Bar Pals vs BarKeep
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Bar Pals
Discover new cocktails, connect with bartenders, and share your experiences. Earn rewards by reviewing drinks and sharing recipes. Find hidden gems and get real-time alerts from your favorite mixologists.
- Cocktail discovery
- Social networking for cocktail lovers
- Recipe sharing
- Virtual gifting and cash rewards
- Personalized drink suggestions
- Rate and review cocktails
- Find local bartenders
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Welcome to Bar Pals – The ultimate cocktail discovery app and social network for cocktail lovers and bartenders! Whether you're a cocktail enthusiast searching for your next favorite drink or a talented bartender aiming to connect with a wider audience, Bar Pals has you covered. Discover new drinks with ease and share the fun with friends. Bar Pals is all about helping you enjoy your night out. Rewarding Creativity and Knowledge With Bar Pals, your passion for mixology can earn you rewards. Whether you're a drinker adding cocktail reviews or a bartender sharing your recipes, our unique gifting system lets your audience show their appreciation with virtual gifts—virtual gifts that can be redeemed for cash. As a content creator, Bar Pals is your number one option for monetizing your passion for mixology. It’s simple—create reviews, share your recipes, and earn as our community shows gratitude for your contributions to the world of cocktails. Personalized Experience Drink Suggestions: Let Bar Pals guide you to your next favorite cocktail based on your tastes and preferences. Rate & Review Uniquely: Celebrate the cocktails and support the bartenders. Your reviews help others discover the art behind each drink and the skill of the mixologist who created it. Explore & Connect Discover Hidden Gems: Taste the best cocktails near you and meet the local bartenders that are best at helping make a night out unforgettable. Real-Time Alerts: Get notified when your favorite mixologists are serving or when friends are out enjoying a drink. Learn & Share Master New Recipes: Access an exclusive collection of recipes curated by top bartenders. Whether you're a pro or a home mixologist, there's always something new to learn. Share your Favorites: Share your best cocktail experiences. Let friends see the bartenders and drinks you love the most on your profile. Safety & Privacy Check-in System: Both patrons and bartenders can check in, sharing their location with a selected circle, ensuring privacy and safety. Controlled Visibility: Check-in details are only visible to connections for bartenders and close friends for patrons. Secure Community: Report or block users with ease, maintaining a safe environment for all. Bar Pals is Free to Join! Step into the world of Bar Pals at no cost and start your journey today. Download the app and jump straight into personalizing your Bar Pals experience. Do you love trying new drinks, or are you a bartender who wants to show off your skills? Either way, Bar Pals is for you. Join a community that celebrates each drink and the expertise of every bartender that makes them. Download Bar Pals Now and embark on a cocktail adventure like no other! Connect, discover, share, and turn your love for cocktails into an opportunity to earn. Join our community of cocktail lovers today!
BarKeep
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Know what's on your bar cart, and what you can make with it tonight. BarKeep is a home bar inventory that answers one question well: given the bottles you actually own, what can you pour right now? Add bottles by photographing the label, scanning the barcode, or typing. BarKeep tracks what's open, what's running low, and what's empty — then filters 300 built-in recipes down to the ones you can make tonight, and shows what you're one bottle away from. NOT THE BIGGEST RECIPE BOOK — THE ONE THAT WORKS Every recipe is curated and checked against the shelf it's meant to be made from, so "makeable tonight" means you can actually pour it — not that an ingredient name happened to match. All 300 have a written note, a glass, and ingredients that recognize the bottles you already own, by the names they're actually sold under. FREE, AND STAYING FREE • Unlimited bottle inventory with photos, sizes, and how much is left • 300 recipes — classics, modern classics, tiki and highballs — 40 of them zero-proof • Makeable Tonight — recipes filtered to what's in stock, not what you wish you had • Identify a bottle from a photo — with Apple Intelligence, or with your own Claude API key • Low stock tracking, with reminders before you run out • Browse by ingredient, glassware, mood, or dietary filter • Ask the Barkeep — questions about your own shelf, answered from your own inventory ZERO-PROOF, NOT AN AFTERTHOUGHT 40 of the 300 recipes contain no alcohol at all — a Nogroni, a Virgin Paloma, a Ginger Switchel, a proper Chocolate Egg Cream. They live in the same book as everything else and run through the same "what can I make tonight" filter, so a shelf with no spirits on it still works. BARKEEP PRO • Advanced Stats — spend, most-used spirits, and pour history • Export — your inventory and recipe book as a file you keep • Home Screen Widgets — low stock and makeable-now at a glance • Unlimited recipe imports — from a URL, pasted text, or TheCocktailDB (five are free) • Written tasting notes for the recipes you import; every built-in recipe already has one Pro is $2.99/month or $19.99/year in the U.S., with a one-week free trial on the yearly plan; prices vary by region. Everything above it stays free forever — no ads, no account, no sign-up. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://homebarkeep.com/privacy/ PRIVACY Your inventory lives on your device. There's no account to create and nothing to log into. To identify a bottle from a photo, BarKeep uses Apple's Private Cloud Compute when it's available, and otherwise does it entirely on your iPhone — when you're offline, for example. Apple designed Private Cloud Compute not to keep your photo and so that Apple can't access it, and the photo is never sent to us. The one feature that uses a server of ours — a written tasting note for a recipe you import — sends only the ingredient list, never the recipe name, and nothing about you or your bar. BarKeep is for adults of legal drinking age. Please drink responsibly.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ads: BarKeep at none against Bar Pals's shown. BarKeep also leads on update cadence (daily vs every 5 weeks). Bar Pals's advantage is iOS requirement (12.0 vs 27.0). On price, in-app purchases and device support 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. Bar Pals sells 7 one-off in-app purchases and BarKeep sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Bar Pals ships an update every 5 weeks, BarKeep daily. The most recent releases landed on October 30, 2026 and October 29, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Bar Pals | BarKeep |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (21 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 21 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 5 weeks | Daily — better |
| Ads | Yes | No — better |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPod | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 12.0 — better | 27.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 38 MB | 8 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Event Tree Inc. | Andrew Vlahopoulos |
In-app purchases
Bar Pals
- 60 Bar Coins$0.99
- 300 Bar Coins$4.99
- 600 Bar Coins$9.99
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- 1200 Bar Coins$19.99
- 3000 Bar Coins$49.99
- 6000 Bar Coins$99.99
- 15000 Bar Coins$249.00
BarKeep
- BarKeep Pro (Monthly)$2.991 Month
- BarKeep Pro (Yearly)7 Days trial$19.991 Year









