AlpacaKeepIs it actually free, or a free trial in disguise?
Free here means free forever, up to 10 animals, no card, no countdown. You can stay on the free plan as long as you like.
Here is the trap you are right to watch for. A free trial is a test drive that ends. After 14 or 30 days the door locks and you either pay or lose access to your own records. Free forever is different: it is a small permanent plan you settle into and keep using, no expiry date attached.
Three things get called free, and they are not the same:
Free trial: full features, but a clock runs out and then you pay.
Freemium with a real free tier: a smaller plan that stays free, with an optional paid upgrade.
Free as a one-time download that is actually a trial in disguise: the classic old-desktop pattern.
AlpacaKeep is the middle one. There is a permanent free tier for up to 10 animals, plus one optional 30-day free trial per farm if you ever want to test everything with more room. The free tier does not depend on the trial. You only pay if your herd grows past the cap and you decide to upgrade.
What is the catch? How can free software make sense?
The free tier is real, and the model behind it is simple. Larger farms upgrade to paid plans, and that funds the free tier for everyone else. That is the whole arrangement.
No ads. We do not sell your data. There are no surprise add-ons and no setup fees.
It exists because we needed it ourselves. AlpacaKeep is built and run on a working alpaca farm in Val Gardena, South Tyrol. The people building it keep their own herd records in it, so the free plan is not a marketing hook bolted on at the end. It is the on-ramp we wanted for small and starter herds.
Free is not a loss-leader trick here. It is the front door.
What you can actually do on the free plan (and what is paid)
The limits up front, so there is nothing to discover later. The free plan covers up to 10 animals, 2 team members and 100 MB of storage, enough for roughly 280 photos, EU-hosted.
On the free plan you can:
Keep full herd records: each animal's profile, IDs, microchip, photos.
Track breeding and pedigree.
Log health and medication, including the withdrawal period supplied by your vet or product instructions. AlpacaKeep tracks when the period you entered ends.
Keep fibre and shearing notes.
Set tasks and reminders.
Some features sit on the paid plans, and we would rather tell you now: full financials, public sale pages, and the fibre analytics hub. See features for the full tour and pricing for where each line sits.
It is a modern web app. It runs in your browser on a phone, tablet or laptop. Nothing to install, and it updates itself. If you want the husbandry side of things, the care how-to lives in our alpaca care guide library. This page is about the software.
Will I outgrow the free tier and get held hostage?
10 animals stay free forever, and when you outgrow that the next step is a low fixed annual price, not a per-animal meter that climbs every time a cria is born. The full upgrade path is on pricing.
The escape hatch matters more, so we will say it plainly: you can export your data at any time, on every plan including the free one. Export is per-resource CSV (animals, events, financial entries) plus a full GDPR data download. Your records are yours, and you can leave with them.
Upgrading is a choice you make because the herd grew, not a wall that drops on day 30. There is no moment where you are locked out of work you have already done.
Is my data safe? (EU-hosted, GDPR, and you can export it)
Two different worries live inside that question: losing the data, and who controls it. Both have honest answers.
Your records are cloud-hosted rather than tied to one laptop or USB stick, and you can export them whenever you want. Our security page states exactly which database backups and file-storage protections are in place today.
Who controls it deserves a straight answer rather than a slogan. Your records live on servers in the EU (Frankfurt), so EU privacy law and GDPR apply, including your right to request erasure. We will not tell you that EU hosting makes your data untouchable by any government. Our infrastructure providers are US-incorporated companies, so we keep the claim to what is true: EU data residency, EU jurisdiction for data at rest, GDPR rights, published security details, and the ability to export your records and walk away.
Do not take our adjectives for it. The export button is real, the region is named, and the law is public. Those are the things a careful buyer can check, which is rather the point.
Record keeping still matters
Good news first: if your country expects you to keep certain records, a free tool should make that easier, not push you back to a paper folder.
EU rules require keepers of food-producing animals to retain specified veterinary-medicine information for at least 5 years. Whether those rules apply to your alpacas depends on how the animals are kept or used and on national requirements. Article 108 allows the information to be retained across prescriptions, purchase evidence, and other farm records, so no single app or template should be treated as proof of compliance.
Beyond that one anchor, rules vary, so treat the lines below as pointers to check with your own authority, not as legal advice:
UK: camelids are not on the GOV.UK list of livestock that need a County Parish Holding (CPH) number, and you do not need a movement licence to keep alpacas on your own land for routine purposes. Whether a CPH applies to you is worth confirming with APHA or the RPA. Licences can apply in disease control zones, for export, or for TB.
Australia: a Property Identification Code (PIC) for the property is required, and movements are recorded with a waybill. NLIS tagging for alpacas is voluntary. Check your state or territory authority.
United States: there is no federal alpaca register. AOA pedigree registration is voluntary, and premises and movement rules vary by state. Check your state department of agriculture or USDA.
This is a record-keeping point, not a treatment plan. For when and what to actually administer, see our deworming schedule and vaccination schedule guides.
Last reviewed: June 2026. Confirm current rules with your own authority. Not legal advice.
Free alpaca software vs a spreadsheet (and old desktop tools)
A spreadsheet is free too, and for a handful of animals it can hold its own. What it cannot do is the thinking.
It will not calculate a due date for you. It will not show that the withdrawal period you recorded is still running. It will not flag a risky grey-by-grey mating. It stores numbers. It does not act on them.
Old desktop software has a different problem. It is tied to one computer, there is no phone access in the barn, and when the machine dies the data usually dies with it.
Where they differ, in plain terms:
Calculates a breeding due date: app yes, spreadsheet no, desktop sometimes.
Warns you about a withdrawal period: app yes, spreadsheet no, desktop no.
Keeps records off one local device: app yes, spreadsheet depends where it is stored, desktop usually no.
Works on your phone in the field: app yes, spreadsheet awkwardly, desktop no.
Already keep your herd in a sheet? Moving it across is its own job, and we walk through it in switching from a spreadsheet. This page is about getting the free software in the first place.