Publish Date
March 2026
Free Whisky Apps Compared: What's Actually Free in 2026?
Tyler Berry
Whisky Collector
There are a lot of whisky apps that call themselves free. When you look closer, "free" often means "free until you want to do something useful."
We looked at the main whisky and spirits apps available in 2026 and checked what you actually get without paying. The results are mixed.
What we compared
We focused on the features that matter most to someone tracking a whisky collection: adding bottles, writing tasting notes, rating and scoring, barcode scanning, price information, data export, and discovery tools like flavour search and recommendations.
For each app, we checked what's available on the free tier and what's locked behind a subscription or one-off payment.
Distiller
Distiller has been around since 2013 and has one of the largest spirits databases, covering around 60,000 bottles across all spirit categories. The free version lets you search the database, create lists of bottles, write reviews with flavour tags, and follow other users.
The catch is Distiller Pro, which costs $4.99 per month or $48 per year. Pro unlocks flavour search (finding bottles by taste characteristics), ad-free barcode scanning, data export of your lists and reviews, bottle quantities on lists, and access to exclusive content and giveaways. Flavour search and data export are the big ones. If you want to find bottles by flavour profile or get your data out of Distiller, you're paying.
Whiskybase
Whiskybase claims the largest whisky-specific database, with over 220,000 bottles catalogued. The free version gives you collection tracking, wishlists, ratings on a 1 to 100 scale, barcode and label scanning, and a marketplace where collectors buy and sell bottles.
The app itself is free, but Whiskybase offers a Supporter subscription that unlocks additional perks within the community. The core tracking features work without paying, though the mobile app has had mixed reviews for stability and usability compared to the website.
OnlyDrams
OnlyDrams is a collector-focused app with around 56,000 bottles in its database. The free tier covers collection tracking, barcode scanning, custom lists, tasting notes, and lifecycle tracking (tracking what happens to each bottle over time). It also shows pricing data and rarity rankings.
OnlyDrams has paid monthly tiers that enter users into allocated bottle raffles from partner distilleries. The core collection features are free, but the paid tiers offer access to limited bottle drops that are a significant draw for serious collectors.
Drammer
Drammer positions itself as "Untappd for whisky" and has around 50,000 users. It's free with no paid tier. You get barcode scanning, collection and wishlist management, taste search (finding whiskies by flavour profile), CSV export, a community timeline, over 50 badges, a festival calendar, and whisky news.
For a free app, Drammer is surprisingly complete. The main limitation is database size. With around 20,000 barcodes, users with niche or indie bottles sometimes find their bottles aren't recognised.
Bevvy
Bevvy is a UK-based app with a strong label scanning feature that works from photos of labels rather than barcodes. It has over 200,000 bottles in its database and offers collection tracking, tasting notes, ratings, valuations, and personalised recommendations that learn from your scanning and rating habits.
Bevvy is free to use. The company raised $1.5 million in seed funding in 2024 and appears to be focused on building its user base before introducing revenue features. It has around 120,000 active users.
WhiskeyShelf
WhiskeyShelf covers whiskey, tequila, rum, and other spirits. The free version includes inventory tracking with unlimited bottles, bottle level tracking, barcode scanning, valuations, wishlists, and an infinity bottle feature.
A premium tier adds additional features including enhanced reporting and community tools. WhiskeyShelf gets consistently positive reviews for responsive customer support, with the team often adding requested bottles within hours.
Cabinet (whisky.cab)
Full disclosure: this is us. We built Cabinet, so take this section with that context.
Cabinet is free with no subscription and no paid tier. Collection tracking, barcode scanning, price comparison across UK retailers, structured tasting notes with flavour tagging, a personal taste profile with radar chart and personality labels, personalised recommendations, community reviews, public profiles, CSV export and import, stats dashboard, collection valuation, and insurance export.
The price comparison feature checks specialist UK retailers multiple times a day and always shows the cheapest price, including from retailers Cabinet doesn't earn commission from. The taste profile builds over time from your ratings and flavour tags, and powers recommendations with match confidence percentages.
Cabinet is funded by affiliate commissions when users click through to a retailer and make a purchase. That's how it stays free without gating features behind a paywall.
So what's actually free?
Here's the summary.
If you want flavour search without paying, your options are Drammer and Cabinet. Distiller charges $48 a year for it.
If you want data export without paying, Drammer and Cabinet offer CSV export for free. Distiller charges for it. Most others don't offer it at all.
If you want price comparison, Cabinet is the only app that compares prices across multiple UK retailers. BoozApp does something similar for the US market. Everyone else shows shop links or single-retailer pricing at best.
If you want a personal taste profile, Cabinet is currently the only whisky app that builds a per-user flavour radar from your ratings. Vivino does this for wine, but no one else has brought the concept to whisky.
If you want barcode scanning without ads or payment, Cabinet, Drammer, Bevvy, and OnlyDrams all offer it free. Distiller requires Pro for ad-free scanning.
Every app on this list lets you track a collection and write tasting notes without paying. The differences are in the extras, and that's where the "free" claim starts to matter.
The bottom line
The whisky app space has improved significantly in the last couple of years. There are genuine options at every price point, and several apps offer solid free experiences.
If price comparison, taste intelligence, and data export matter to you, and you don't want to pay a subscription, Cabinet is the most complete free option available. But every app on this list does something well, and the best one for you depends on what you value most.
