Comparison

BarShelf vs BarKeep

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

BarShelf

Catalog your home bar's bottles, track pours, and discover cocktail recipes based on what you own. Get AI-powered suggestions and insights into your drinking habits. Share your collection and tasting notes visually.

Highlights
  • Catalog bottles with details (ABV, volume, fill level)
  • Track tasting notes and ratings
  • AI cocktail suggestions based on owned bottles
  • Log drinking moments and analyze taste patterns
  • Create shareable collection and review cards
  • Visualize your digital home bar shelf
Features
Read full description

Start without an account. Scan a whiskey bottle and let AI fill in the details. Log a pour and watch your collection become a calendar of bottles, amounts, moods, and tasting notes. Then see which of 57 classic cocktails you can make from what you already own. POUR CALENDAR & JOURNAL - See every drinking day at a glance - Tap any date to revisit the bottle, amount, mood, and note - Turn your pour history into a personal whiskey journal Your home bar deserves more than a dusty shelf. BarShelf helps you catalog every bottle, remember every pour, and discover cocktails you can make from what you already own. Start without an account — no signup required. ADD BOTTLES IN SECONDS - Snap a photo of any bottle and AI recognizes the name, category, and ABV - No barcode needed — works on whiskey, gin, rum, tequila, and more - Or add manually with full control over every detail ORGANIZE YOUR HOME BAR - Add whiskey, sake, gin, rum, tequila, vodka, liqueurs, wine, and more - Build a visual digital shelf that mirrors your real collection - Track bottle details, ABV, volume, price, origin, rating, and fill level - Sort and filter your spirits by category, rating, status, or shelf ORGANIZE, KEEP, AND SHARE - Tag and label bottles so your shelf is sorted your way - Keep a wishlist of the bottles you want next - Buy again: restock a finished bottle in one tap from your Archive - Export your whole collection to CSV whenever you want - Share your shelf as a web link friends can open without the app - Get a weekly report on what you poured REMEMBER EVERY POUR - Write tasting notes for nose, palate, and finish - Rate bottles and keep a personal record of what you loved - Archive finished bottles so your collection becomes a drinking journal - Look back on past pours, favorite bottles, and memorable nights AI BARTENDER FROM YOUR OWN SHELF - Get cocktail ideas based on the bottles you already own - Ask for recipes by mood, flavor, occasion, or preferred style - Save favorite AI recipes to your personal recipe book - Get suggestions that understand your shelf and taste profile WHAT YOU CAN MAKE TONIGHT - See which of 57 classic cocktails you can make right now - Matched live against the exact bottles on your shelf - Discover what one more bottle would unlock INSIGHTS FOR YOUR TASTE - Log drinking moments and see patterns over time - Discover which categories, flavors, and styles you return to most - Unlock deeper monthly insights, trends, and palate analysis with BarShelf Pro SHARE YOUR COLLECTION - Create beautiful shelf cards from your favorite bottles - Turn tasting notes into shareable review cards - Show your home bar in a way that looks as good as it tastes BarShelf Pro unlocks unlimited bottles, AI Bartender, personalized palate profile, advanced insights, premium themes, and more. Whether you collect bourbon, explore Scotch, mix cocktails, host friends, or simply want to remember what is on your shelf, BarShelf gives your home bar a place to live. Download BarShelf and pour with purpose. Please enjoy responsibly. SUBSCRIPTION BarShelf Pro is a weekly, monthly, or annual auto-renewing subscription. The annual plan includes a 3-day free trial. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase. It renews automatically unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Manage or cancel anytime in your Apple Account settings. Privacy Policy: https://barshelfapp.com/en/policy Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

BarKeep

Features
Read full description

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

BarShelf4 screens
BarKeep4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: BarKeep at daily against BarShelf's every 2 weeks. BarShelf's advantage is iOS requirement (15.1 vs 27.0). On price, ads, 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. BarShelf sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per 7 days 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.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

BarShelf ships an update every 2 weeks, BarKeep daily. The most recent releases landed on October 6, 2026 and October 9, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
BarShelf versus BarKeep: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBarShelfBarKeep
PriceFreeFree
Rating3.5 (6 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings6 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeksDaily — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFreemium—
DevicesiPhone, iPodiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS15.1 — better27.0
Further details — not scored
Size98 MB8 MB
Age rating17+17+
DeveloperDefine YouAndrew Vlahopoulos

In-app purchases

3 purchases

BarShelf

Subscriptions3
  • BarShelf Pro Weekly$1.997 Days
  • BarShelf Pro Monthly$3.991 Month
  • BarShelf Pro Annually3 Days trial$39.991 Year
2 purchases

BarKeep

Subscriptions2
  • BarKeep Pro (Monthly)$2.991 Month
  • BarKeep Pro (Yearly)7 Days trial$19.991 Year

Questions

Is BarShelf free?
BarShelf is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is BarKeep free?
BarKeep is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do BarShelf or BarKeep have ads?
Neither BarShelf nor BarKeep shows ads.
Which is updated more often, BarShelf or BarKeep?
BarShelf ships an update every 2 weeks, and BarKeep daily. Most recently, BarShelf was updated on October 6, 2026 and BarKeep on October 9, 2026.

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