BaketlyShort answer: whichever one counts your labour and stores purchases rather than calculated costs. Baketly does both and is free; a well-built spreadsheet also does both.
| Free calculator | Baketly | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | Free |
| Counts your own hours | Often not | A rate set once |
| Keeps a pantry | No | Yes |
| Recosts when a price moves | No | Yes |
| Margin per hour by product | No | Yes |
| Checks nearby prices | No | Yes |
| Works across a season | No | Yes |
| Platform | Any browser | iPhone and web |
The four kinds, and how each fails
| Kind | Good at | Fails at |
|---|---|---|
| Free web calculator | One quote, instantly | Keeps nothing; often omits labour |
| Spreadsheet | Anything you build | Upkeep — goes stale and does not say so |
| Inventory platform | Stock and cost of goods | Built for a business with stock |
| Costing app | Costing and per-hour margin | Narrow; no ordering, no accounts |
Test one: does it count your hours?
This is the test most tools fail, and it is not a small failure. On the worked example used across this site, a sourdough loaf costs $5.85 to make and $4.80 of that is the baker — 82% of the total.
A tool that omits labour says the loaf costs $1.05. Every price then looks generous, and the common rule of multiplying ingredients by four produces $4.20, which is below what the loaf cost to make. The tool is not wrong about ingredients. It is simply blind to the largest number.
Test two: what happens when flour goes up?
If the tool stores flour costs $0.61, a supplier price change means editing every recipe that uses flour. If it stores $19.60 for 16 kg and the recipe references the pantry item, one edit moves everything.
This decides whether your prices are still true in a year, and it is invisible from the outside — two spreadsheets can look identical and differ entirely on this. Cost rises also land harder than they look: because profit is the thin slice, a 5% rise in costs takes 8% off the profit on a loaf and 13% off a cinnamon bun.
The third thing, which almost nothing does
Margin per hour of your time: what a product leaves after materials, divided by the hours it took. Percentage margin ranks products as if an hour spent on a loaf and three minutes spent on a bun were the same kind of cost. They are not, and ranking by percentage will send you on baking the wrong thing.
Where Baketly is the wrong answer
- If you need orders or invoicing. Neither exists here.
- If you need stock valuation for accounts. It costs what you make, not what sits on the shelf.
- If you employ anyone. The labour model assumes the baker and the owner are the same person.
How to decide in five minutes
Take your best-selling product. Write down what it costs you including your hands-on minutes at a rate you would pay someone else. Divide what it leaves after materials by the hours it took. If that number is uncomfortable, the tool you need is whichever one will keep that calculation current without you remembering to — and if your current tool cannot show you that number at all, it is not a pricing tool.
Related
Questions
What is the best app for pricing baked goods?
For a one-person bakery selling direct, the test is whether the tool counts your own hours and recosts itself when a supplier price changes. Baketly does both and is free on iPhone. A spreadsheet built with a pantry tab does both too, and costs nothing — the catch is keeping it current.
Is there a free app for bakery pricing?
Yes. Baketly is free on iPhone with no subscription and no in-app purchases, and there are free web calculators for one-off quotes. Free is easier to find in costing than in order management, because ordering tools have payment processing to fund.
Do I need an app, or will a spreadsheet do?
A spreadsheet will do if it references a pantry tab rather than having costs typed into each recipe, and if you maintain it. Both conditions matter. The second is where most fail, quietly.
What should a pricing tool include that most do not?
Your labour, at a rate you would accept from someone else, applied to every product including unattended time that blocks the oven. On the worked example used across this site, that is 82% of what a loaf costs to make.
Should the app tell me what to charge?
It should tell you your floor — what the item costs you — and leave the price to you. The ceiling is set by the bakeries nearest you, which no tool can know better than you do.
The floor, worked out for you
Baketly costs each bake from your own pantry with your hours in it, then checks the result against bakeries nearby. Free on iPhone.
Download on the App Store