The UK farm management software market has gone through a significant consolidation in the past two years. If you have been using Gatekeeper or Muddy Boots, the platform you are on is now owned by the same company that owns the other. This article looks at what the landscape actually looks like in 2026 and which systems suit which farming operations.
Three developments make 2026 a pivotal year for farm software decisions:
The market dominance of Farmplan's Gatekeeper and Muddy Boots (later Soil First) was built over decades. Both were the go-to systems for UK arable and mixed farmers needing serious crop recording. In 2026, both are owned by TELUS Agriculture and Consumer Goods, a Canadian company that has been systematically acquiring agricultural technology businesses globally.
TELUS acquired Muddy Boots in 2020 and renamed the product TELUS Farm Management. In 2024 it acquired Proagrica, which had itself acquired Farmplan: bringing Gatekeeper into the same portfolio. Both systems continue to be supported, but the roadmap has changed. TELUS is developing a new unified platform called TELUS Crop Management, with migration from both legacy systems planned through 2025 and into 2026.
This consolidation changes the competitive landscape considerably. What was a multi-vendor market with genuine competition between Gatekeeper, Farmplan, and Muddy Boots is now, at the major-platform level, largely one vendor.
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The successor platform to both Gatekeeper and Muddy Boots. Designed for arable and mixed farms needing comprehensive crop recording: field management, agronomy records, spray application logs, soil data, yield mapping, and environmental scheme compliance tracking. The legacy Gatekeeper codebase was particularly strong on compliance reporting and audit trails, which is relevant for Countryside Stewardship and SFI record-keeping.
Pricing is not publicly disclosed. The Gatekeeper product was historically available from around £17 per month for the Express tier (a figure from older pricing structures), with the full professional version considerably more. Current pricing for the TELUS platforms requires a direct quote.
Best suited to: arable and mixed farms of medium to large scale, particularly those with existing Gatekeeper or TELUS Farm Management implementations who are being migrated rather than actively choosing.
Farmplan has been a UK farm accounting and management software brand for decades. It offers farm-specific accounting with a chart of accounts built around agricultural businesses, stock and livestock valuation, payroll, subsidy claim tracking, and integration with crop recording modules. Also now within the TELUS group following the Proagrica acquisition.
Farmplan offers pricing tiers described as covering basic users through to complex multi-farm or enterprise businesses. Current pricing is not publicly listed. Best suited to farm businesses that need proper farm management accounts, not just field records.
Herdwatch has become one of the most widely used livestock management platforms in the UK and Ireland, with over 18,000 UK farms using the platform. It is mobile-first and focused on making BCMS compliance and herd health recording simple enough for a farmer to do in the field on a phone.
It integrates directly with BCMS (Cattle Tracing System / CTS) for cattle movement reporting, with ScotEID for Scottish cattle, and with the Livestock Information Service (LIS) that will replace BCMS during 2026. A free tier (digital calving book) is available. Paid plans start at around £119 per year, making it significantly more accessible than the major arable platforms.
Best suited to: beef, suckler, sheep, and dairy farms needing mobile-first livestock recording and BCMS compliance without a complex setup.
AgriWebb is an Australian platform with a growing UK presence, focused on larger commercial livestock operations. It handles mob and paddock management, weight recording, health treatments, breeding records, and pasture management. It supports BCMS compliance and is designed for teams managing multiple properties rather than single-farm sole traders.
Best suited to: large-scale cattle operations (typically 1,000+ head) with multiple staff and multiple sites.
John Deere's free platform connects to JD Link telemetry on John Deere machinery and centralises field data, machine hours, fuel use, and agronomic records. It is not a standalone farm management system but it is a valuable complement for equipment-heavy operations running John Deere kit. The wireless connectivity subscription has been free for qualifying machines since 2021.
Best suited to: farms with significant John Deere machinery investment wanting visibility on field operations and machine performance alongside other software.
Hutchinsons, one of the UK's largest agrochemical distributors, has developed Omnia from a precision farming tool into a full farm management system. It combines satellite imagery, variable rate application planning, soil analysis, and field-level crop recording in a map-based interface. It is positioned as the most digitally advanced option for arable growers who want data-driven agronomy alongside their record-keeping.
Omnia is available to Hutchinsons customers and is priced as part of a wider agronomy service relationship rather than as a standalone software subscription. This bundled model makes direct pricing comparison difficult, but the relationship means you get agronomy expertise alongside the technology.
