The UK farm management software market has gone through a significant consolidation in the past two years. You may use Gatekeeper or Muddy Boots. One company now owns both of them. 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. It is built for arable and mixed farms that need full crop records. Field management, agronomy records, spray logs, soil data, yield mapping and environmental scheme records. 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. Gatekeeper started at about £17 a month for the Express tier, on older price lists. The full professional version cost much more. Current pricing for the TELUS platforms requires a direct quote.
Best for medium and large arable and mixed farms. It suits farms already on Gatekeeper or TELUS Farm Management, who are being moved rather than choosing.
Farmplan has been a UK farm accounting and management software brand for decades. It has farm accounting, with a chart of accounts built for farms. It covers stock and livestock valuation, payroll and subsidy claims. It connects to 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 is one of the most used livestock platforms in the UK and Ireland. More than 18,000 UK farms use it. It is built for a phone first. A farmer can keep BCMS records and herd health records in the field.
It integrates directly with BCMS for cattle movement reports, and to ScotEID for Scottish cattle. It also connects to the Livestock Information Service, which replaces 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. It entered the UK market in late 2024, with Dyson Farming as its partner. It aims to cover 700,000 hectares in 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. Its UK market is still young. One question decides its value here. Will xFarm build the UK connections for BCMS and LIS, for SFI evidence and for Red Tractor audit trails? Or will it stay built around European rules?
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.
Soil Benchmark is the newest entrant in the UK market. It builds on farm planning software. It covers soil health data, carbon accounting and environmental scheme records. With SFI26 placing growing emphasis on soil condition evidence and environmental outcomes, Soil Benchmark is positioned at the intersection of compliance and sustainability.
Best for farms that watch soil health closely and keep environmental scheme records. It suits farms entering SFI agreements that need soil tests 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. Hidden pricing is one of them. Almost no major platform publishes its prices. You therefore cannot compare them without 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.
Livestock farms have had few choices. Herdwatch fills the mobile-first gap well. Some farms need strong crop records and livestock records in one system, with no switch between platforms. Those farms have very few options.
Integration is a persistent problem. Most farm systems do not connect easily to farm accounts software. Nor do they connect to machinery data from brands other than John Deere. Nor to the BCMS and RPA portals that UK farmers use daily. Herdwatch's direct BCMS integration stands out precisely because most other systems require manual re-entry of data that could be automated.
Two of the platforms in this article had been rivals for years. One company now owns both. A farm that wanted to leave one of them had a choice, and today that choice is smaller.
This is normal in software markets. Suppliers buy their rivals, and buyers lose alternatives. The hidden pricing above is the same effect. A market with few sellers does not need to publish a price.
Your protection is not a better contract. It is whether you can leave.
Ask each supplier in this article for three things. A real export from a live system, with the field definitions attached. The name of whoever holds your encryption keys. A plain answer on whether you could run the system yourself.
We build farm systems on engage.re. Your meaning is held as data, so an export carries the definitions with the records. You hold your own keys. The platform behaviour is published at version 2.0.0, so another supplier can build a system that conforms.
We explain the five forms of lock-in in vendor lock-in, what can you prove. We explain what a market looks like when buyers keep that choice in what does an interoperable software market look like.
A system of your own makes the strongest case for farms that do not fit the standard shape. Farms that also run a shop, a processing site or direct sales. Diversified farms with holiday lets or wedding venues beside the farming. Large estates that run several businesses together.
General farm management software is designed for the agricultural core. A farm may run a large business beside the farming, such as processing, retail or events. The software then breaks 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. That system also grows as you add new businesses. Your data belongs to you. It sits on secure UK-based servers, with backup as changes happen.
For farms implementing SFI and Countryside Stewardship actions, the record-keeping requirements are specific and audit-facing. A system of your own records the exact evidence that DEFRA and RPA inspectors expect. You do not bend ordinary crop record fields to fit.
Our live farm demo holds all of this in one system. Livestock registers, field operations, medicine records with automatic withdrawal periods, SFI geotagged evidence and BCMS movement logging. Sign in as an owner, a worker or a vet, and try it on a phone, a tablet and a desktop.
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The right system depends primarily on what type of farming the business does and what problem is most pressing:
For arable farms needing crop recording and SFI compliance, TELUS Crop Management (formerly Gatekeeper) is the most comprehensive. For livestock farms, Herdwatch is the most practical and affordable. For large cattle operations across multiple sites, AgriWebb is designed for that scale. For mixed farms wanting modern mapping, xFarm offers a clean interface with a free tier. For farm accounts, Farmplan or SUM-IT have the strongest UK heritage.
Costs range widely. Herdwatch starts at about £100 to £150 a year for basic plans. xFarm has a free tier with paid upgrades. Gatekeeper/TELUS and Hutchinsons Omnia are mid-range, typically £300 to £800 per year depending on farm size and modules. AgriWebb is enterprise-priced for larger operations. Soil Benchmark is per-farm pricing for environmental monitoring.
The transition from BCMS to the Livestock Information Service (LIS) in England is underway. Herdwatch has confirmed LIS integration for the summer 2026 cattle rollout. Gatekeeper/TELUS has established UK integration. xFarm is developing LIS connectivity. Check directly with your provider for current LIS status. See our BCMS to LIS guide for details.
Gatekeeper/TELUS has the strongest SFI26 compliance evidence for UK farms. Soil Benchmark is purpose-built for environmental scheme evidence. xFarm is developing UK SFI support. Herdwatch and AgriWebb have basic reporting but are not specifically designed around SFI evidence requirements. See our SFI scheme requirements guide.
No single platform handles both equally well. Gatekeeper/TELUS is strongest on arable with basic livestock. Herdwatch and AgriWebb are strongest on livestock with no arable. xFarm covers both but with less depth than specialists. Farmbrite covers both from a US perspective. For genuinely mixed farms, you may need two systems or a bespoke farm system.