There are three serious options for coffee roasting software on macOS in 2026: Artisan, Cropster, and First Crack. Each serves a different type of roaster, at a very different price point, with very different tradeoffs between real-time control, analytics depth, and workflow integration.
This guide covers what each one actually does — including the things each one doesn't do — so you can pick the right tool for where you are in your roasting practice.
The Short Answer
If you want the most hardware-compatible free logger and you mostly care about the roast session itself: Artisan.
If you run a commercial roastery with multiple machines, a green buying team, and production scheduling needs: Cropster.
If you want a native macOS app with a cloud platform for analytics, bean inventory, cupping, and community — without paying $91–$308 per month: First Crack.
Artisan — The Free, Open-Source Standard
Artisan has been the go-to roasting logger for nearly two decades. It is free, open-source, and actively maintained by a large community. The hardware compatibility list is extraordinary — Artisan supports hundreds of probes, meters, and machines via serial, Phidgets, Modbus, and more. If your roaster connects to a computer, Artisan almost certainly has a profile for it.
What Artisan does well:
- —Real-time temperature logging during the roast
- —Rate of rise (RoR) display and configuration
- —Alarms and automation for consistent profiles
- —Event markers (charge, dry end, first crack, drop)
- —Phase annotations and development time ratio display
- —Broad hardware support across every major roaster brand
- —Active forum community and long-term project stability
What Artisan doesn't do:
Artisan is a session tool. When the roast ends, it saves a local file. There is no cloud sync, no bean inventory management, no cupping workflow, no way to share a roast profile with another roaster, no analytics dashboards comparing your last twenty roasts, and no way to track what happened to the coffee after the roast.
For roasters who are just getting started with data logging, this is fine. For roasters who have accumulated years of profiles and want to learn from them systematically, it becomes a friction point. Every profile lives on the machine it was recorded on. Running comparisons means manually opening multiple files. Inventory is a spreadsheet. Cupping notes are wherever you wrote them.
Artisan is excellent at what it does. The question is whether what it does is enough for where you are.
Cropster — For Commercial Roasteries
Cropster is a commercial platform built for production roasteries doing serious volume. It includes roast logging, green coffee management, production scheduling, quality control workflows, and EUDR compliance tooling. Pricing starts at approximately $91 per month and scales to $308+ per month for higher-tier plans.
Cropster is genuinely excellent for what it targets. If you have multiple roasters, a green buying team, and you need fleet management, production scheduling, and compliance documentation, Cropster is purpose-built for those problems.
What Cropster does well:
- —Multi-roaster fleet management
- —Green coffee inventory and purchase tracking
- —Production scheduling across multiple machines
- —Team workflows with role-based access
- —EUDR and sustainability compliance tooling
- —Commercial-grade cupping and QC workflows
What Cropster doesn't do:
At $91–$308+/month, Cropster is priced for the commercial roastery it targets. A specialty roaster doing one to three batches per week is paying for fleet management and compliance tooling they will never use. The native macOS experience is web-based or Electron — not a native SwiftUI app.
If you are not a commercial roastery, Cropster is overbuilt and overpriced for your needs.
First Crack — Native Mac App with a Free Cloud Platform
First Crack is built as two platforms that work together: a native macOS app for live roasting, and a free web platform for everything that happens between roasts.
The macOS app is built in SwiftUI — a native framework for macOS, not a Catalyst port and not an Electron wrapper. It connects to roaster hardware via serial/USB for real-time curve capture, rate of rise display, and event logging during the session. Captured roasts sync to the cloud immediately.
The web platform is free — no subscription, no credit card required. It includes analytics dashboards, bean inventory management, cupping workflow, Agtron color scoring, recipe management, community sharing, and side-by-side roast comparison. All of it is accessible in any browser on macOS, Windows, iOS, or Android.
Analytics and Dashboards
The First Crack web platform shows rate of rise curves, drop temperature, development time ratio, drying/Maillard/development phase durations, and weight loss percentage for every roast. Trend dashboards let you see how your roast characteristics have changed over batches, which beans are performing well, and where your cupping scores cluster.
