Tasting Grounds vs Coffee Journal
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Tasting Grounds
This app helps specialty coffee enthusiasts brew better coffee by logging brew details, tasting notes, and ratings. Connect with friends and the wider coffee community to share experiences, discover new coffees and roasters, and learn about coffee origins and processing methods.
- Log brew details and tasting notes
- Rate coffees like a professional
- Share brews and methods with friends
- Discover coffee origins and processing
- Explore new roasters and brewing techniques
- See community tasting notes and ratings
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Brew Coffee Together! Tasting Grounds is the specialty coffee app designed to connect the coffee community and help everyone brew better coffee together. - Log and rate your brews - record the details of your brewing process (such as brewer, water to grounds ratio, brew time, and more), the flavors you are tasting, and scoring notes like a coffee professional. - Share with your friends and the community - share your coffees and brewing methods, see what your friends are drinking, and discuss how we all enjoy our coffee differently. - Learn more about your coffee - see details about where your coffee was grown, how it was produced, and what flavors your roaster tastes as well as how others are brewing the same beans, what others are tasting, and how others are rating their brews. - Discover new things - discover similarities in the coffees that you do or don’t enjoy, explore new roasters from around the world, and find new ways to brew better coffee. We hope you enjoy using Tasting Grounds! Don’t forget to give us feedback at https://tastinggrounds.com/contact or follow us on Twitter (@tastinggrounds) and Instagram (@tastinggrounds)! TOS: https://tastinggrounds.com/terms
Coffee Journal
Log your coffee brews, beans, and recipes in a digital journal. Track brewing details, tasting notes, and coffee bag aging. Discover new recipes and connect with the coffee community.
- Coffee journal for brews and café visits
- Track beans, roast dates, and aging
- Explore and save coffee recipes
- Organize coffee gear
- AI bag scanning for details
- Coffee community feed
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BeanBook is a free coffee app for specialty coffee lovers. Keep a coffee journal, organize your beans with a coffee tracker, explore coffee recipes, and follow the coffee world in the Coffee Feed. Remember what made each cup great. Save your photos, tasting notes, grind settings and brewing details together, from your morning pour-over to a memorable café visit. YOUR COFFEE LIBRARY - Beans, Brews, Recipes and Gear live in one library, a swipe apart. - One + button adds a bag, brew, recipe or gear from any page. - View, sort and filter each page from one menu next to search. - Open My Coffee Wrapped, your coffee year, in one tap (Pro). THE COFFEE FEED - Read facts and real voices from the coffee community on new beans and gear, daily, each with its sources, quotes and key notes. - See what coffee people are arguing about in Hot takes, and vote in the Daily Poll. - Catch new coffee drops and deals from roasters in your region. - Save stories to read later. YOUR COFFEE JOURNAL - Record home brews and café visits with photos, notes and ratings. - Track dose, ratio, grind, water temperature and brew time. - Log the water and mineral drops you brewed with. - Send Brew Calculator's ratio, water and pours straight into a Brew Log. - Attach beans, Gear and recipes to each Brew Log. - Save a setup as a template (gear, recipe, numbers and steps) and start your next brews from it (Pro). - Customize sections and backgrounds to make the journal your own. - Changes save as you edit. - Revisit your cups in list or grid view, see every brew on a check-in calendar and every café on a map. YOUR COFFEE TRACKER - Scan coffee bags with AI to fill in the roaster, origin, process and tasting notes. - Track roast dates, resting time and how each bag is aging. - Pause the roast clock while a bag is frozen. - See how much coffee is left in each bag as you brew. - Match your beans to jars with numbered or custom container labels. - Remember your favorite coffees and keep a history of finished bags. EXPLORE COFFEE RECIPES - Discover brewing methods and save your own coffee recipes. - Keep dose, ratio, grind settings and temperature ready for your next brew. - Start a Brew Log from a saved recipe. - Calculate water amounts for two to five pours with Brew Calculator. - Follow your brew with the built-in timer. Find recipes for Hario V60, AeroPress, Hario Switch, OXO Rapid Brewer, V60 NEO, NextLevel Pulsar, Deep27, Origami, Orea, Chemex, French Press and Cezve. Explore recipes from coffee professionals including James Hoffmann, Tetsu Kasuya, Lance Hedrick, Scott Rao, The Coffee Chronicler, April Coffee Roasters and World Brewers Cup champions. YOUR COFFEE GEAR - Organize grinders, brewers, kettles and scales with photos, notes and ratings. - Save grinder settings for the coffees you brew. - Find related Brew Logs on bean and Gear pages. - Keep a wish list for your next setup. BEANBOOK AI - Scan bags to spend less time entering coffee details. - Ask about origins, processing, flavor notes and brewing techniques. - Get suggestions for grind size, temperature, resting time and extraction. FREE TO START BeanBook is a free coffee app with optional Pro features. Keep up to 10 fully unlocked Brew Logs on the free plan, plus unlimited basic logs with photos, notes, beans, locations and overall ratings. BeanBook Pro unlocks unlimited beans, recipes and Gear, plus advanced Brew Log features beyond the free allowance. Brew, taste, remember. Keep your coffee journey in BeanBook. Terms of Service: https://beanbook.app/terms-of-service Privacy Policy: https://beanbook.app/policy
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Verdict
The clearest difference is monetization model: Tasting Grounds at free against Coffee Journal's freemium. Coffee Journal's advantage is update cadence (every 4 days vs every 9 days). On price, rating, review sentiment and ratings volume there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Tasting Grounds sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month and Coffee Journal sells 4 in-app purchases, starting at $7.90 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.9 for Tasting Grounds against 4.9 for Coffee Journal. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 47 and 30 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 84% of Tasting Grounds's written reviews are positive against 91% of Coffee Journal's.
Tasting Grounds ships an update every 9 days, Coffee Journal every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on November 3, 2026 and November 5, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Tasting Grounds | Coffee Journal |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.9 (47 ratings) | 4.9 (30 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 84.2% of reviews | 91.3% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 47 — better | 30 |
| Update frequency | Every 9 days | Every 4 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Freemium |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.1 | 15.1 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 62 MB | 104 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Tasting Grounds, LLC | Bitlever |
Customer experience
Tasting Grounds
Coffee Journal
In-app purchases
Tasting Grounds
- Tasting Grounds Pro - Monthly$2.991 Month
- Tasting Grounds Pro - Yearly$24.991 Year
Coffee Journal
- BeanBook Pro Monthly$7.901 Month
- BeanBook Pro1 Month trial$35.901 Year
- BeanBook Pro1 Month trial$49.901 Year
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- BeanBook Pro1 Year trial$49.901 Year
Questions
Is Tasting Grounds free?
Is Coffee Journal free?
Which has better reviews, Tasting Grounds or Coffee Journal?
Do Tasting Grounds or Coffee Journal have ads?
Which is updated more often, Tasting Grounds or Coffee Journal?
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