CompareCropster
RoastConsole as a Cropster alternative
Nobody goes deeper at the machine than Cropster, and this page will not pretend otherwise. On price the honest answer depends on which of their tiers you read against ours. The features that make a roastery one record — order management, production plans, traceability, green contracts, the API — are Scale and Advanced at Cropster and in our base plan. Read against Scale, we cost less up to about 5,000 kg of green a month and more above it. Read against Core, which is profiling and inventory, they cost less from about 250 kg up. The table below has the actual numbers.
Credit where it is due
What Cropster does well
Depth at the machine nothing here matches
CurveIQ predicts where a roast is heading and matches it against a reference, which is a different thing from following a curve and is the one piece of the roasting side we do not have an answer to. Their hardware list is longer than ours too. We read gas, airflow and drum speed where the machine exposes them, and Auto roast will hold a PID-capable roaster to a target, so the gap is narrower than it used to be — but predictive matching is theirs.
A decade of production use behind it
Thousands of roasteries have been finding its edge cases since before we existed, and those edges are all sanded down by now. There is also a good chance the roaster you would hire next already knows it, which is worth more than any feature on this page.
Reach beyond the roastery
Cropster Cafe handles espresso operations and retail sites; Cropster Origin runs processing at the mill; and Firescope, the Seoul roast-profiling app they acquired in October 2025, brings a few thousand more roasteries with it. If your business runs past roasting into cafes or importing green, those are whole territories we do not enter and are not planning to. It is also worth knowing that the company is consolidating rather than standing still: Verdane took a majority stake in 2024 and Cropster has said it is funded for further acquisitions. Whether that reads as stability or as a moving target is a judgement about your own risk, not something this page can settle for you.
The honest limit
Where roasteries look elsewhere
These are the complaints we hear from roasteries who go looking, not defects. Most of them are consequences of Cropster being big and modular rather than of it being poor.
You buy the platform in pieces
The platform arrives in pieces you buy separately, so the bill grows each time you join another part of the operation up. That is manageable when you know what you need next. It is harder when you are three years in and still finding out — and some of the pieces are not for sale at all, because a roastery also runs on equipment servicing, expense records, a sales pipeline and somewhere to put the week's jobs.
The operations layer sits high up the plans
Profiling and green inventory arrive early, but cupping analysis, traceability, order management and automated production planning are Scale features, and green contracts and the API are Advanced or add-ons. A roastery that wants the whole operation on one record is shopping near the top of the range rather than the bottom.
More platform than a small roastery needs
A lot of it is built for operations with several sites and someone whose whole job is quality. If you are two people and one roaster you pay for that depth, spend a week configuring it, then click past most of it every morning. Being smaller does not make us better. It makes us a better fit for a particular size of roastery, and you know which one you are.
Every plan carries a volume charge on top
Every published price is a starting-from. Each Roast plan is a monthly fee plus a volume component that moves with roasted weight, connected machines and hardware. Ours works the same way, so neither of us is being sly about it. It does mean the numbers on both pricing pages are the beginning of a quote rather than a quote, and only your own volume settles it.
Side by side
Including the rows where Cropster wins.
| Cropster | Pilot · free | Cloud · paid | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price | Starter from $35/mo; 10 roasts a month free | Free | $79/mo base, plus volume |
| Starter tier limits | 200 roasts a month, 6 kg machine | None | — |
| Whole operation on one plan | Scale from $319/mo; contracts and API are Advanced or add-ons | — | Included at base |
| Users | Unlimited from Core ($109) | Per Mac | Unlimited people and machines |
| Live curve and control | CurveIQ predictive matching, replay | PID control and Auto roast to a curve | — |
| Gas, airflow, drum speed | Captured | Captured where the machine exposes them | — |
| Machine integrations | Industry-wide | Control on six models; read-and-record on a dozen commercial machines over Modbus and S7 | — |
| Cupping and QC | Sensory analysis at Core; custom cupping and QC objectives at Scale | — | Included |
| Green lots and contracts | Inventory at Core; contracts are Advanced or a €500 add-on | — | Included |
| Automated production plans | Scale tier | — | Included |
| Order management | Scale tier | — | Included |
| Wholesale customer portal | Not in their published plans | — | Included |
| Invoicing and card payments | Not in their published plans | — | Invoicing; paid through Stripe or Square; synced to Xero |
| Equipment and maintenance | Not in their published plans | — | Registry, depreciation, servicing |
| Expenses and finance reports | Reporting yes; expenses not listed | — | Included |
| Leads and CRM pipeline | Not in their published plans | — | Included |
| Point of sale | Not in their published plans; Cafe is machine monitoring and QC | — | Counter and walk-in |
| Team task board | Not in their published plans | — | Kanban, calendar, list |
| API and webhooks | Advanced, or a €100 add-on | — | Included at base |
| Cafe and espresso | Cropster Cafe, from €39/machine | — | Not covered |
| Origin and processing | Cropster Origin, from €199/mo | — | Contracts and suppliers only |
| Your data out | Export available | Artisan CSV and .alog | Full archive, open formats |
At your volume
What each one costs at your volume
Their columns are Cropster's own pricing calculator, in US dollars, monthly. Ours is the published rate card. Scale is the tier to read against ours, because that is where order management, production plans and traceability live; Advanced is where contracts and the API arrive without add-ons.
