The market, in one honest table
A small food business shopping for labelling software is usually offered three kinds of tool: UK compliance suites that start around £25 a month and climb to £65 for the tier where the allergen matrix and food safety logs actually live, enterprise nutrition platforms priced for hospitals and manufacturers, and order-book apps that don't do UK allergen law at all. ProvenBatch starts at £9 with the complete label engine in every tier, and does several things nobody else advertises at any price.
| Capability | ProvenBatch | FoodCore | CakeBoss | Bakesy | Craftybase |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PPDS / Natasha’s Law labels, allergens emphasised | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Allergen matrix + export | ✓ | £65 tier | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Recipe costing | ✓ | £40 tier | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| QUID % and net quantity on the label | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Label derived from the actual batch (per-batch supplier selection) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Second-opinion allergen scan + verification & freshness tracking | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Append-only compliance history | ✓ | Audit trail | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Photograph a pack → declaration read for you | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Receipt scanning (photo, PDF, email-in) with price alerts | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Offline capture in the kitchen (installable app) | ✓ | Read-only cache | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Orders with prices | ✓ | £40 tier | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cash-basis accounts & monthly P&L | ✓ | Insights only | Partial | ✗ | COGS focus |
| Stock control | ✓ Pro | £40 tier | Partial | Partial | ✓ |
| Food safety diary (SFBB-style), HACCP plans & EHO pack | ✓ Pro | £65 tier | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Overnight FSA recall watch against your own suppliers | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Read-only inspector access that expires by itself | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| UK price under £15/month | ✓ £9 | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Trial | 30 days, no card (private beta) | 7 days, no card | Trial | 30 days | 14 days |
Competitor pricing and features as published by each vendor, verified 20 Aug 2026; check their sites for current detail. US tools price in USD. Craftybase now trades as Stocksmith, same product, same prices.
Where we're honestly behind
We are behind on track record, and that is the honest answer. The tools in this table have years of customers, reviews and published content behind them; we have a product, a status page, a published price and an export promise. If you want a name that a hundred other businesses have already vouched for, that isn't us yet. If you want to read exactly what we do with your data before you sign up, it's all written down.
What nobody else does at any price: derive the label from the batch that was made (the pack you actually used, not the one the recipe assumes) and check its own allergen detection with an independent second pass. If proving your labels is the centre of your problem, that's us.
Try the difference on your own recipes
Private beta until 30 September · Public free trial opens 1 October · From £9 a month Free 30 days, no card · Data held in the UK · From £9 a month