Arable Farm Management Software Compared

Most arable farm management software comparisons list every feature of every product and leave you to decide. That doesn’t help someone who has to sign a licence before drilling. This one compares five platforms that UK arable farms actually use. Each is judged on five things you’ll deal with every week: spray records, nutrient planning, AI features, how well it works on a phone in the cab, and what it costs per year. Each farm size gets a clear verdict.

The five are Gatekeeper (Proagrica, sold through Farmplan), Muddy Boots Greenlight Crop Manager, xarvio FIELD MANAGER (BASF), Cropwise (Syngenta) and fieldmargin.

A note on prices before we start. Vendors change pricing often, and several only quote after a call. The figures below are indicative 2026 ranges, excluding VAT, based on published tiers and typical quotes for UK holdings. Treat them as a guide for budgeting and get a written quote before you commit.

The short answer

If you only read one section, read this one.

The headline: none of these platforms has AI that replaces a good agronomist. Pay for compliance first. Add an AI decision layer only when the arithmetic works on your acreage.

Spray records: where software actually saves you time

Spray records are the job most farms are really buying for. You must keep plant protection product records for at least three years, Red Tractor auditors will ask for them, and a missing LERAP buffer note is the kind of slip that becomes a non-conformance.

Gatekeeper is the strongest here, and by a clear margin for anyone audited annually. Its product database carries MAPP numbers, maximum individual doses, total-dose limits per crop and harvest intervals, and it warns you before you save a record that breaks a label. Greenlight Crop Manager is just as thorough, but it’s built around the agronomist writing the recommendation and the farm confirming it, which suits you if your agronomist already works in it.

fieldmargin surprised us. Logging a job from a phone takes under a minute, and the record includes product, rate, water volume, operator and weather. It doesn’t police label limits the way Gatekeeper does, so you’re trusting your own checks.

Here is what a well-formed spray record export looks like. This is the standard all five should meet before you consider anything else:

Field:            Long Meadow (14.2 ha)  Crop: Winter wheat (Extase)
Date / time:      2026-04-11  07:40–09:15
Operator:         J. Harris   NRoSO: NR123456   PA1/PA2/PA6 held
Sprayer:          Amazone UX 5201, last NSTS test 2026-02-03
Product:          Ascra Xpro  MAPP 18084  Rate 1.0 L/ha  Total 14.2 L
Water volume:     100 L/ha
Wind:             SW 6 km/h   Temp 9°C
LERAP:            Cat A, 5 m buffer applied to east watercourse
Reason:           T1 septoria / yellow rust protection

Gatekeeper and Greenlight produce this without nagging you. xarvio and Cropwise can capture most of it, but you’ll find yourself adding operator certificate details and LERAP notes by hand.

Nutrient planning: the gap is wider than it looks

This is where the platforms split hardest. If you farm in an NVZ in England, you need a nitrogen management plan, field risk maps for manure and closed-period records. If you’re in SFI, the nutrient management action expects a documented review, soil analysis and a plan built on it.

Gatekeeper does this properly. It builds field-by-field recommendations on the AHDB Nutrient Management Guide (RB209), accounts for manures and soil nitrogen supply, and generates the N-max calculation for the whole holding in a format an inspector will recognise. Greenlight covers similar ground, usually set up by your agronomist.

xarvio takes a different route. Its zone maps use years of satellite biomass data to split a field into higher- and lower-yielding areas, and then build variable-rate nitrogen files for your spreader. It doesn’t produce your NVZ paperwork, though. It optimises the application and leaves the compliance to you.

Worked example: is variable-rate N worth it?

Take a 320 ha arable farm with 180 ha of winter wheat at an average 200 kg N/ha. Ammonium nitrate is about £330/t, which works out at roughly £0.96/kg N.

