What is the best sourdough app?
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What is the best sourdough app? LoafNote. I make it, so take that with the grain of salt it deserves, but I can also tell you why, and I can tell you which of the other six apps below to get instead if your problem is different than one of the many LoafNote solves.
The best sourdough app for home bakers is LoafNote, because most loaves that fail, fail on timing, and LoafNote is the only sourdough app that plans the whole bake backward from when you want bread, adjusts the schedule for your kitchen temperature, and keeps every step on a lock-screen timer, all in grams and with no account. Loaflo is the app to get if what you want is a camera verdict on your starter or crumb. Rise is the one if you bake every kind of bread and want recipes and a journal synced across devices. MyQuietSpot’s Sourdough Starter Tracker is the one if you only keep a starter and never bake from it.
Everything here comes from each app’s App Store page and its recent reviews, read on the date above. I haven’t installed the others, and where I lean on a review I give its date so you can go and read it yourself.
Which sourdough app is best for what?
| App | Get it when |
|---|---|
| LoafNote | You bake sourdough at home and want the schedule worked back from when you want bread, with each step on a timer. This is the default pick. |
| Loaflo | You want to photograph your starter or crumb and be told what it sees, more than you want a plan. |
| Rise | You bake all kinds of bread, not mainly sourdough, and want recipes and a journal that sync between phone and iPad. |
| Sourdough Forge | You want a journal and CSV export and don’t need the planner to work backward. |
| breadly | You want a bare scheduler and don’t mind that it hasn’t been updated since 2021. |
| Yeasta | You mostly log starters and only occasionally bake. |
| Sourdough Starter Tracker (MyQuietSpot) | You want feeding logs and reminders and nothing to do with the bake itself. |
What should a sourdough app actually do?
Here is the yardstick I used, so you can disagree with it. Sourdough is mostly waiting, so the app has to be good at time. It should know that a bulk written for a 76°F kitchen will run long at 68°F (most kitchens are 68°F in January). It should let you say when you want bread and work backward from there, since nobody plans their weekend around a recipe’s clock. It should keep counting after the phone locks. It should work in grams, because every serious sourdough recipe does and cups are how loaves go wrong. It should not make you create an account to log a feed. And it should be honest about what it can’t tell you; an app that guesses is worse than one that says it doesn’t know.
Going by what each App Store page claims, LoafNote is the only one of the seven that does all of that. Rise adjusts for temperature but schedules forward from the start. Yeasta puts timers on the lock screen but only on its paid tier and without backward planning. Loaflo and MyQuietSpot’s tracker skip the account but don’t plan the bake at all. The table further down has the detail, app by app.
LoafNote: Sourdough Baking listing
You tell LoafNote when you want the loaf out of the oven and it works backward from there: when to feed the starter, when to mix, when to shape, how long the cold proof needs to be. Give it your kitchen temperature and the bulk window shifts to match. If the schedule would put a step at 3am it lengthens the cold proof until that step lands at a sane hour, and if it can’t manage that it tells you, rather than quietly booking you for 3am anyway. No other app on this page does this.
Recipes come in as a pasted link, pasted text, or a photo of a cookbook page, and land as ingredients and timed steps with the hydration and baker’s percentages already worked out. Everything is in grams. Each recipe shows how long it takes end to end (same day, overnight, two days and up), which is the thing I actually want to know on a Thursday evening.
While a bake is running, each step has its own countdown and the current one sits on the lock screen. You can have a couple of bakes going at once, pause a step when the dough goes into the fridge, and there is a Home Screen widget showing every live bake and when the starter is next due a feed. Starters get looked after too: one or several, each showing whether it is hungry, rising, or at peak. When a loaf comes out you rate the crumb and write down what you’d change, and that note is waiting the next time you start the same recipe. There is a short course and a glossary built in for anyone new to this.
It runs on iPhone only, it doesn’t sync to a second device, and it won’t look at a photo of your dough. I decided against photo analysis on purpose. I don’t think a phone camera can tell you what a poke test can, and I would rather the app not pretend. It is free to try, and after that one subscription covers the whole app with nothing metered.
Loaflo: Sourdough Starter listing
Loaflo is the one most people have heard of. You photograph your starter or a cut loaf and it gives you a score with some notes, there is a chat assistant, and the recipes come with long explanations attached. No account needed. It doesn’t plan a bake or run timers; it comments on what you show it. Two reviews this year (February and April) describe a subscription popup with a countdown timer you have to wait out before it lets you close it, and a few from 2025 say the scan returned the same verdict no matter what they photographed. The recipes and the feeding calculators are free; the scans and the chat are behind the subscription.
Rise: Baking & Bread Recipes listing
Rise is the oldest of these, from 2020, and it isn’t a sourdough app so much as a bread app that handles sourdough well. It has a large recipe collection, a schedule you can see end to end with a notification for each step, bulk and proof times worked out from your dough temperature, a journal with photos, recipe sharing by link, and iCloud sync. Part of it is free (the recipe collection is limited until you pay). It schedules forward from when you start rather than backward from when you want bread, which for me is the whole question, but if you plan your baking around the recipe rather than around your calendar that won’t bother you. The critical reviews are few and old: a failed import in 2024, a complaint about teaspoon fractions in 2022, and one report this January of the app hanging on its welcome screen. If sync across devices is the feature you can’t live without, Rise is the one, because LoafNote doesn’t have it.
