Vivino vs Untappd

Two giants, two different jobs

People compare Vivino and Untappd as if they’re rivals, but they hardly compete — they own different drinks. Vivino is wine; Untappd is beer. Choosing between them is mostly a question of what you drink most.

Their personalities differ just as much. Vivino is a buying tool wrapped around the largest wine database in the world. Untappd is a social game wrapped around beer. Both are excellent at their core job — and both have lately drawn the same complaints: ads, paywalled stats, and features that seem built for the company more than the user.

Vivino vs Untappd vs Drinkist

Vivino: wine, ratings and a shop

For wine, Vivino is hard to beat: scan a label and you get crowd ratings from millions of drinkers, plus the option to buy the bottle on the spot. If wine is most of what you drink and you like choosing by the wisdom of the crowd, it’s the obvious pick.

The flip side, per its own reviews, is the drift toward a marketplace — ads even for subscribers, and your taste profile and stats increasingly behind Vivino Premium.

Untappd: beer, badges and a community

Untappd is the social home of beer: check in what you’re drinking, unlock badges, follow friends, and browse what’s on tap at nearby venues. For beer lovers who want the community, nothing else comes close.

Its weak spots, again from reviews, are full-screen ads on the free tier, stats locked behind Supporter, and a beer-first identity that made its move into other drinks feel unwelcome.

The catch if you drink both

Here’s the problem the Vivino-vs-Untappd question hides: if you drink wine and beer — let alone cocktails, whisky or coffee — you end up running two apps, two logins and potentially two subscriptions, and still have nowhere that shows your whole drinking life in one place. Neither app is a journal for all of it.

The third option: one private journal for everything

Drinkist is the app for people who refuse to pick a lane. It logs wine, beer, cocktails, whisky, spirits, coffee and tea in one private journal, scans any label with AI, and shows you one set of stats across the lot — with no ads, no marketplace and no social feed.

It won’t give you Vivino’s crowd scores or Untappd’s community; that’s the deliberate trade for privacy and breadth. But if “what did I actually like, across everything I drink?” is your real question, that’s the one Drinkist answers — and the free Palate DNA quiz is a good place to start.

Which one fits you?

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