Magpie vs Countstead
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Magpie
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Magpie now speaks English, French, and Spanish, with a new experience designed for iPad. • Choose your preferred language from Home or Settings • Optimized iPad layouts for portrait and landscape • Fully localized inventory, counts, reports, alerts, exports, and widgets • Improved formatting for dates, numbers, currency, and units • Additional accessibility and interface refinements
Countstead
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Countstead is an inventory app for small businesses on iPhone and iPad. Record what comes in and goes out, count what is on the shelf, scan barcodes and see what is running low, even with no internet connection. No account is needed to start. It is built for shops, market stalls, makers, resellers, cafés and kitchens, salons and repair workshops: small businesses that keep physical stock and have outgrown a spreadsheet, without taking on an ERP or warehouse system. WORKS OFFLINE Items, counts, locations and history live on your iPhone or iPad and work without a connection. Your inventory stays on the device unless you turn on sync. SCAN BARCODES Scan a barcode or QR code with the camera to open the item and record stock. Scan a code you have not used yet and Countstead offers to create the item with the code filled in. Codes are read on the device and matched against your own items; nothing is looked up online. RECORD EVERY MOVEMENT Record stock in, stock out, counts, corrections and transfers between locations. Every change is added to the item's history, so the original entry stays visible. Quantities can be whole units or decimals, such as kilograms and litres. SEE WHAT NEEDS ATTENTION Set a low-stock level for each item at each location, and the Low Stock view lists everything at or below it. Add best-before dates to see what is expiring soon. Reports show what your stock is worth at cost. KEEP ITEMS ORGANIZED Give each item a photo, SKU, barcode, unit, unit cost, sale value, notes and tags, and find it by searching as you type. YOUR DATA, BACKED UP A snapshot is a complete copy of your inventory, with quantities, history and photos, saved on this device. Share it to keep it somewhere else, and restore it on this device or another one. Import up to 10,000 rows from a CSV file or Excel workbook, and export everything as CSV whenever you like. COUNTSTEAD PRO The free app holds up to 30 active items at one location. Countstead Pro is an optional subscription that adds: • Unlimited items • More than one location • Sync across your devices, set up separately with Sign in with Apple • Low-stock and expiry alerts on this device • Reorder suggestions from your usage • Guided counts • What moved, by period • Retail value and margin • Printable barcode label sheets • A PDF inventory summary and filtered CSV reports • Automatic daily backups on this device Countstead is available in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean and Indonesian. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://countstead.com/privacy/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Magpie at none against Countstead's 2. On price, update cadence, ads 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. Countstead sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $10.00 per month. Magpie asks for nothing beyond the download.
Magpie ships an update every 2 days, Countstead every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on October 25, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Magpie | Countstead |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Every 2 days — better | Every 4 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 18.2 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 11 MB | 32 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Jason McBride | Imdad Ismail |
In-app purchases
Magpie
No in-app purchases
Countstead
- Countstead Pro Monthly$10.001 Month
- Countstead Pro Annual1 Month trial$90.001 Year









