HiveTracks has been around long enough that many beekeepers assume it is the default choice for hive records. It is a capable platform, and for some operations the $50 per year is money well spent. But a growing number of hobbyists and sideliners are asking a simple question: why am I paying a subscription to write down what I saw in my own hives? If you keep two to twenty colonies, inspect them every week or two, and mostly need a reliable place to record queen status, mite counts, feeding and supering, a free tool can do the job. This guide walks through five genuinely free HiveTracks alternatives, starting with the one we build, and tells you honestly where each one falls short.

Why People Switch From HiveTracks

Most beekeepers who leave HiveTracks are not angry about it. They just find that the product has grown in a direction that does not match what they do in the bee yard. The complaints we hear most often fall into a few groups.

  • The subscription. HiveTracks runs about $50 per year. That is not a large number on its own, but it is recurring, it comes out of a hobby budget that already covers sugar, treatments and woodenware, and it buys a feature set most small apiaries never touch. Over five years of beekeeping that is $250 for a notebook.
  • Account and connectivity requirements. HiveTracks is a cloud platform. You create an account, your data lives on their servers, and the app expects to sync. Many apiaries sit in orchards, on rooftops or behind a barn where the signal is one bar or none. An app that stalls when it cannot reach the server is frustrating when your hands are sticky and the bees are getting testy.
  • Complexity. The platform has expanded toward commercial and certification use cases. Hobbyists open it and face more screens, more fields and more setup than they need for a Saturday inspection.
  • Data ownership. If you stop paying, what happens to ten years of hive history? Beekeepers increasingly want their records on a device they control, in a format they can export, without a login standing between them and their own notes.

None of these are fatal flaws for everyone. If you manage hundreds of colonies, need team access or care about pollination contract documentation, HiveTracks remains a reasonable product. If you do not, keep reading.

1. HiveBook (Free)

HiveBook is a beekeeping record-keeping app for iPhone and iPad built around one idea: your hive notes should live on your phone, work anywhere, and cost nothing. There is no subscription, no premium tier and no account. You download it from the App Store, open it, add your first apiary and hive, and start logging.

The core of HiveBook is the inspection record. For each hive you log queen sighting or evidence of laying, brood pattern, temperament, stores, pests and disease signs, mite counts, feeding, treatments applied and equipment changes such as adding or removing supers. Every inspection is timestamped and attached to a specific hive, so you can scroll back through a colony's season and see exactly when you last saw eggs or when you put on that second medium. Hives are grouped into apiaries, which matters once you have an outyard or two and need to remember which hives are where.

Because HiveBook is 100% offline, it works identically in a cell-signal dead zone and in your kitchen. Nothing is uploaded, nothing syncs to a server, and nothing breaks when the connection drops. That also means your records are private by design. There is no company holding your apiary locations, your treatment history or your email address.

Honest limitations: HiveBook is App Store only, so Android users are out of luck. The offline design means there is no multi-user sharing or web dashboard, which rules it out for clubs or commercial crews that need several people editing the same hive records at once. It does not integrate with hive scales or sensors. If you need any of those things, one of the options below will serve you better.

For the hobbyist or small sideliner who wants a fast, private, free notebook that is built for bees rather than adapted from a generic farm tool, HiveBook is the best place to start.

Try HiveBook free today. Download HiveBook Free — no subscription, no account, works 100% offline.

2. Apiary Book (Free + $5 Premium)

Apiary Book is one of the longest-running beekeeping apps and has a large user base, particularly on Android. The free version covers the basics well: apiaries, hives, inspection logs, queen tracking, harvest records and a simple calendar for tasks. A one-time premium purchase of around $5 unlocks extras such as cloud backup, additional reports and some export options. For a few dollars, that is a fair deal and far cheaper than a yearly subscription.

Pros: Available on both Android and iOS, so it is the natural pick for mixed households or clubs. Mature feature set with years of refinement. The premium price is a one-time payment, not a subscription. Decent task and reminder system.

Cons: The interface shows its age and can feel cluttered, with many fields you may never use. Some features nudge you toward creating an account for sync and backup, so it is not a fully offline, no-account experience. Ads or upsell prompts appear in the free tier. Data export in the free version is limited.

Apiary Book is a solid choice if you are on Android or want cross-platform access and do not mind a busier interface. It is less appealing if you want something minimal and fully private.

3. BeeKeepPal (Free Tier + $39/Year)

BeeKeepPal takes a modern, cloud-first approach. It has a clean design, a web dashboard alongside the mobile app, and features aimed at people who like data: hive-by-hive charts, weight tracking if you own a compatible scale, weather overlays and treatment schedules. The free tier gives you a limited number of hives and the core inspection logging. The paid plan at roughly $39 per year lifts the hive limit and unlocks the analytics and sharing features.

Pros: Attractive and easy to learn. Web access means you can review records on a large screen in winter. Sharing and multi-user support make it workable for a small club or a mentor and student. Sensor and scale integration for those who want it.

Cons: The free tier is genuinely limited. Once you pass the hive cap you are back to a subscription, which is the thing many people are trying to escape. Requires an account and expects connectivity for sync. Your data lives on their servers.

If HiveTracks appeals to you but the price does not, BeeKeepPal is the most similar product at a lower cost. Just understand that it is a subscription with a free trial tier more than a free app.