Best suited to: arable farms already working with Hutchinsons for agronomy who want their precision farming and record-keeping in one place.
xFarm is a Swiss-Italian platform that entered the UK market in late 2024 through a high-profile partnership with Dyson Farming, aiming to cover 700,000 hectares within three years. The app is designed for simplicity: field recording, crop planning, input tracking, and compliance logs on a mobile-first interface. It does not attempt the enterprise complexity of the TELUS platforms.
xFarm offers a free tier for basic field recording, with paid plans for precision agriculture features and team access. The UK market is still early, and the question for UK farms is whether xFarm builds the specific compliance integrations (BCMS/LIS, SFI evidence capture, Red Tractor audit trails) that British agriculture requires, or whether it remains oriented toward European regulatory frameworks.
Best suited to: smaller arable or mixed farms wanting a clean, modern interface without the weight of the TELUS ecosystem. Early adopters comfortable with a platform still building its UK compliance feature set.
The newest entrant in the UK market, Soil Benchmark builds on farm management planning software and focuses on soil health data, carbon accounting, and environmental scheme record-keeping. With SFI26 placing growing emphasis on soil condition evidence and environmental outcomes, Soil Benchmark is positioned at the intersection of compliance and sustainability.
Best suited to: farms with a strong focus on soil health monitoring and environmental scheme compliance, particularly those entering SFI agreements that require soil testing and carbon baseline evidence.
Syngenta's digital farming platform offers crop monitoring, input recommendations, and field-level data collection. It integrates with Syngenta's agronomy network. Like Omnia, its strongest proposition is for farms already within the Syngenta supply relationship.
Best suited to: arable farms using Syngenta products who want agronomy-linked digital tools.
Pricing opacity is one of the most common frustrations in farm software. Most platforms do not publish transparent pricing. Below is what we have been able to confirm or estimate from published information and market data:
| Platform | Published Pricing | Typical Annual Cost | Pricing Model |
|---|---|---|---|
| Herdwatch | Yes | From ~£119/year | Per-farm subscription. Free tier available. |
| TELUS Crop Management | No (quote-based) | Estimated £500-£2,000+/year | Tiered by farm size and features. |
| Farmplan | No (quote-based) | Estimated £400-£1,500+/year | Module-based. Accounts, crop, livestock separately. |
| AgriWebb | No (quote-based) | Estimated £600-£2,000+/year | Per-property pricing for larger operations. |
| Hutchinsons Omnia | Bundled with agronomy | Varies by relationship | Part of Hutchinsons agronomist package. |
| xFarm | Partially | Free tier available; paid plans vary | Freemium. Precision ag features are paid. |
| John Deere Ops Center | Free | £0 (JD equipment required) | Free with qualifying JD machinery. |
| Bespoke (ESRE Media) | Yes (on enquiry) | One-off £15,000-£30,000 | Capital investment. No recurring fees. |
Over five years, a mixed 600-hectare farm running multiple subscriptions (crop recording, livestock management, accounting, compliance) can spend £15,000-£38,500 in total. A bespoke system at £15,000-£30,000 replaces all recurring costs and typically reaches payback within three to four years.
The complaints that emerge from the farming community about existing software tend to fall into a small number of categories. Pricing opacity is one of them: almost none of the major platforms publish transparent pricing, which makes comparison impossible without going through a sales process for each vendor.
The TELUS consolidation has created some uncertainty. Farmers who built workflows around Gatekeeper or Muddy Boots over years are now being told their platform will eventually be migrated. The risk period is during the transition, when data migration errors or gaps in functionality can disrupt an entire season's records.
For livestock-focused farms, the choice has been limited: Herdwatch fills the accessible-mobile-first gap well, but for farms that need both strong crop recording and livestock management in a single system without switching between platforms, the options narrow quickly.
Integration is a persistent problem. Most farm management systems do not connect easily to farm accounts software, to machinery telemetry from non-John-Deere brands, or to the specific BCMS and RPA portals that UK farmers deal with daily. Herdwatch's direct BCMS integration stands out precisely because most other systems require manual re-entry of data that could be automated.
The farm sectors where bespoke systems make the strongest case are those with non-standard operations: farms that also run a farm shop, processing facility, or direct sales operation; diversified farms with holiday lets, wedding venues, or other commercial activities running alongside the agricultural business; large estates managing multiple enterprises under one umbrella.
General farm management software is designed for the agricultural core. The moment a farm has a significant commercial operation alongside it (processing, retail, events) the software landscape fragments into systems that do not talk to each other. A bespoke system built around the full operation can eliminate the manual reconciliation that otherwise falls to whoever does the bookkeeping. Critically, that system grows with the business as new enterprises are added, and your data belongs to you, hosted on secure UK-based servers with real-time backup.
For farms implementing SFI and Countryside Stewardship actions, the record-keeping requirements are specific and audit-facing. A bespoke approach can build the exact evidence capture that DEFRA and RPA inspectors expect, rather than adapting generic crop record fields to approximate what is needed.
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The right system depends primarily on what type of farming the business does and what problem is most pressing: