Is Firescope still an independent company?

No. Cropster acquired Firescope on 14 October 2025. Cropster said at the time that it would remain a fully supported standalone product and then be integrated into the Cropster portfolio over the following twelve months. If long-term independence matters to your decision, that is the fact to weigh.

Can I import my Firescope roast data?

Not directly today. We read Artisan, Cropster and RoastPATH roast data, and Firescope is not on that list. Send us an export and we will tell you honestly whether we can bring it across, because we would rather answer that before you move than after.

Does RoastConsole run on Windows?

Cloud does, in any browser. Pilot does not: it is a macOS application. Firescope is Windows software, so a roastery already running Windows at the roaster would be pairing our Cloud with something other than our Pilot at the machine, and you should factor that in rather than assume the pair comes together.

Firescope does profiling and inventory. What am I gaining?

The commercial half. Wholesale orders through to invoices and payments, customers and a pipeline, packaging, equipment and maintenance, expenses and finance reporting, all against the same batches and lots the roasting side produced. If your roastery's problem is that the roast is well recorded and everything after it is not, that is the gain. If the roast itself is the problem, Firescope is already doing that job.

CompareFirescope

RoastConsole as a Firescope alternative

Firescope is a good piece of roasting software and this page is not going to argue otherwise. There are two things worth knowing before you choose it. Cropster acquired it in October 2025, so the roadmap you are buying into is now Cropster's rather than Firescope's. And it covers the roasting half of a roastery: the commercial and finance side lives somewhere else.

Credit where it is due

What Firescope does well

Sampling and event detection that hold up

It reads the machine every half second, which is a finer curve than most roasting software draws, and it picks out charge, drop and first crack from bean temperature on its own rather than waiting for someone to press a key with one hand on the drum. Rate of rise is calculated live off the same data.

Cloud from the first roast

Every roast is stored centrally and reachable from another device or another site, so there is no local file to lose and no laptop that quietly holds the only copy of last year. Pilot keeps roasts locally and syncs them; the destination is the same, the default is not.

It set itself up without a technician

Self-serve installation is a large part of why it reached roughly three thousand users from a standing start in Seoul in 2020. Anyone who has spent a morning on a roasting integration with someone else's support team on the phone will know what that is worth.

The honest limit

What to weigh before choosing it

None of these are faults in the software. Two are consequences of who owns it now, and one is a consequence of what it set out to be.

It belongs to Cropster now
Cropster announced the acquisition on 14 October 2025, saying Firescope would stay a fully supported standalone product before being brought into the Cropster portfolio over the following twelve months. Nothing about that is sinister and Cropster is a serious company. It does mean a roastery choosing Firescope today is choosing Cropster's plans for it, and those are not published on Firescope's site.
It is the roasting half of a roastery
Profiling, inventory and green analysis are there. Wholesale orders, invoicing, payments, customers and the money side of the operation are not what it was built for. That is the same shape as Artisan or Pilot on their own, and for a roastery whose problem is at the machine it is the right shape.
It is PC software
Firescope runs on Windows. Pilot runs on macOS. If your roastery is on Windows machines then Pilot is not an option for you at all, and that decides this comparison before any feature does. Cloud is a web application and runs anywhere, but Cloud is not the piece that sits beside the roaster.

Side by side

Including the rows where Firescope wins.

	Firescope	Pilot · free	Cloud · paid
Owned by	Cropster, since October 2025	Independent	Independent
Platform	Windows	macOS	Any browser
Sampling rate	Every 0.5 seconds	Adjustable update rate	—
Automatic event detection	Charge, drop and first crack from bean temp	Milestones, nudgeable after the fact	—
Rate of rise	Live	Live, with selectable methods	—
Machine control	Not described in their guide	PID and Auto roast where exposed	—
Roast storage	Cloud by default	Local, syncing to Cloud	Included
Green inventory	Included	—	Lots, groups and depletion
Green contracts	Not described in their guide	—	Included
Wholesale orders and invoicing	Not described in their guide	—	Included
Price	Not published	Free	$79/mo base, plus volume

Moving

If you are considering the move

Ask us about your roast history first

We import Artisan, Cropster and RoastPATH directly. Firescope is not a format we read today, and now that it sits inside Cropster that may change on its own. Send us an export before you decide anything and we will tell you plainly whether it comes across or not, rather than finding out together afterwards.

Settle the Windows question before the rest

Pilot is a Mac application. If the computer beside your roaster runs Windows, the roasting half of what we do is not available to you, and no other row on this page changes that. Cloud would still run in a browser on that machine, but you would be pairing it with something else at the drum.

Try it against your own roaster

Our tested machine list is four, with everything else reading through a Phidget board rather than a driver of its own. Pilot is free, so one batch on a quiet afternoon settles whether your hardware and ours get along before anybody signs anything.

Questions

Including the ones where the answer is “stay”.

Is Firescope still an independent company?: No. Cropster acquired Firescope on 14 October 2025. Cropster said at the time that it would remain a fully supported standalone product and then be integrated into the Cropster portfolio over the following twelve months. If long-term independence matters to your decision, that is the fact to weigh.
Can I import my Firescope roast data?: Not directly today. We read Artisan, Cropster and RoastPATH roast data, and Firescope is not on that list. Send us an export and we will tell you honestly whether we can bring it across, because we would rather answer that before you move than after.
Does RoastConsole run on Windows?: Cloud does, in any browser. Pilot does not: it is a macOS application. Firescope is Windows software, so a roastery already running Windows at the roaster would be pairing our Cloud with something other than our Pilot at the machine, and you should factor that in rather than assume the pair comes together.
Firescope does profiling and inventory. What am I gaining?: The commercial half. Wholesale orders through to invoices and payments, customers and a pipeline, packaging, equipment and maintenance, expenses and finance reporting, all against the same batches and lots the roasting side produced. If your roastery's problem is that the roast is well recorded and everything after it is not, that is the gain. If the roast itself is the problem, Firescope is already doing that job.

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

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 trial