4. BEEP (Free, Open Source)

BEEP is an open-source beekeeping platform developed by a Dutch foundation and used widely in Europe. It is a web application with a companion mobile app, and it is free to use. Its distinguishing feature is sensor support: BEEP was built alongside its own hive monitoring hardware and can ingest weight, temperature and sound data from a range of devices. The inspection system is highly configurable, with customizable checklists you can tailor to your own method.

Pros: No cost, no hive limit and open-source code you can inspect. Best free option for anyone running hive scales or sensors. Configurable inspection templates. Research-grade data model with export to standard formats.

Cons: It is web-first and account-based, so offline use in the yard is weak. The flexibility comes with a steep learning curve, and the interface can feel academic rather than practical. Mobile experience lags behind dedicated native apps. Support is community-driven.

BEEP is the right choice for the technical beekeeper who wants monitoring data and does not mind spending an evening setting things up. It is overkill for someone who just wants to note that hive three needs a super.

5. A Spreadsheet or Paper Logbook (Free)

It would be dishonest to leave this out. Plenty of excellent beekeepers run their operations on a clipboard, a waterproof notebook or a Google Sheet, and they are not wrong to. A spreadsheet costs nothing, exports to anything, never shuts down and can be structured however you like. One row per inspection, one column per observation, a tab per apiary. Many clubs share template sheets that already include the standard fields.

Pros: Total control and total portability. No vendor can change the terms or discontinue the product. Easy to analyze with filters and charts. Works offline if you use the paper version or an offline-capable spreadsheet app.

Cons: No structure means no guardrails. Entries get inconsistent, mite counts end up in the wrong column and the sheet becomes unreadable by August. Data entry on a phone in gloves is slow. No reminders, no per-hive history view, no photos attached to inspections. Paper gets wet, lost or left in the truck.

If you are disciplined and small-scale, this works. Most people who start here eventually move to an app because they want the structure, and that is usually the point at which a free app like HiveBook makes the most sense.

What to Look for in an Alternative

Before you pick a replacement, be clear about what you actually need. A good test is to think about your last three inspections and ask what you wished you had written down. Then judge the candidates against that list rather than against a feature chart.

  1. Real cost over five years. Free with a one-time upgrade is not the same as a free tier that caps you at three hives. Work out what you will pay over the time you expect to keep bees, not just the first year.
  2. Offline reliability. If your apiary has poor signal, this is the deciding factor. Test any app in airplane mode before trusting it. It should let you log a full inspection with nothing cached and nothing pending.
  3. Speed in the yard. You will be logging with sticky hands, a smoker going out and bees in your veil. The fewer taps between opening the app and recording a queen sighting, the more consistently you will actually use it.
  4. Data ownership and export. Can you get your records out in a readable format? If the company disappears, do you still have your history?
  5. Privacy. Apiary locations are sensitive. Hive theft is real. Prefer tools that do not require uploading your yard coordinates to a server.
  6. Honest feature match. If you need sensor data, multi-user access or certification reports, do not pretend a minimal app will do. Choose BEEP or BeeKeepPal and accept the trade-offs. If you do not need those things, do not pay for them.

The same thinking applies well beyond bees. Small producers across agriculture are moving away from subscription platforms toward simple, offline, purpose-built tools. Those who also run cattle, goats or poultry often pair a hive app with a dedicated livestock record keeper such as Barnsbook for barn and herd management, and market gardeners who keep bees for pollination frequently track their beds and harvests in CropsBook. Keeping each part of the operation in a tool built for that job tends to beat one sprawling platform that does everything averagely.

Making the Switch

Moving off HiveTracks is less painful than it looks, as long as you handle it in a sensible order. Here is the approach that works for most beekeepers.

  1. Export before you cancel. While your HiveTracks subscription is active, export everything it will give you. Download CSV files of inspections, hive lists and any reports. Save PDF copies of anything that does not export cleanly. Do this before the renewal date, not after.
  2. Decide what history matters. Most people do not need every inspection from 2019 in the new app. What matters is the current state of each hive: queen age and source, last treatment and date, mite count trend over the past season, equipment configuration and anything flagged for follow-up. Write a short summary note per hive with those facts.
  3. Set up the new app during the off-season. Winter or early spring is ideal. Create your apiaries and hives, enter the summary note for each, and get comfortable with the inspection form before the first real inspection of the year. Fumbling with a new app during a swarm-season check is how records get skipped.
  4. Run both for one or two inspections if you are nervous. Log the same inspection in HiveTracks and the new app. If the new one captures what you need, you have your answer. Most people stop double-entering after the second visit.
  5. Keep the export files. Store the CSV and PDF exports somewhere safe, such as a cloud folder or an external drive. Even if you never open them again, you own that history and it cost you years to accumulate.
  6. Cancel the subscription. Do it from your account settings and confirm the cancellation in writing. Set a reminder a week before the renewal date in case anything goes wrong.

For the majority of hobbyists and small sideliners, the switch ends with a free, offline app on the phone they already carry into the yard. HiveBook is built for exactly that situation, and it costs nothing to find out whether it fits. If your needs turn out to be bigger, the other options on this list are honest places to look next.