This is the layer Artisan does not have. Not because Artisan is limited as a logger, but because Artisan was never designed to be a database and analytics platform. First Crack is.
Bean Inventory Management
First Crack tracks your green coffee inventory by bean, with freshness tracking, yield tracking per roast, and cost analytics. Low-stock alerts surface when a bean is running low. Weight loss is tracked automatically from the roast data. If you have ever lost track of how much of a lot you have left, or paid too much for a bean without realizing your yield was poor, this is the feature that changes that.
Agtron Color Scoring
First Crack includes Agtron color scoring — a standardized scale for measuring roast color that gives you a repeatable, objective number for roast level instead of a subjective "medium-dark." Agtron correlates directly with flavor profile and roast degree. Neither Artisan nor Cropster includes this.
You do not need an Agtron spectrophotometer (which costs thousands of dollars) to use it. First Crack measures roast color from a photo of your ground coffee.
The recommended method uses an 18% gray card — an inexpensive photography reference card available for under $20. You grind a small sample, lay it flat next to the card in even diffused light, and take a photo from directly overhead. First Crack reads both regions, uses the gray card to correct for your camera's white balance and ambient lighting conditions, and outputs an Agtron score. The gray card calibration is what makes the result consistent across different phones, lighting setups, and shooting conditions.
If you don't have a gray card, there is also a no-card mode: First Crack automatically scans the image for a neutral reference surface and applies a best-effort calibration. It works for tracking trends across your own roasts, though the gray card method gives tighter consistency across sessions.
You can also enter a score manually if you have access to a commercial Agtron meter. All three methods record the score to the roast profile and show it in your analytics over time.
SCA Cupping Workflow
A full SCA-style cupping workflow is built into the platform. You can run a scored cupping session on any roast — fragrance, aroma, flavor, aftertaste, acidity, body, balance, and overall impression — and store the results alongside the roast curve and analytics. Cupping scores appear in trend dashboards over time. You can also record an SCA quality score directly on each bean in your inventory, which is separate from per-roast session scores.
Community and Sharing
Any First Crack roast profile can be shared with a public link or published to the community browse page. Public profiles include the full curve, phase markers, and analytics. You can also generate a shareable side-by-side comparison of any two roasts — one link shows both temperature trajectories, rate of rise curves, and key metrics in a single view. Neither Artisan nor Cropster has comparison sharing.
Artisan Import
If you have been using Artisan, your existing profile library can be imported directly — Artisan .alog files and JSON roast format are both supported. Years of roast history, including curves, temperatures, and event markers, come with you on import. You can also create roasts directly in the browser without any hardware.
How to Choose
You should use Artisan if:
- —You want the broadest hardware compatibility available
- —The session is the primary focus and you don't need cloud sync or analytics
- —You prefer open-source software with a large community forum
- —Cost is the primary constraint
You should use Cropster if:
- —You run a commercial roastery with multiple machines
- —You need production scheduling, fleet management, or EUDR compliance
- —Your team requires role-based access and QC workflows
You should use First Crack if:
- —You want a native macOS app with cloud analytics and inventory — without a monthly subscription
- —You have been using Artisan and want cloud sync, bean tracking, and a cupping workflow alongside your existing profile library
- —You want to share roast profiles publicly or compare roasts side-by-side with a link
- —You want Agtron color scoring and SCA cupping scores integrated into your analytics
Bottom Line
The right coffee roasting software for Mac depends on what layer of the workflow you are trying to solve.
Artisan solves the session. It is the best free logger available, with the broadest hardware support in the market and twenty years of community development. If real-time data capture is all you need, Artisan is the answer.
First Crack solves everything after the session — analytics, inventory, cupping, community, and sharing — with a native macOS app for the session itself. The web platform is free. The macOS live roasting app pricing has not yet been announced; hardware compatibility details will be published at launch.
If you have been using Artisan and want a cloud layer without switching workflows: First Crack imports your .alog files directly. Your existing profile library comes with you on day one.
Questions about First Crack? See the FAQ or compare First Crack vs. Artisan and First Crack vs. Cropster.