Drinkist vs Vivino
Drinkist vs Vivino
Vivino is the biggest wine app on earth — a crowd-rating database with a wine shop attached. Drinkist is a private tasting journal for everything you drink, with AI scanning for any label and no ads or marketplace. Pick Vivino to buy wine by the crowd score; pick Drinkist to remember what you personally loved across wine, beer, cocktails, whisky and coffee.
The quick version
Vivino and Drinkist look alike at first — point your camera at a bottle, get the drink, save it — but they’re built around opposite goals. Vivino exists to help you buy the right wine using millions of crowd ratings, and increasingly to sell you that wine through its in-app marketplace. Drinkist exists to help you remember what you tasted, across every category, with nobody selling you anything.
That one difference shows up everywhere: in what each app scans, in what’s free versus paywalled, and in what happens to your own data over time.
Drinkist vs Vivino at a glance
| Drinkist | Vivino | |
|---|---|---|
| Drink categories | Wine, beer, cocktails, whisky, spirits, coffee & tea | Wine only |
| AI label scanning | Any drink — brand, type, vintage, ABV, country & tasting notes | Wine labels matched to its catalog |
| Crowd ratings | No — your own private ratings | Yes — millions of community scores |
| Tells you what to order | Smart Pick — photograph any menu or shelf; picks ranked against your own tastings | Crowd average scores for wine |
| Buy drinks in-app | No marketplace | Yes — built-in wine shop |
| Ads | None | Yes, including sponsored listings |
| What’s for sale in the app | Nothing — no shop, no sponsored placement | Wine, plus sponsored listings |
| Your stats & history | Your own log is always readable free; the charts screen opens with Premium | Taste profile & stats partly behind Premium |
| What it’s built for | Remembering your taste | Rating & buying wine |
| Platforms | iOS & Android | iOS & Android |
| Price | Free — 30 drinks, 10 tastings, 1 AI scan a day, 3 Smart Picks; Premium lifts every limit | Free; Vivino Premium (~$50/yr) |
Wine only vs. every drink
Vivino is wine, full stop. That focus is its strength — there’s no deeper wine catalog anywhere. But your drinking life rarely stays in one lane: the wine at dinner, the IPA after work, the negroni on Friday, the single malt at the holidays, the morning coffee you actually want to remember.
Drinkist was built multi-category from day one, so all of that lives in one journal with one set of stats. You’re not bolting non-wine drinks onto a wine app — they were always meant to be there.
Crowd ratings vs. your own palate
Vivino’s superpower is the crowd: average scores from millions of drinkers help you pick a bottle off a shelf you’ve never tried. That’s genuinely useful for buying — and genuinely beside the point once you want to remember what you thought.
Drinkist answers the same question from the other end. Smart Pick reads the menu or shelf in front of you and ranks it against the drinks you have actually rated — so the recommendation is built on the one dataset a crowd average can never see: yours. Vivino tells you what strangers liked; Drinkist tells you what you are most likely to like, from the list you are holding.
A journal, not a marketplace
The most common theme in recent Vivino reviews is that it stopped feeling like a journal and started feeling like a shop. Users report ads even as paying subscribers, sponsored listings sitting alongside the wines they were looking up, and a marketplace steadily crowding out the notebook. “A perfect example of enshittification,” as one reviewer put it.
Drinkist has no shop and no ads. Premium lifts the logging and scanning limits and opens the full stats screen — but nobody pays to appear in your recommendations, because Drinkist doesn’t sell drinks. Smart Pick ranks the menu in front of you against your own tastings, not against who bought placement.
AI scanning that works on anything
Vivino matches a wine label against its catalog, which is brilliant when the match lands — though a recurring complaint is that recognition has gotten less reliable over time.
Drinkist’s scanner reads the label itself with AI and drafts the brand, type, vintage, ABV, country and tasting notes — for a wine, a craft beer, a bottle of bourbon, or a bag of coffee. One tap and it’s in your journal.
Which should you choose?
Choose Drinkist if…
A private journal for everything you drink
- You drink across categories, not just wine
- You want a private journal, not a feed or a shop
- You’re tired of ads and a marketplace in your wine app
- You want AI scanning for any drink — beer, whisky, coffee, cocktails
Choose Vivino if…
A buying guide for wine
- You drink almost exclusively wine
- You want crowd ratings and average scores before you buy
- You want to buy wine inside the app
- A huge wine-only catalog matters more than privacy
Frequently asked questions
Is Drinkist a good Vivino alternative?
Yes — especially if you drink more than wine. Drinkist gives you Vivino-style AI label scanning and a tasting journal, but across wine, beer, cocktails, whisky, spirits, coffee and tea, with no ads and no marketplace. The trade-off: Drinkist has no crowd ratings or in-app wine shop, because it’s a private journal rather than a buying guide.
Does Drinkist have crowd ratings like Vivino?
No, by design. Vivino’s value is millions of strangers’ ratings; Drinkist’s value is your ratings and notes. If you want an average score to pick a bottle in a store, Vivino is better. If you want to remember what you personally thought, Drinkist is built for exactly that.
Can I scan wine labels in Drinkist?
Yes. Point your camera at any wine label and Drinkist’s AI identifies the brand, type, vintage, ABV and country and drafts tasting notes — then saves it to your journal in a tap.
Is Drinkist free?
Yes, free to start on iOS and Android — 30 drinks, 10 tastings, one AI scan a day and three Smart Picks — with Premium lifting every limit and adding the full stats screen and cloud sync. Unlike Vivino, there is no shop, no sponsored listing and nothing sold to you inside the app.
Remember every drink you love
Log, rate and scan any drink with AI — and let Smart Pick read the menu when you can’t decide. Wine, beer, cocktails, whisky and coffee, free on iOS & Android, no ads.