Bartender's Choice Vol.3 vs Specsmith
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Bartender's Choice Vol.3
Discover over a thousand classic and modern cocktail recipes. This app provides guidance on spirits, drink styles, and flavor profiles, along with essential tips on ice, garnishes, and preparation techniques. Elevate your home bartending or professional cocktail service.
- Over 1000 cocktail recipes
- Search by spirit, style, or flavor
- Tips on ice and garnish
- Shaking and stirring techniques
- Classic and modern cocktails
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From the master bartenders behind NYC and Nashville's Attaboy and Milk & Honey comes Bartender's Choice Vol.3, the definitive classic and modern classic cocktail app. Search through over a thousand recipes by spirit, style of drink or flavor profile. Ideal for home use or in any establishment wanting to serve better cocktails. Includes tips on ice, garnish, syrups, shaking & stirring. Here's to drinking better!
Specsmith
This app provides bar teams with instant access to cocktail specifications, prep recipes, and batching calculations. It's designed for quick, at-a-glance readability in a busy service environment, ensuring consistency and accuracy.
- Instant cocktail specs
- Linked prep recipes
- Batching calculations
- Service-ready recipe display
- Multi-workspace support
- In-app recipe editing
- Ad-free experience
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Specsmith is the bar team's spec book, on the floor. Every cocktail program lives in a binder, a shared doc, or someone's memory — and none of those survive a Friday night. Specsmith puts the whole thing in your pocket: the spec, the prep recipe behind it, and the batch numbers, one tap from each other. BUILT FOR SERVICE Pull up a recipe mid-ticket. Measures sit in their own column so you can read a spec at arm's length across a crowded bar, not squint at a paragraph. No loading spinner between you and the drink. PREP THAT CONNECTS An ingredient that is made in house links to the prep recipe that makes it. Tap the honey ginger syrup on a Penicillin and you get the syrup, not a search box. The prep list is there on its own too, alphabetised, for the person doing Tuesday's mise. BATCHING WITHOUT ARITHMETIC Pick a menu, pick a multiplier, get the numbers. The maths happens on the server and matches what the desktop workspace shows for the same menu, so the bar and the office are never quoting different volumes at each other. THE WHOLE WORKSPACE Your menus and your recipes, including recipes that are not on a menu right now. Belong to more than one bar? Switch between workspaces from the menu list; the app remembers which one you had open. EDIT WHERE YOU STAND Fix a spec at the station where you noticed it was wrong. Change measures, methods, glassware and garnish, and photograph the drink with the camera. If a colleague edited the same recipe first, Specsmith says so instead of quietly overwriting their work. MADE FOR A BAR, NOT A PHONE DEMO Big type, one thumb, and a spec you can read without leaning in. No adverts, and no tracking across other apps. Specsmith for iOS is the companion to the Specsmith workspace on the web, where menus get built, costed and printed. Sign in with the account you already have, or create one with email and password, Apple, or Google. Most tools for building menus, managing recipes, and creating prep guides are on the web at getspecsmith.com.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Specsmith at Free against Bartender's Choice Vol.3's $8.99. Specsmith also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.4). Bartender's Choice Vol.3's advantage is chart position (#8 vs unranked) and ratings volume (5 vs 1). On update cadence, ads and in-app purchases 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
Specsmith is free to download; Bartender's Choice Vol.3 costs $8.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Specsmith holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Bartender's Choice Vol.3 has 5 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two.
Bartender's Choice Vol.3 ships an update every 3 days, Specsmith every 5 days. Both last shipped on October 8, 2026.
| Parameter | Bartender's Choice Vol.3 | Specsmith |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $8.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.4 (5 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 66.7% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 5 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 days — better | Every 5 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Free — better |
| Best chart rank | #8 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Apple Watch — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 15.1 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 171 MB | 3 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Fancy Free LLC | Jeremy Oertel |
Customer experience
Bartender's Choice Vol.3
Specsmith
In-app purchases
Bartender's Choice Vol.3
No in-app purchases
Specsmith
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Bartender's Choice Vol.3 free?
Is Specsmith free?
Which has better reviews, Bartender's Choice Vol.3 or Specsmith?
Do Bartender's Choice Vol.3 or Specsmith have ads?
Which is updated more often, Bartender's Choice Vol.3 or Specsmith?
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