Bake Diary Shut Down? Here Are the Best Alternatives in 2026

Bake Diary shut down on May 31, 2025, leaving thousands of home bakers without a recipe costing tool. The best replacement depends on what you need: BakeMargin for margin protection and real cost tracking, or Bake Boost for full order management and invoicing.

Here is a detailed comparison of every serious alternative, with honest pros and cons for each.

What Happened to Bake Diary?

Bake Diary was a popular recipe costing app based in Ireland, serving mostly UK and Irish bakers at €6.95/month (~$7.50 USD). It offered simple ingredient costing, recipe management, and basic pricing tools.

In May 2025, the service shut down permanently. No migration tool was provided. Users lost access to saved recipes, ingredient libraries, and pricing data unless they had exported it beforehand.

The baking community reacted immediately. The Slice of Success podcast and The Business of Cake Making podcast both dedicated episodes to the shutdown. Facebook groups like Cake Boss Help Group saw dozens of posts asking "what do I switch to?"

Bake Boost was the fastest to respond, offering Bake Diary users an extended 1-month trial (through June 15, 2025) and a dedicated FAQ page for migrants. That trial has long expired, but the need for a replacement has not.

What You Need in a Bake Diary Replacement

Before comparing tools, here is what a proper recipe costing system should offer. Bake Diary covered some of these. A good replacement should cover most.

1. Recipe costing — enter ingredients, get total cost per unit
2. Master ingredient library — update a price once, all recipes recalculate automatically
3. Unit conversion — cups to grams to ounces without manual math
4. Margin-based pricing — "charge $X for a 60% margin," not just "multiply by 3"
5. Cloud storage — no data loss if your device breaks
6. Mobile-friendly — usable in the kitchen on a phone
7. Affordable — under $15/month for home bakers
8. Data export — never get locked into a tool you cannot leave

Top 5 Bake Diary Alternatives Compared (2026)

| Feature | BakeMargin | Bake Boost | CakeBoss | BakeSmart | Excel/Sheets | |---------|-----------|-----------|---------|---------|-------------| | Price | Free + $9.99/mo | ~$19/mo | $149 1st yr, $20/yr after | $99+/mo | Free | | Recipe costing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Manual | | Master ingredient library | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Manual | | Price tracking + alerts | Yes | No | No | No | No | | Order management | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Manual | | Unit conversion | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Manual | | Mobile-friendly | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Partial | | Best for | Margin protection | Full bakery ops | Budget long-term | Multi-location retail | DIY bakers |

#1 BakeMargin — Margin Protection + Real Cost Tracking

BakeMargin is not a bakery management system. It is a margin protection system — designed to answer one question: "Am I making or losing money on every product?"

What sets it apart:

• Free calculators with no account required. Try them right now, before deciding anything.
• Master ingredient library — update butter once, every recipe using butter recalculates instantly.
• Price history and margin alerts — get notified when ingredient prices rise enough to push your products below your target margin. This is the feature Bake Diary never had and the reason margins erode silently.
• AI pricing assistant (Pro plan) — get specific pricing advice based on your actual costs and local market.

Pricing: Free forever for calculator tools. Starter plan at $9.99/month for saved recipes, price tracking, and 3 margin alerts. Pro at $29/month for unlimited alerts, AI assistant, and regional benchmarking.

What it does not do: Order management, invoicing, storefront, or production scheduling. If you need those, look at Bake Boost or CakeBoss below.

#2 Bake Boost — Order Management + Invoicing

Bake Boost is the closest thing to an all-in-one bakery tool. It covers recipe costing, order management, invoicing, customer contacts, and inventory — all in one app.

Why consider it:

• Broadest feature set of any tool on this list
• Was the first to actively support Bake Diary migrants (extended trial, migration FAQ)
• Stripe and Square payment integration for taking deposits
• Supports master ingredient data and recipe nesting

Pricing: Starts with a free tier. Paid plans around $19/month for full features.

The honest take: If you need order tracking, invoicing, and customer management alongside recipe costing, Bake Boost covers more ground than BakeMargin. But it does not track ingredient price changes over time or alert you when your margins drop. If your main pain was "am I pricing correctly?" rather than "how do I manage orders?", Bake Boost is broader but shallower on the costing side.

#3 CakeBoss — Budget Option for Long-Term

CakeBoss has been around for years and has a large installed user base. It is desktop software, not a web app.

Why consider it:

• $149 for the first year, then just $20/year — the cheapest long-term option
• Covers recipe costing, order management, delivery scheduling, PayPal payments
• 30-day money-back guarantee

The honest take: The UI feels dated compared to modern web tools. It is desktop-only (no phone access in the kitchen). The upfront $149 is a barrier, especially if you are not sure you will use it long-term. But if you commit and use it for three or more years, the annual cost drops to $20/year — significantly cheaper than any subscription tool.

#4 BakeSmart — Full POS for Retail Bakeries

BakeSmart is designed for retail bakeries with storefronts, employees, and multiple locations. It includes point-of-sale, inventory management, purchase orders, and integrations with bakery suppliers.

Pricing: Starts at $99/month. The Essentials plan runs $240/month plus a $1,999 onboarding fee.

#5 Excel / Google Sheets — Free but Fragile

Most bakers start here. A spreadsheet can technically do recipe costing, but it requires manual setup and maintenance.

Why it fails over time:

• No automatic recalculation when ingredient prices change — you update one cell and forget three others
• No unit conversion built in — converting cups to grams means a separate lookup every time
• No alerts — your margins can erode for months before you notice
• Formula errors are invisible. One broken cell means you are pricing a product at a loss without knowing it.

Spreadsheets work for your first 2–3 recipes. Beyond that, the manual maintenance becomes a second job. Most bakers who switch to dedicated tools say the same thing: "I wish I had switched sooner."

How to Migrate from Bake Diary

If you exported your data before Bake Diary shut down, you have a head start. If not, here is how to rebuild quickly.

Step 1: List your top 10 recipes. Start with the products you sell most. You do not need to re-enter everything at once.

Step 2: Gather current ingredient prices. Check your most recent grocery receipts or supplier invoices. Focus on the ingredients that appear in multiple recipes (flour, butter, sugar, eggs).

Step 3: Enter them in a free calculator. Use our recipe cost calculator for general recipes or cake pricing calculator for cake-specific pricing. You will see your real cost per unit and a suggested selling price immediately.

Step 4: Compare your old prices. If your Bake Diary prices were based on "multiply by 3" or an old ingredient price, you may discover you have been undercharging. Ingredient costs rose 1.6% across bakery products in 2025 alone (BLS data). Even small increases compound across recipes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a free alternative to Bake Diary?

BakeMargin offers free recipe cost and cake pricing calculators with no account required. You can calculate costs, set margins, and get a suggested price without signing up. Saving recipes and tracking prices over time starts at $9.99/month.

Can I import my Bake Diary data into another tool?

No tool currently supports direct Bake Diary import. If you exported your recipes as a spreadsheet before the shutdown, you can use that as a reference to manually re-enter your top recipes. Most bakers report re-entering their 10 most-used recipes takes about an hour.

Which alternative is cheapest long-term?

CakeBoss is cheapest after year one ($20/year). BakeMargin Starter is $9.99/month ($119.88/year, or $79/year on annual billing). The difference is what you get: CakeBoss has no price tracking, no alerts, and no mobile access. Compare features and pricing on our pricing page.