| Green in, per month | Cropster Core | Cropster Scale | Cropster Advanced | RoastConsole Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 250 kg green · ~470 lb roasted | $109 | $319 | $1,159 | $99 |
| 500 kg · ~940 lb | $129 | $340 | $1,186 | $132 |
| 1,000 kg · ~1,870 lb | $170 | $382 | $1,240 | $198 |
| 2,000 kg · ~3,750 lb | $251 | $465 | $1,349 | $311 |
| 5,000 kg · ~9,370 lb | $372 | $610 | $1,538 | $610 |
| 10,000 kg · ~18,700 lb | $531 | $802 | $1,787 | $1,022 |
Read 15 September 2026. Cropster prices by green coffee in; we meter roasted coffee out, so the roasted figure assumes 15% loss. Their calculator calls its figures approximate and says they also move with connected machines and hardware; annual plans take 10% off. Ours has no annual discount and no hardware component. Above 25,000 lb roasted we quote rather than publish.
Moving
If you are considering the move
Your Cropster history imports
Cropster roast data comes across directly, alongside CSV and JSON for lots, suppliers, products, customers, and price lists. Years of roasting do not become a reason you cannot leave.
Check the machine list before anything else
This is the row that decides it. Cropster talks to more roasters than we do. Ours are tiered on the Pilot page: full control on Kaleido and IKAWA, control built for Aillio, Hottop, ROEST and Sandbox Smart, read-and-record over Modbus and Siemens S7 for Loring, Probat, Giesen, Diedrich and a dozen others, and a Phidget board for the rest. If yours is not there, nothing else on this page matters. Pilot is free, so one batch on a Tuesday afternoon will tell you before anyone signs anything.
Compare the whole bill, not the entry price
Add up the tiers and add-ons you would actually be on, then read our rate card against that total rather than against their entry price. For a lot of larger roasteries the answer comes back Cropster, and we would rather you found that out with a calculator than four months into a migration.
The move itself.
Roast history imports directly, and the business records come across as CSV or JSON. It is not perfect. Open orders and invoices in flight are easier to finish in the old system than to carry over, and anything that only ever lived in a notes field will need a decision about where it goes. Most of the switch is a few hours of checking that the numbers match, not weeks of re-keying, and we do it with you. Send us an export before you decide anything and we will tell you what comes across and what does not.
Questions
Including the ones where the answer is “stay”.
- Is RoastConsole cheaper than Cropster?
- It depends which tier you mean, and the table above has the numbers. For a tiny roastery, no: Starter is $35 and ten roasts a month are free, and our answer to that size is Pilot, which is free but does not do inventory. For profiling and green inventory only, Core is cheaper than us from about 250 kg of green a month upward, and you should take it. For the whole operation — orders, production plans, traceability, contracts, the API — the comparison is Scale or Advanced, and there we cost less up to about 5,000 kg a month, the same at 5,000, and more above it. Most roasteries reading this page are under that line.
- Can I import my Cropster roast data?
- Yes. Cropster and Artisan roast data import directly, with bulk CSV and JSON for lots, suppliers, products, customers, and price lists. A full tenant export is available in open formats too, so the same door works in both directions.
- Does RoastConsole support my roasting machine?
- Check first. Cropster's hardware list is broader than ours. Pilot reads gas, airflow and drum speed where the machine exposes them, holds a PID-capable roaster to a curve, and covers the machines listed on the Pilot page at three honest levels of support; what it does not have is CurveIQ's predictive matching. If your practice depends on that, Cropster is the better tool and this is the wrong page for you.
- We are a large multi-site roastery. Should we switch?
- Not on the strength of a comparison page, no. Multi-warehouse stock, roles and permissions, and several sites on one record are in Cloud today. What we do not have is Cropster's years of other people's edge cases at that size, and that is a real advantage once you are running several sites. The roasteries who gain most from moving are the small and mid-sized ones paying Scale prices for two features. Send us your volume and site count and we will tell you honestly which of those you are.
The like-for-like swap
Pilot is a free Mac download.
Run it beside what you use now and compare the curves before anything changes.
Download Pilot (opens in a new tab)Only if you need it
Cloud holds the record the roast belongs to.
Green lots, production, cupping, orders, and invoices, agreeing with each other. Fourteen days, no card.
Start Cloud trialIf you are moving
Ask us about the move from Cropster.
What imports, what needs re-keying, and whether your machine is on the list. A straight answer, including when it is “stay”.
Talk to us