HiveTracks Alternatives: 5 Options for Beekeepers in 2026

HiveTracks is the name most beekeepers hear first. It launched over a decade ago, it has a solid mobile app, and its free tier still works for anyone with five hives or fewer. But it was designed primarily as an inspection logger with GPS mapping — and if your needs have moved beyond logging toward financial tracking, voice data entry, or real business analytics, it starts to show its age.

This is not a list of five identical alternatives with star ratings. Each of these tools was built for a different kind of beekeeper, and the right choice depends entirely on what you are actually trying to do.

1. HiveMoney — built around the business side

HiveMoney was designed from the start for beekeepers who treat their operation as a business. Where HiveTracks focuses on colony health logging, HiveMoney focuses on the financial picture: cost per hive, revenue per channel, margin by product line, and pollination contract profitability. It tracks inspections too, but the differentiator is that every hive record connects to a cost.

Best for: beekeepers who want to know whether they are making money, not just whether their bees are healthy. Hobby beekeepers who sell honey, sideliners running pollination, and commercial operations that need cost visibility.

2. Apiary Book — voice-first and well-priced

Apiary Book is a Romanian-built app that has quietly become one of the most feature-rich options in the market. It has a voice assistant, QR code and NFC tag support for hive identification, and a mentorship program that pairs newer beekeepers with experienced ones. The Android version is significantly more capable than iOS.

Pricing is straightforward: free for up to 9 hives, or €80/year (roughly $87 USD) for unlimited hives with cloud sync and multi-device access. The main limitation is that the platform is strongest on Android. If you work from a desktop or primarily use an iPhone, the experience is more limited.

Best for: Android users who want a polished, full-featured inspection app at a low annual price and do not need financial tracking.

3. MyApiary — enterprise-grade commercial platform

MyApiary is built for large commercial operations. It starts at $69/month per user for the Sideliner plan (up to 350 hives), jumps to $99/user/month for Commercial, and $135/user/month for Professional with multi-region support and asset tracking. If you have an extraction shed, dedicated packages run $2,499–$5,499 per year.

This is not a tool for hobby beekeepers — the pricing alone makes that clear. But for operations running thousands of hives across multiple teams and regions, MyApiary provides GPS tracking of completed tasks, RFID/barcode asset management, audit-ready traceability, and turn-by-turn navigation between yards. It is the closest thing to fleet-management software in the beekeeping world.

Best for: commercial operations with multiple crews, hundreds or thousands of hives, and a need for staff accountability and audit compliance. Not practical for anyone under about 200 hives.

4. BeeKeepPal — free and open-source

BeeKeepPal is a free, web-based hive management tool that covers the basics: inspection logging, queen tracking, and simple reports. There is no mobile app, no financial tracking, and no sensor integration. But it is genuinely free with no hive limit, which makes it a reasonable starting point for hobbyists who want something more structured than a notebook.

Best for: hobbyists who want a free, no-commitment digital log and are comfortable with a web-only interface.

5. Spreadsheets — the tool you already have

This is not a joke entry. A well-built Google Sheet or Excel workbook is still a legitimate alternative, especially below about 25 hives. You control the structure, there is no subscription, and your data is never locked inside a platform. The downside is obvious: no mobile field entry, no automation, and maintaining formulas across multiple seasons becomes increasingly fragile.

If you are currently using a spreadsheet and it is working, the honest advice is to keep using it until it starts costing you time. When you notice you are spending more time maintaining the spreadsheet than learning from it, that is the natural switching point.

How to choose

The best tool is the one you will actually use every inspection. Start free, test with real data, and decide after a season — not after reading a comparison article.