Farm management software in the UK: the options and prices compared
Guide

Farm management software in the UK: the options and prices compared

The eight main UK farm management software options - Soil Benchmark, Omnia, Gatekeeper, Greenlight, Telus Crop Management, Geofolia, Cropwise and xFarm - with what each does best and what it costs at 100ha, 400ha or 1,000ha.

There are now eight serious options for arable and mixed farm management software in the UK, from the established desktop systems to a wave of cloud-based newcomers. This page sets out who makes each one, what it is best at, and what it costs. The shortlist and prices come from Farmers Weekly's April 2026 review, put together with independent agronomist Kieran Walsh, who has spent several seasons evaluating farm management software for his clients.

We make one of them, so we have tried to be straight about where each system is strong, including the ones we compete with.

The options at a glance

SoftwareWho makes itBased inTied to an input supplierSummaryMap-basedRuns onPricing
Soil BenchmarkSoil BenchmarkUKNoVery easy to use, independent and UK run. Growing rapidly, to 1.4m hectares in three years. A few features still in development.YesCloud, mobile app coming soon£
OmniaHutchinsonsUKYes (agronomy and inputs)Very slick and good on compliance and NVZs (with a few bugbears). Expensive, and tied to an input supplier, which raises data questions for some.YesCloud, plus mobile app££££
GatekeeperTelusCanadaNoWidely used, and powerful once you know how to use it, with Sentinel spray compliance. Very clunky and dated, and no longer being developed.No (database)Desktop (cloud back-up)£££
Telus Farm Management (Greenlight)TelusCanadaNoA good system, quick and simple to use. Lacks some mapping detail, doesn't cover grassland for NVZ rules, and users are being moved onto Telus Crop Management.No (workflow)Cloud£
Telus Crop ManagementTelusCanadaNoThe new platform Gatekeeper and Telus Farm Management users are being moved to. For now a step back in features from both, while Telus works towards matching them.No (workflow)Cloud£
GeofoliaLandmark (Isagri)FranceNoGood accounting integration through Landmark's KeyPrime, plus Pear Farmer agronomy. Starting to feel dated and clunky next to newer systems.YesHosted, plus mobile app£££
Cropwise OperationsSyngentaSwitzerlandYes (crop protection and seed)Excellent variable rate planning and satellite imagery. Not really built around UK rules, with no nutrient compliance.YesCloud, plus mobile app£££
xFarmxFarm TechnologiesItalyNoGreat machinery integration, connecting with over 50 brands. A global platform not yet fully adapted to UK rules, with RB209 and NVZ support still arriving.YesCloud, plus mobile app££

All eight cover arable farming; how well they handle grassland varies, so check if you have both. The list of systems comes from independent agronomist Kieran Walsh's review in Farmers Weekly. The summaries are our own view, informed by his ratings and what we hear from farmers and agronomists.

Livestock and accounts are a different market

If you mainly need livestock records, the specialist tools are Herdwatch and AgriWebb. For farm accounts, most farms use Xero, QuickBooks or Sage, often alongside a farm management system rather than instead of one.

See each one in action

Here are videos of each of the software systems listed above. Swipe or use the arrows to move between them.

Soil Benchmark
Video: Soil Benchmark, the full 40-minute platform tour from our 21st October webinar
Omnia
Video: Precision Blash, a dealer, showing Omnia on desktop
Gatekeeper
Video: Farmplan (Telus)
Telus Farm Management (Greenlight)
Video: Muddy Boots (Telus)
Telus Crop Management
Video: Telus
Geofolia
Video: Landmark Systems
Cropwise Operations
Video: Syngenta South Africa (commentary in Afrikaans)
xFarm
Video: xFarm

Prices compared

Annual cost at three farm sizes, as published by Farmers Weekly (April 2026). One-off purchase prices are shown where the system is sold that way.

Software100ha400ha1,000ha
Soil Benchmark (SB Farm, all four products)£475/yr£475/yr£475/yr
Omnia (full system)£600/yr£2,325/yr£4,875/yr
Omnia Field Manager£315/yr£1,210/yr£2,510/yr
Gatekeeper£1,700 one-off + £305/yr~£3,000 one-off + £1,000/yr~£3,000 one-off + £1,000/yr
Telus Farm Management (Professional)£465/yr£465/yr£465/yr (1,000ha limit)
Telus Crop Management (Advanced)£550/yr£620/yr£1,050/yr
Geofolia£795 one-off + support£1,375 one-off + support£1,985 one-off + support
Cropwise Operations£425/yr£1,700/yr£3,750/yr
xFarm£950/yr£1,250/yr£2,700/yr
  • Soil Benchmark is priced per farm, not per hectare. SB Farm is £475 +VAT per farm per cropping year and unlocks all four products: Soil Sage, Nutrient Nerd, Crop Rex and SFI Shepherd. Any single product is £200 per farm. Farmers Weekly listed our earlier pricing; the figures above are our current prices.
  • Advisors pay per person. SB Agronomist is a £500 a year licence that covers every farm you advise, and drops each per-farm product to £150.
  • Most of the platform is free to use. You can add farms, build plans and run compliance checks without paying. You pay when you export a report or send a plan out.
  • xFarm charges extra for machinery connections (£100 for one machine up to £1,000 for unlimited). Cropwise pricing is under review.

