A coffee cupping app built by one person on the side: all five official scoring sheets done right, 100 users in two months
What it is A coffee tasting / cupping app: free tasting notes and group scoring with friends, plus a paid tier ($5.99/month or $29.99/year) giving professional cuppers the five official scoring sheets from SCA, CVA, CoE and Q, with report export.
Why it's trending It isn't really trending yet. The Coffee Association SCA has swapped in a new scoring sheet, which has brought out a batch of digital cupping tools, and this is one of the most detailed. Ranking #2 on Latvia's Top Grossing chart says more about how thin that chart is: a couple of purchases is enough to climb it.
CHow you could follow it Don't chase coffee. Take this playbook to another small niche with official scoring sheets (wine, BJCP beer, tea cupping): get the sheets accurate, keep the facilitator tier paid and the guests free, and first seek endorsements from the associations and training courses.
- Data (updated daily) · Launched 2026-09-09 · Colombia rating 1 · 11-08 charting in 2 stores
iOS · best category chart rank · by store LVGTData 2026-10-30 → 2026-11-08 (10 days, 10 observations). Lower rank is higher; gaps mean it wasn't charted that dayiOS · rating count · Colombia Number of ratings 1Data day 2026-11-05, only 1 days so far. Apple doesn't give download counts, so rating growth is the proxy
A full-time engineer in Madrid built an iPhone cupping app after hours, implementing all five official coffee scoring sheets by their real rules. Two months after launch, it says it has 100+ users and only 1 ratings worldwide. The ranking on Latvia's Top Grossing chart looks busy, but it proves little. This piece covers what it got right, why it hasn't taken off, and whether the playbook works in other small niches.
A scoring sheet that got replaced
Around Oct 2026 21, a LinkedIn company page with only 6 followers posted an update: Cupping 1.6.0, ending with "we are already more than 100 users". The poster was Alejandro Bailo, a senior product engineer by day at Prowler, a security company in Madrid. Cupping is his solo side project, launched on the App Store in Sep 9. On r/iosdev on Reddit he titled the project "I replaced my coffee tasting spreadsheets with an iOS app".
Cupping is the industry's standard way to grade coffee beans: a table of people smell, slurp and score a row of cups. The scores determine what a batch of green beans is worth. The sheets are changing generations: in 2023 the Specialty Coffee Association SCA launched the new CVA evaluation system to replace the long-used 100-point sheet, and Q Graders (certified cuppers) have to take courses and recertify. Old and new sheets now coexist, and many people still use paper plus Excel. That's the gap Cupping is trying to fill.
What it is
A coffee tasting app for iPhone and iPad only, in English and Spanish. The website says an Android version is in development.
- Free tier, free forever: unlimited sessions, up to 50 samples per session; five-star overall score, with aroma / acidity / body rated 1–10 for intensity, plus flavor descriptors and full history; invite friends into the same session via link or QR code.
- Cupping Pro: $5.99/month (7-day trial) or $29.99/year (14-day trial). Includes the five official scoring sheets: SCA classic, CVA 2024, Cup of Excellence, Q Arabica, Q Robusta, plus in-group calibration, analysis and PDF / CSV export.
- Snap a photo of a coffee bag and the origin, variety and roast details fill in automatically. Recognition runs on-device with Apple Intelligence, so the developer pays nothing in API fees. It works offline and syncs when back online.
The sharpest line on the website is "No generic sliders relabelled as professional protocols": no generic sliders passed off as professional sheets. Each sheet uses its real scale: CVA is 1–9 points in 0.5-point steps, the SCA classic is 6–10 points in 0.25-point steps, CoE marks the 86-point line, and Q Robusta has a dedicated ratio item. Professional cuppers can tell whether these details are right. Iteration is fast too: from 9-09 to 1.0,10-28, it shipped 1.7.1,7 versions in 14 weeks (per App Store version history).
Has it taken off: no
| What to look at | Metric | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Rating | 1 worldwide, Colombia, 5 stars, 11-05 appearances | App Store,11-06 |
| users | "100+" | Developer LinkedIn posts, about 10-21 |
| LinkedIn follows | 6 people | Same as above |
| Latvia Food & Drink Top Grossing | 11-01 #2 → 11-02 #3 → 11-03 #11 → 11-04 #16 → 11-05 #18 → 11-06 #21 | App Store charts |
| Top Free (Food & Drink) | Latvia, Guatemala, Ecuador, Colombia, Bahrain, appearing sporadically at #94–208 | App Store charts, 10-30 to 11-06 |
It's #2 on Latvia's Top Grossing chart, but that chart is thin. 11-04 that day, the apps around it were mostly 0-rated ones and a pile of old paid apps from over a decade ago, so one or two sales were enough to crack the top spots. It hit #124 on Latvia's Top Free chart 10-30 and climbed to #2 on Top Grossing 11-01, then slid down every day after. This most likely means one Latvian user downloaded it and paid once (inferred), though you can't tell if it was monthly or yearly. It shows someone was willing to pay, not that it has meaningful subscription revenue.
