BrewPlanner Review (2026): Pricing, Features & Honest Verdict

TLDR

BrewPlanner is production planning and ERP software for craft beverage makers: breweries, wineries, distilleries and cideries. It handles batch scheduling, recipe management and inventory, and undercuts the big platforms on price. Best for: small and mid-size producers wanting affordable planning. Price: Free plan: no; from $49/mo. Rating: 6.1/10.

What is BrewPlanner?

BrewPlanner is software built for the people who make craft beer, wine, cider and spirits. It bills itself as an all-in-one platform for batch scheduling, inventory management and recipe management. The core idea is to replace the whiteboards, spreadsheets and guesswork that small producers use to plan production, with one system that knows what is fermenting where and when the next batch can start.

It targets the full range of craft producers, from nano breweries and single-barrel operations up to multi-location regional facilities, and it covers breweries, wineries, distilleries, cideries and meaderies. The company cites 500+ breweries and wineries on the platform. We dug into how it positions against the established names, and the angle is affordability and simplicity: it does the planning fundamentals at a price well below the legacy ERPs, trading some depth for accessibility. That tradeoff is deliberate. The established platforms in this category grew complex and expensive, and a lot of small producers feel they are paying for features they never touch. BrewPlanner bets that a nano or small craft producer would rather have a clean scheduling and recipe tool at a fair price than a sprawling ERP that takes weeks to learn.

What Are BrewPlanner’s Key Features?

Batch tracking and scheduling

The headline feature is drag-and-drop batch scheduling across your fermenters, with a real-time production calendar. You can see tank availability, slot in upcoming brews and avoid the classic problem of planning a batch with nowhere to put it. For a producer juggling limited tank space, this visual scheduling is the single biggest day-to-day value, and it is what BrewPlanner does best. Tank time is the hard constraint in any brewery, since a fermenter tied up for an extra week is a batch you cannot make and revenue you cannot earn. Seeing the whole calendar at a glance, and being able to drag a batch to a free slot, turns a planning headache that used to live on a whiteboard into something you can manage in a couple of clicks.

Recipe management

BrewPlanner lets you create, version and scale recipes and blends. Versioning matters because recipes evolve, and being able to scale a pilot batch up to full production without redoing the math saves time and reduces errors. It works across beverage types, so a producer making both beer and cider can manage both in one place rather than two tools. Scaling is where manual recipe management goes wrong most often, since converting a 10-gallon pilot to a 30-barrel production run by hand invites arithmetic mistakes that ruin a batch. Letting the software handle the math, and keeping a version history so you can roll back to the recipe customers loved, protects both quality and consistency as you grow.

Inventory and MRP

On the Brewery ERP tier, BrewPlanner adds raw material tracking for hops, malt, yeast and grapes, with automated reorder alerts and MRP (material requirements planning) calculations. This connects your production schedule to your purchasing, so the system can tell you what to buy and when based on planned batches. It is the feature that turns BrewPlanner from a planning tool into an actual ERP. The payoff is avoiding the two expensive failure modes of manual inventory: running out of a key ingredient mid-schedule and halting production, or over-ordering perishable hops and yeast that spoil before you use them. MRP that reads your planned batches and tells you exactly what to order is the difference between guessing and planning your purchasing.

Analytics and orders

The ERP plan also brings production analytics dashboards (yield rates, production costs), plus purchase orders, sales orders and keg tracking, and API access. The company markets figures like 99% on-time scheduling and 30% average waste reduction. Treat those as vendor claims rather than tested results, but the operational pieces (orders, keg tracking, cost analytics) are genuinely useful for a growing operation. Keg tracking in particular solves a real and costly problem, since kegs are expensive assets that vanish into the distribution chain and rarely all come back. Knowing your true cost per batch, rather than guessing, is also what lets a small producer price properly and spot which products actually make money.

How Much Does BrewPlanner Cost?

