Most people do not abandon a cellar app because it lacked a feature. They abandon it because adding a bottle took ninety seconds and they had twelve bottles to add.
So before the list, the thing that actually decides this.
The feature that decides everything: getting data in
Every app on this page can store a wine, a vintage, a quantity and a location. That is not where they differ.
They differ in how long it takes you to add a bottle you just bought. If that is a barcode scan or a label photo, you will keep the inventory current. If it is a form with fifteen fields, you will do it for two weeks and then stop, and an inventory that is out of date is worse than no inventory, because you will trust it and be wrong.
Test this before you commit. Add ten real bottles. If it is tedious at ten it is impossible at two hundred.
The three that are still running
We checked these on 10 September 2026. The 2020 version of this article listed ten apps, most of them small French projects, and we have not re-verified the rest, so they are gone from this page rather than left here to rot.
CellarTracker
The serious option, and the one most large collections end up on. Its advantage is the community: the site reported over 13 million tasting notes when we looked, which is what makes its drinking windows and market valuations useful rather than decorative. You can see when other people are opening the same wine and vintage, which is far better guidance than a producer’s own drink-by date.
It also does multi-location inventory, which matters more than it sounds once bottles live in two places.
It has a free tier and paid options, and the model has changed over the years, so check the current terms rather than trusting any article, including this one.
Vivino
The one almost everyone already has. Label scanning is genuinely good and it is the fastest way to find out whether the bottle in your hand is worth buying.
Two honest caveats. It is a shop now: the front page is a wine store, and recommendations sit alongside things for sale. And its ratings are a crowd average across a huge and mostly casual user base, which is a reasonable guide to whether a wine is pleasant and a poor guide to whether it will age.
Use it in the shop. It is not the tool for tracking a cellar of any size.
VinoCell
iOS only, paid, and it was $11.99 on the App Store when we checked. Worth mentioning because it does the one thing the other two do not: graphical bin mapping. You tell it your rack layout, and it shows you which slot a bottle is in.
If you have a physical cellar with racks and you have ever stood in it unable to find one bottle, that feature alone is the reason to pay.
What to actually look for
Fast entry. Covered above, and it matters more than everything below combined.
Location tracking, down to the bin. The point of an inventory is not knowing you own the wine. It is finding it.
Drinking windows fed by real data. A producer saying “drink 2025 to 2040” is marketing. A thousand people logging when they opened it is information.
Export. Can you get a CSV out? A 500-bottle inventory you cannot export is a 500-bottle hostage. Check this on day one, not on the day the app shuts down or triples its price.
Consumption tracking. Marking a bottle drunk should be one tap. If it is not, your counts drift within a month.
The unfashionable answer
Under about fifty bottles, a spreadsheet is not a worse tool. Wine, vintage, quantity, where it is, and roughly when to drink it. Five columns.
It cannot be discontinued, it cannot be paywalled, it exports itself, and it takes about the same time to update as a well-designed app. What it will not give you is community drinking windows or market values, which is exactly the point at which you switch.
The apps earn their place when the collection outgrows your memory: when you cannot remember what you own, when bottles live in more than one place, or when you need to know what is ready now rather than what you have.
If you are still choosing the hardware rather than the software, start at our wine cellar buying guide, and the current models are compared here.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best wine cellar management app?
CellarTracker for a serious collection, because of the size of its community database and its drinking-window data. Vivino for discovery and label scanning, though it is now heavily a shop. VinoCell if you want graphical bin mapping and are on iOS. The right one is mostly decided by how you prefer to add bottles.
Is CellarTracker still free?
It has a free tier and paid options, and the model has changed over the years, so check the current terms rather than trusting an article. What has not changed is the community database, which the site put at over 13 million tasting notes when we checked on 10 September 2026.
Do I need an app to manage a wine cellar?
Under about 50 bottles, honestly no. A spreadsheet with wine, vintage, quantity, location and drink-by does the whole job and cannot be discontinued or paywalled. Apps earn their place at the point where you cannot remember what you own or where a specific bottle is.