Guatemala, Ecuador and Colombia, the countries that also charted on Top Free, all grow coffee and speak Spanish, which matches the Spanish version. But the Food & Drink Top Free bar in those countries is low too, and a few dozen downloads a day can get you on it.
Where users come from
The channels I could find are the ones a developer can do alone, and all of them are small:
- Reddit build-in-public: r/buildinpublic has a post titled "Building Cupping in public: I made a demo video for my coffee tasting app. Does it work?" with only 1 upvotes visible. The r/iosdev post is the one above about replacing Excel.
- LinkedIn: an update with each version, getting 1–5 likes each.
- Website SEO: coffeecupping.app has English and Spanish pages, with "SCA scoring" in the title.
- Built-in sharing in the product: this is the best-designed part. The host unlocks Pro, and others at the table can join the official cupping with free accounts. Anyone without the app who taps the invite link is taken straight to the App Store. One person pays, and the whole table installs it.
- Ads, TikTok, X, press coverage: none found.
Who it's competing with
There are more of these than I expected, and most launched in the last couple of years, for the same reason: the SCA form change.
| Product | Platform | Scale | Compared with Cupping |
|---|---|---|---|
| Catador / Catador CVA (Guatemala) | iOS / Android | Old version: 6 ratings on the US store; CVA version: 1K+ Google Play downloads; 2024-05 officially recommended by the SCA | Has association backing and many Latin American users; only does the old forms or CVA |
| Quantify CVA (South Korea) | iOS / Android | During beta: 18,000 evaluations, 1,100 evaluators, 8 languages; 2026-07 named as an SCA recommendation | Only CVA, about an order of magnitude bigger than Cupping |
| Tastify | Web | SCA 2024-year partner | B2B workspace for roasters and green bean sellers |
| TheBeanGeek | Web | Completely free, no sign-up required; 2026-07 recommended by the SCA | Only CVA, with a community |
| Cuppy | iOS / Android(Beta) | Unknown | Most similar feature set: SCA forms, blind tasting, QR codes, PDF, offline, in French, English and Spanish |
| Cuptrace | Android | 2026-09 beta | Also a solo project, offline-first, all free |
| SensoCup CVA, Cupscore, SCA's official score calculator | Web | Free utilities | Score calculation only |
| Beanconqueror, iBrewCoffee, Filtru, etc. | iOS / Android | US store ratings in the dozens to a hundred or two | Logs brewing and taste, does not do official forms |
Where Cupping stands out is in combining three things: all five forms (especially CoE and Q Robusta, which few others do), a free personal tasting log, and offline multi-person syncing. The catch is that new-generation cuppers who only use CVA don't need five forms, and casual enthusiasts already have logging apps like Beanconqueror. The real distribution channel in this niche is the SCA's recommendation press release, and Catador, Quantify and TheBeanGeek have already taken it.
The whole category is small. Catador, the longest-running, has only 6 ratings on the US store, and Quantify's 1,100 evaluators count as a big player. Worldwide there are probably tens of thousands of professional cuppers (estimated, counting Q Graders and roastery quality control staff).
What to learn from it
The coffee cupping route isn't worth squeezing into, but its approach can be transplanted:
- "Digitizing industry-standard scoring sheets": find a small community with official scoring sheets, ideally one going through a version change, such as wine (WSET, CMS tasting sheets), BJCP beer judging, whisky, tea evaluation, olive oil, or chocolate. Get the forms exactly right to the official rules, then add offline use, multi-person syncing and PDF export.
- "Host pays, guests free": one person at the table pays, and invite links go straight to the store. Niche professional tools rarely have this built-in sharing mechanism.
- The cautionary lesson: users in these communities are controlled by associations, training schools and trade shows. Quantify reached 1,100 evaluators because of SCA backing and a large public beta. Going public on Reddit alone produced just 100 users in two months.
If it were you
C: learn from it, but chasing coffee cupping itself isn't worth it. The category is small, the SCA-backed spot is already taken, and five or six similar products are in the same stretch. Cupping hasn't yet proven that anyone pays at scale.
Who it suits: people who know a particular evaluation community from the inside. If you're a WSET student, a BJCP judge or a tea evaluator, you know where the sheet is hard to use, and you know the associations or instructors who can share it for you. One person can build it in a few weeks with SwiftUI or Flutter.
Who it doesn't suit: anyone who wants to do coffee cupping (too late, and too small); anyone who knows no channels in the community and plans to grow on Reddit and SEO alone; anyone who expects several thousand dollars a month in subscription revenue, since this kind of community may have only a few hundred paying people.
How to do it: pick one community, first get its single most-used official sheet exactly right, then bring users in with a free personal tasting log. