Sourdough Starter vs Sourdough Bread Timer
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Sourdough Starter
This app helps you track and care for your sourdough starter and other ferments. It uses your phone's camera to analyze your starter's progress and provides personalized feeding schedules and troubleshooting advice. It also includes recipes and calculators for various fermented foods.
- Camera-based starter analysis
- Personalized feeding schedules
- Troubleshooting for ferment issues
- Recipes for starter and other ferments
- Ferment tracking for multiple types
- Bake planning and calculators
- Voice and widget controls
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Your sourdough starter is alive. Fermento treats it that way. Klaus — or whatever you name yours — has a face. Leave him too long and he looks hungry. Feed him and he beams. It sounds silly right up until you realise you haven't killed a starter in months. A PHOTO INSTEAD OF A GUESS Hold the jar up to the camera. Bubbie reads the bubbles, how far it climbed, the crust drying on the glass — six things a camera can genuinely judge, not ten invented ones. Then she says what it means for your next feed, and moves it. Photograph a cut loaf and she reads the crumb the same way. SIX JARS, ONE SHELF Sourdough starter, brine pickles, kombucha, kraut and kimchi, yogurt and kefir, ginger bug. Each gets its own character, rhythm and checklist. FROM FLOUR AND WATER Three day-by-day recipes raise a starter from scratch: the grams for each day, and what you should be seeing. Around day four it looks dead in every one of them — Fermento tells you that before you throw it out. REMINDERS THAT READ THE ROOM Free jars run on a fixed rhythm you choose. With Plus, tell Fermento how warm your kitchen is and it pulls the next feed forward on hot days, pushes it back when it's cold. Quiet hours are respected — nothing pings you at 3 a.m. Burp reminders for pickles, fizz checks for kombucha, a wake-up when a jar leaves the fridge. FEED BY THE SCALE Tell Fermento once what the empty jar weighs and every feed names the number to watch for instead of an amount to guess at. Your jar can hold a blend — 70 % wheat, 30 % wholegrain rye — and Bubbie says whether that ratio carries it to the next feed. WHEN SOMETHING LOOKS WRONG Grey liquid on top? White film? No rise? Photograph it, or pick what you see from a list. Bubbie explains what it actually is, and with Plus installs a real fix: a changed ratio, a shorter schedule, a set number of feeds. The jar stays in rescue mode until it's back on track. IT LEARNS YOUR STARTER Log a rise and Fermento remembers how long it took. The countdown to the peak is free and runs on your Lock Screen. With Plus it drops the rule of thumb and uses your jar's own measured curve instead. PLAN A BAKE BACKWARDS Say when the dough goes together and Fermento names the feed time and the ratio so the starter peaks exactly then. One plan a month is free. WHEN YOUR HANDS ARE FULL "Hey Siri, feed my starter in Fermento." A widget and a Control Centre button do the same in one tap. On bake day the step you're in counts down on the Lock Screen. EVERYTHING YOU DID, KEPT A calendar that fills itself and, with Plus, a photo timeline per jar and a monthly recap to share. Dough and brine calculators. Discard recipes so nothing goes in the bin. Your whole log exports as CSV — free, because it is your data. BADGES YOU EARN Twenty milestones and twenty-one outfits for your jars. None of them can be bought — they only come from actually looking after your ferments. WHAT LEAVES YOUR IPHONE No account, no sign-up, no ads, nothing sold on. Your jars, photos and history live on the device and sync through your own iCloud if you want them to. A photo sent for a reading is resized, stripped of its location, and stored nowhere — not on the server, not in a log. The weather heads-up is optional and sends a rounded-off region, never an address. Anonymous counts show where people get stuck; a switch in Settings turns them off. FERMENTO PLUS Unlimited jars, full history, the photo readings, the bake planner, rescue plans, temperature-aware reminders, photo timelines and the bake book. Free keeps two jars and 30 days of history. Fermento is a logbook, not a lab. It won't tell you whether something is safe to eat - when in doubt, throw it out. Apple Standard EULA: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Terms of Use: https://jonaspolenz368.github.io/Fermento/terms.html Privacy Policy: https://jonaspolenz368.github.io/Fermento/privacy.html
Sourdough Bread Timer
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Sourdough doesn't wait for you. Levain runs your whole bake from one timeline — every stage, every fold, every proof — and its alarms ring through silent mode so you never sleep through a shape again. Most timers count down once. A real loaf needs eight stages across eighteen hours, half of them overnight. Levain was built for that. ONE TIMER, EVERY STAGE Chain autolyse, mix, bulk ferment, folds, shape, cold retard and bake into a single schedule. Every step shows the clock time it will actually happen, before you start — so you know tonight whether you are pulling bread out at 7am or at noon. Long bakes get Next Day markers where the timeline crosses midnight. ALARMS THAT ACTUALLY WAKE YOU Stage alerts ring through silent mode and Focus, the way a Clock alarm does. Loud alarms are per stage: quiet for the overnight retard, loud for the oven. LIVE ON YOUR LOCK SCREEN The countdown lives in the Dynamic Island and on your Lock Screen. Glance at the stage name, the step number and the time left without opening the app. DOUGH THAT RUNS LATE When a stage ends the clock keeps counting up instead of resetting. Dough is ready when it is ready — Levain waits, and tells you how far over you are. BUILD YOUR OWN BREAD Drag stages into a timeline, scrub durations on a rotary dial, and drop ingredients, temperatures and humidity targets onto any step. Baker's percentage is calculated as you go, with levain counted as half flour and half water. A JOURNAL OF EVERY LOAF Log a bake and it becomes a photo on your calendar. The background is lifted off your loaf on device, so the bread sits as a sticker on the day you baked it. Notes, a gallery, the ingredients and the timeline it really ran on are kept as a snapshot — editing the recipe later never rewrites history. Starts with Classic Sourdough and Sourdough Focaccia. No account, and nothing leaves your phone. FREE AND PRO Free includes 3 recipes with the full multi-stage timer, loud alarms and Live Activity. Levain Pro unlocks unlimited recipes and the full photo bake journal, with a 7-day free trial. Available monthly, yearly, or as a one-time purchase. Monthly and yearly plans renew automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Manage or cancel in Settings. Terms of Use: https://liuys614.github.io/levain/terms.html Privacy Policy: https://liuys614.github.io/levain/privacy.html
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Sourdough Starter at every 3 days against Sourdough Bread Timer's every 8 days. Sourdough Starter also leads on iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.0). 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
Both are free to download. Sourdough Starter sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $4.49 per month and Sourdough Bread Timer sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Sourdough Starter ships an update every 3 days, Sourdough Bread Timer every 8 days. Both last shipped on November 6, 2026.
| Parameter | Sourdough Starter | Sourdough Bread Timer |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (2 ratings) — better | — |
| Number of ratings | 2 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 3 days — better | Every 8 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Freemium | — |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, Apple Watch — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 16 MB | 8 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Jonas Polenz | YI SHIH LIU |
In-app purchases
Sourdough Starter
- FermentoPlusMonthly7 Days trial$4.491 Month
- Fermento Yearly7 Days trial$35.991 Year
Sourdough Bread Timer
- Pro Monthly: Unlimited Journal$3.991 Month
- Pro Yearly: Unlimited Recipes7 Days trial$15.991 Year
- Pro Lifetime: Unlimited Bakes$29.99
Questions
Is Sourdough Starter free?
Is Sourdough Bread Timer free?
Do Sourdough Starter or Sourdough Bread Timer have ads?
Which is updated more often, Sourdough Starter or Sourdough Bread Timer?
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