, though, a monthly bill for software can be hard to justify.
CropsBook is free. Not free-for-now, not free-until-you-hit-a-limit, not free-with-your-data-as-the-product. There is no paid tier, no account, and no upsell. Here is how the real cost of each looks over time, using a representative paid FarmLogs plan for illustration:
| Time Period | CropsBook | FarmLogs (paid plan) |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $0 | Subscription fee |
| 1 Year | $0 | 12 monthly payments |
| 3 Years | $0 | 36 monthly payments |
FarmLogs does not publish a single flat price because plans vary by acreage and feature set, but the direction is clear: costs scale up with use, and they recur every month you keep the app. CropsBook stays at zero no matter how many seasons you track or how many beds you add.
Save money. Try CropsBook free today. Download CropsBook on the App Store — no account needed, works 100% offline.
Features
Let's be fair to FarmLogs, because it does real work well. Its strength is data at field scale. Satellite imagery lets you spot variability across a large field. Automatic rainfall tracking pulls weather data tied to your field boundaries. Field mapping and activity logging are genuinely handy when you are coordinating equipment, inputs, and multiple large parcels. If your operation is measured in hundreds of acres of a single commodity crop, those tools earn their keep.
The trade-off is that almost none of that maps cleanly onto vegetable growing. A market gardener does not manage one uniform 200-acre field; they manage forty short beds of fifteen different crops, each on its own planting and harvest schedule, with succession plantings stacked on top. Satellite imagery of a 30-foot bed tells you nothing you cannot see by walking out the back door. What that grower actually needs is a fast way to log what got planted where, when it went in, when it is due, and what came out of it.
That is exactly what CropsBook is built around. You track crops and varieties, record planting dates, keep harvest logs, and jot notes per crop — the everyday record-keeping that makes next year's plan smarter. It is deliberately focused. It will not map your fields from orbit, and it does not try to. It does the small handful of things a vegetable grower does every single day, and it does them without friction.
This kind of purpose-built, small-operator tooling is a pattern worth looking for across your whole operation. If you also keep animals, Barnsbook handles livestock and barn records the same way; and if you run hives, HiveBook tracks apiary inspections and honey production. Each is built for the specific job rather than being a general farm platform stretched to fit.
Want to try CropsBook for free? Download CropsBook on the App Store — no subscription required.
Offline & Privacy
Here is the advantage that matters most out in the dirt: CropsBook works with no signal at all. The back corner of a field, a hoop house with a metal frame, a rural plot where cell coverage is a rumor — none of it stops you from logging a planting or checking what is due to harvest. Everything runs locally on your phone.
FarmLogs, like most cloud platforms, leans on an internet connection for its core value. Its imagery, weather, and syncing features assume you are connected. When you are, that is fine. When you are standing in a dead zone trying to record what you just seeded, it is a problem. For growers who spend their day away from reliable coverage, an offline-first tool is not a nice-to-have; it is the difference between records that get kept and records that get forgotten.
Privacy follows from the same design. Because CropsBook stores your data on your device rather than in a cloud account, your planting history, yields, and notes stay with you. There is no account to create, no profile to build, and nothing shipped off to a server you do not control. Cloud platforms necessarily hold your operational data on their infrastructure. Neither model is wrong, but if you would rather your farm records simply live on your own phone, local storage is the cleaner answer.
The best record-keeping tool is the one you will actually use in the field. If it needs a signal you do not have, it stays in your pocket.
Who Should Use FarmLogs
FarmLogs is the better pick if you run a mid-to-large row-crop or commodity operation. If your acreage is measured in the hundreds or thousands, if you are growing corn, soybeans, wheat, or similar, and if field-scale analytics like satellite imagery and rainfall tracking drive real decisions for you, FarmLogs delivers value that a simple logging app cannot. Operations that already budget for software, coordinate across multiple people and machines, and want everything synced to the cloud and accessible from a web dashboard will feel at home. For that profile, the subscription is a reasonable cost of doing business.
It is also a fair choice if you specifically want cross-platform access — iOS, Android, and web — and multi-user cloud syncing across a team. Those are real capabilities, and a single-device offline app does not replace them.
Who Should Use CropsBook
CropsBook is built for the grower FarmLogs was not designed around: the solo operator, the market gardener, the small vegetable farm, the serious home grower. If you are managing many crops on a small footprint, running succession plantings, and mostly need to remember what you planted where and when it is coming out, CropsBook fits the way you already work.
It is also the obvious choice if any of these are true: you do not want to pay a monthly subscription, you do not want to create yet another account, you work in spots with poor cell coverage, or you would rather keep your data on your own device. You get crop tracking, planting and harvest logs, and per-crop notes with zero setup friction — download it and start logging. There is no learning curve for features you will never use, because those features are not there.
The honest limitation: CropsBook is iOS-only today, it is single-device, and it does not do field mapping or satellite analytics. If those are dealbreakers, FarmLogs or another platform is the right call. For most small vegetable operations, they simply are not.
The Bottom Line
These two apps are aimed at different farmers, and the best choice depends entirely on which one you are. FarmLogs is a strong platform for row-crop and commodity operations that live online and can put field-scale analytics to work. If that is your operation, use it and use it well.
But if you grow vegetables, run a market garden, or work a small plot solo, CropsBook is almost certainly the better fit — and it is free. You lose the satellite imagery you were never going to use on a 30-foot bed anyway, and in exchange you get a fast, offline, private log that costs nothing and needs no account. For most small-scale vegetable growers, that is not a compromise; it is the right tool. Try CropsBook first, and only reach for a heavier platform if you actually hit a wall.
Ready to switch? Download CropsBook on the App Store — it takes 30 seconds and costs nothing.