• Total wheat N spend: 180 ha × 200 kg × £0.96 = £34,560
• Variable-rate trials often save 5–10% of N, or shift the same N to where it pays more. Take a cautious 5%: £1,728 saved
• Premium xarvio zone mapping at an indicative £5–£8/ha on the 180 ha of wheat: £900–£1,440

So it roughly pays for itself on nitrogen savings alone, and only if your spreader can already read a variable-rate file. If you need a new ISOBUS controller or a section-control upgrade, the payback stretches into years.

AI features: what is real and what is marketing

Every vendor now says “AI” somewhere on its homepage. Here’s what each one actually does.

xarvio is furthest along. Its disease risk models combine field-level weather data, your variety and drilling date to estimate infection pressure for septoria, rusts and other diseases, and they suggest spray timing windows. On a wet spring that can give you a three- or four-day warning, which helps when a 24 m sprayer has 300 ha to cover. Treat it as a second opinion. Your agronomist walking the crop still decides.

Cropwise and fieldmargin both offer satellite crop-health maps (NDVI-style). They’re useful for spotting a drainage problem or a patchy establishment from the farm office, but cloud cover in a typical British March can leave you without a clear image for a fortnight.

Gatekeeper and Greenlight are record-keeping systems first. Their “intelligence” is mostly rule-checking: label limits, harvest intervals, NVZ caps. It’s less exciting, but it’s what keeps you right on audit day.

If you want to know how general-purpose AI assistants compare with these specialist tools for planning and admin, our farm AI software reviews and costs hub covers that side.

Mobile use: test it in the cab, not the office

Sitting at the kitchen table won’t tell you much about a mobile app. Take it into a tractor in a field with one bar of signal.

fieldmargin wins this outright. It works offline, syncs later and has buttons you can hit with a gloved thumb. xarvio and Cropwise are close behind, which you’d expect from apps designed phone-first.

Gatekeeper Go has improved a lot and now handles job recording and field notes well, but heavier work like planning and reporting still pulls you back to the desktop. That suits a farm with an office-based administrator. It annoys an owner-operator who wants everything done before tea.

Annual cost, per hectare

Spread across your area, the costs look like this:

Farm size     Gatekeeper (~£900)   fieldmargin paid (~£250)   xarvio premium (~£6/ha)
100 ha        £9.00/ha             £2.50/ha                   £6.00/ha
320 ha        £2.81/ha             £0.78/ha                   £6.00/ha
800 ha        £1.13/ha             £0.31/ha                   £6.00/ha

Per-hectare pricing scales linearly, while flat licences get cheaper per hectare the more land you farm. That single fact drives most of the verdicts below.

Verdict by farm size

Under 150 ha, owner-operated. Go with fieldmargin. The free tier covers field mapping and job recording, and a paid plan in the low hundreds of pounds gives you assurance-ready exports. Do your nutrient plan with your agronomist or in the free AHDB RB209 tools rather than paying for a full Gatekeeper licence you’ll use one evening a month.

150–600 ha, mixed or combinable cropping. Buy Gatekeeper. At this scale the per-hectare cost falls below £3, and the label checks and NVZ reports will save more admin time than any other single feature. If your agronomy firm runs Greenlight and gives you farm access as part of its fee, take that instead and keep the money.

600 ha and above, or contract-farming agreements. Use Gatekeeper or Greenlight as your record of truth, then add xarvio premium only on the crops where variable-rate nitrogen and disease timing pay back, which usually means wheat. Run the sums from the worked example on your own figures. A business farming 1,200 ha across several holdings will also want the multi-business reporting that Gatekeeper’s higher tiers offer.

Mixed farms with livestock. None of these five handles herd records well. Keep your arable platform for the arable side, and don’t let a vendor talk you into a bolt-on livestock module that’s weaker than dedicated tools such as Herdwatch or FarmWizard.

Before you sign anything, ask each vendor for a 30-day trial on your own fields. Enter last season’s T1 spray on one field and see how long it takes. If it’s more than five minutes, the software will end up on the “I’ll do it later” pile, and an empty record system won’t pass an audit.