Sourdough Forge: Starter listing
Sourdough Forge is a journal first. Every feed and every bake gets a record with notes and a rating, and around that there is a step-by-step planner, a stack of calculators, and CSV export on the paid tier. Its website mentions Home Screen widgets and recipe import from a URL, though the App Store listing doesn’t. It came out in January 2026, and the listing says new users need a subscription once they have finished setup. LoafNote keeps the same kind of record (crumb rating, notes, the plan against what actually happened) and adds the backward planner on top, so Forge only wins if CSV export is the thing you need.
breadly: Sourdough Scheduler listing
breadly does one thing, scheduling, and its listing is clear about that: timers that run on their own, a progress view, and notifications grouped by recipe so two bakes don’t get mixed up. You schedule a recipe from its start, and there is no mention of choosing a finish time. The last update was in March 2021. It may well still run fine on your phone, but I wouldn’t count on a fix if it doesn’t, and LoafNote does everything on that list with a backward planner and a maintainer.
Yeasta: Sourdough Tracker listing
Yeasta started out as a starter tracker and has been adding things since. Multiple starters, a recipe collection, calculators, and on the paid tier a guided bake with live timers on the lock screen and iCloud sync. Two reviews this year mention a notification that wouldn’t clear and a purchase that wouldn’t restore. The developer replied to both, which counts for something. It is a reasonable choice if the starter is the main thing you track; if you bake from it every week, the planner is the part that’s missing.
Sourdough Starter Tracker by MyQuietSpot listing
MyQuietSpot’s tracker stops at the jar and says so. Feeding logs, reminders that slow down when you put a starter in the fridge, alerts for off smells and no activity, unlimited starters, and a ten-topic beginner guide. You pay once, it works offline, and it needs no account. The free version has ads (one review from March 2026 was unhappy about what the ads showed), and the iCloud feature is a manual backup and restore rather than sync, which the developer confirms in a reply. If you only keep a starter alive for someone else to bake with, this is a fine tool. The moment you mix a dough yourself you have outgrown it.
Which sourdough apps plan backward, adjust for temperature, or sync?
What each App Store page claims, as of September 5, 2026. “Not listed” means the page doesn’t mention it, which is not the same as the app not doing it.
| App | Plans back from a finish time | Adjusts for temperature | Timers on the lock screen | Imports recipes | Grams | Photo analysis | Cloud sync | No account needed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LoafNote | yes | yes, kitchen temperature | yes | link, text, or photo | grams only | no | no | yes |
| Loaflo | not listed | rise forecast calculator | not listed | not listed | not listed; reviews ask for metric | yes | not listed | yes |
| Rise | no, schedules from the start | yes, dough temperature | step notifications; lock screen not listed | website, photo, or text | grams and volume | not listed | yes, iCloud | not listed |
| Sourdough Forge | not listed | rise time estimates | stage timers; lock screen not listed | URL, per its website | not listed | not listed | not listed | not listed |
| breadly | not listed | not listed | timers; lock screen not listed | not listed | not listed | not listed | not listed | not listed |
| Yeasta | not listed | not listed | yes, paid tier | not listed | not listed | not listed | yes, paid tier | not listed |
| Sourdough Starter Tracker | no | no | no | no | not listed | no | manual backup only | yes |
How is LoafNote different from Loaflo?
LoafNote plans the bake; Loaflo comments on it. Loaflo looks at your starter or your crumb through the camera and tells you what it sees. LoafNote never looks at a photo; it takes the time you want bread and tells you when to be in the kitchen, and then keeps count for you. If you want to bake better bread on a schedule you can actually live with, get LoafNote. If what you want is a second opinion on a photo, get Loaflo, and read the February and April reviews about its subscription popup before you do.
What’s the best sourdough app for beginners?
LoafNote. It has a short course and a glossary built in, and its planner stops the most common beginner mistake, which is following the recipe’s clock instead of your own kitchen and your own sleep. Timing is where first loaves go wrong, and the planner is the part of LoafNote that exists for beginners even though it never says so. If you learn better by asking questions, Loaflo will answer them in a chat and comment on photos. Rise has the biggest collection of recipes and articles. If you are still trying to keep a starter alive and haven’t baked yet, the beginner guide in MyQuietSpot’s tracker is in the free version.
What’s the best free sourdough app?
The LoafNote web planner at loafnote.com/plan. It is free, it runs the same backward-planning engine as the app, and it doesn’t ask for a download or an email address. Among the apps, none of the full ones are free the whole way through. Rise gives you some recipes and features for nothing. Yeasta has a free tier with the tools behind a paywall. Loaflo’s recipes and calculators are free and the scans aren’t. MyQuietSpot’s tracker is free with ads, and one payment removes them, but it only covers the starter. LoafNote itself is free to try and then one subscription that covers everything.
Do any sourdough apps work without an account?
Yes. LoafNote keeps everything on the phone, so there is nothing to sign up for and nothing of yours on a server. Loaflo and MyQuietSpot’s Sourdough Starter Tracker also say on their listings that no account is needed. The trade-off with LoafNote is that no account also means no sync between devices.
How was this comparison made?
I read each app’s US App Store page and its most recent reviews on September 5, 2026. I didn’t install the others. Where I lean on a review, the date is there so you can find it yourself. If a listing has changed since then, the listing is right and this page is behind; email support@loafnote.com and I will fix it and move the date. The listings: LoafNote, Loaflo, Rise, Sourdough Forge, breadly, Yeasta, Sourdough Starter Tracker.