How to choose

Start with what you have to produce

For most farms the paperwork decides it: soil management plans, RB209 nutrient plans, NVZ and Farming Rules for Water records, spray records that pass a Red Tractor audit, and now SFI applications. Check that a system produces the documents you actually need, for grassland as well as arable if you have both. Farmers Weekly found several systems only partly cover NVZ rules on grassland.

Who will use it

If an agronomist or land agent does most of your planning, ask how they will work in the system and whether their licence covers all their clients or is charged per farm. Systems built around one farm can get expensive for an advisor with fifty.

How easy it is to get help

Support matters more than most people expect, especially in the first season and at busy times like closed periods or an inspection. Ask how you get hold of someone, how quickly they reply, and whether they can actually fix a problem or just log it. Omnia has local digital specialists backed by a central UK team, and Geofolia a dedicated UK support team. Telus runs a UK phone line in office hours, with AI help out of hours. Cropwise's UK support is being rebuilt after its UK sales partnership ended in December 2025. Soil Benchmark has no sales team, so you speak directly to the developers who build it.

How much you need in the cab

If two-way machinery integration and telematics matter most, Omnia, xFarm and Cropwise are the most developed. If what matters is getting compliant plans out quickly, a simpler system will save more time.

Who owns the software

Two of these systems belong to businesses that also sell you inputs: Omnia is owned by Hutchinsons, the agronomy and input supplier, and Cropwise by Syngenta, the crop protection and seed company. Gatekeeper and Telus Farm Management (Greenlight) are now owned by Telus, the Canadian telecoms group, whose agriculture arm describes itself as a data insights business connecting the food chain from seed growers to consumer goods retailers. All three say farmers control their data, and the industry Farm Data Principles help. Even so, we regularly hear from farmers and agronomists who are uncomfortable with their product use and pricing data sitting in a system owned by a business with its own commercial interest in that data. It is worth asking exactly who in the parent company can see your data, and whether your advisor using the same system as your supplier matters to you.

If you are on Gatekeeper

Telus has said it plans to move Gatekeeper and Telus Farm Management users, with up to ten years of data, onto Telus Crop Management. Farmers Weekly reported that the most complex businesses were due to move by mid-2026, and that Telus Crop Management is still building towards feature parity.

In practice the timeline keeps getting pushed back, and many farms are only now being moved. We have also heard from a number of farms and agronomists who have had a difficult migration, with records missing or not working as they did before.

If you are being asked to move anyway, it is a sensible moment to compare the options rather than accept the default. Things worth checking before you switch:

  • Can you bring your field history and spray records across, and in what format?
  • Does the new system handle your grassland as well as your arable for NVZ purposes?
  • How long will your current version be supported?
  • What will it cost at your farm size, including extra users and contractors?

Where Soil Benchmark fits

Soil Benchmark went live in November 2023 and is now used on 1.4 million hectares, over 15% of England's farmland. It started as a soil management tool, and almost everything since has been built from what farmers and agronomists have asked for:

  • Soil Sage - soil management plans, including SFI SAM1 plans for agreements that still need them and the soil plan Red Tractor audits ask for, with risk layers and AI-assisted upload of lab results
  • Crop Rex (spray plans from spring 2025, with job sheets, product ordering and more added since) - spray plans checked against the Fera Liaison data
  • Nutrient Nerd (rebuilt in June 2026, replacing our earlier Manure Maestro and Nutrient Navigator tools) - RB209 nutrient plans for arable and grassland, spreading maps, and NVZ, N max and Farming Rules for Water checks as you plan
  • SFI Shepherd (August 2026) - SFI26 planning with clash checks against existing SFI and Countryside Stewardship agreements

New features ship most weeks, and a problem raised one week is often fixed the next. Farmers Weekly's reviewer said our track record suggests we are "responsive to requests, able to deliver".

Support from the people who build it

We deliberately don't have a sales team. Apart from our two co-founders, everyone on the team is a developer, so there are no reps or resellers between you and the people writing the software. Get in touch by phone, WhatsApp or live chat and you speak to the team who build it, who can usually fix a problem the same week and often turn a good suggestion into a new feature within weeks.

We also help you get your farms set up, run free webinars and training throughout the year, and if you are moving from Gatekeeper or Greenlight, we will help you bring your fields and history across.

What is still to come
  • Before Christmas: stock module, costings reports, and variable rate for nutrients
  • This winter: phone app for recording applications in the field, and variable rate for sprays
  • Spring 2027: more SFI compliance, with a field diary and photo evidence for each action and alerts when a field drifts out of line, plus a soil sampling planner and slurry storage calculator
  • Summer 2027: two-way machinery integration

If machinery integration matters most to you today, Omnia, xFarm or Cropwise may suit you better. We will keep this page updated as each of these goes live.

Sources

Writing spray recommendations

Plan sprays against the label, and keep the records with them

Crop Rex builds spray plans against the label conditions, so the total dose position for each crop is worked out as you plan rather than discovered afterwards. It produces linked job sheets for whoever's spraying, captures the record at the point of application, and exports the season as a document you can show inspectors or the supply chain.
See Crop Rex

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