BrewPlanner has two plans. Production Planning is $49/mo and covers batch scheduling, the visual production calendar, recipe management with scaling and up to 3 users. Brewery ERP is $125/mo, labeled most popular, and adds raw material tracking, MRP, inventory with reorder alerts, production analytics, purchase orders, sales orders, keg tracking, API access and unlimited users.

On price, BrewPlanner clearly undercuts the established platforms. Ollie’s operations plan runs around $201/mo, and Ekos uses custom pricing that craft forums describe as significantly higher, with price hikes that have pushed breweries to shop around. So BrewPlanner at $49 to $125/mo is the budget-friendly option in the category, which is its main selling point.

The catch is what is not published. There is no public free plan, and the free-trial terms are not clearly stated on the pricing page (the FAQ raises the trial question but does not answer it plainly). The 3-user cap on the entry plan also means any real team has to jump to the $125/mo ERP tier, so budget for that if you have more than a couple of people in the system. It is worth contacting them directly to confirm trial and annual-billing terms before you commit, since the pricing page hints at an annual discount without stating it. For most small producers the practical decision is simple: start on Production Planning if you only need scheduling and recipes, and move to Brewery ERP once you want the software to manage purchasing and inventory too.

Who is BrewPlanner Best For?

Use BrewPlanner if you run a small or mid-size craft brewery, winery, distillery or cidery and you want affordable, easy production planning without paying enterprise ERP prices. If your biggest pain is tank scheduling and recipe versioning, the $49/mo Production Planning tier solves exactly that. Producers ready for inventory, MRP and order management get a full ERP at $125/mo for far less than the legacy platforms.

Skip BrewPlanner if you are a larger producer that needs deep reporting, mature integrations and a long track record; the established platforms go further on depth, and at scale that depth is worth paying for. Skip it too if you require a free trial to evaluate before buying, since terms are not clearly published, or if you need more than 3 users but cannot justify the ERP tier. And if brewer-built support is a priority, Beer30 is worth a look first, since its team of former brewers tends to understand production problems in a way generic software support does not. The honest summary is that BrewPlanner is a strong fit for the lower end of the market and a weaker one as your operation grows complex.

Best BrewPlanner Alternatives

Ollie

Ollie is a popular brewery platform with transparent pricing, and its operations plan runs around $201/mo covering inventory, batch management, fermentation logs, yeast management, TTB reporting and packaging. It bundles more out of the box than BrewPlanner but costs noticeably more. Some users report gaps in state-specific reporting, so test it against your local compliance needs.

Ekos

Ekos is one of the most established names in craft beverage software, offering end-to-end coverage: real-time inventory, production planning, sales orders, CRM, cost accounting and TTB reporting. It uses custom pricing that sits well above BrewPlanner, and some breweries have pushed back on its price increases. Choose Ekos if you want maximum depth and a proven platform, and you can absorb the cost.

Beer30

Beer30 is modular, intuitive, affordable and scalable, and its team is largely former brewers, which shows in brewery-specific features like recipe management, yeast genealogy and the full brew-to-package process. Its modular pricing lets you pay for what you use. If brewer-led support and a pay-for-what-you-need structure appeal more than a flat two-tier plan, Beer30 is the strongest alternative.

Final Verdict: Is BrewPlanner Worth It?

BrewPlanner earns a 6.1. It nails the production-planning fundamentals, drag-and-drop batch scheduling and recipe versioning, at a price that genuinely undercuts Ollie and Ekos. For a small or mid-size craft producer whose main headache is tank scheduling and who does not want to pay legacy-ERP prices, it is a sensible, affordable choice that gets the job done.

It sits at the low end of our range because it is leaner than the established platforms on reporting depth and integrations, the entry tier caps you at 3 users, and the absence of a clear free plan or published trial makes it harder to evaluate risk-free. Our take: if you are a smaller producer and price matters, BrewPlanner is worth a demo, but compare it against Beer30’s modular pricing before you commit, and ask directly about trial terms.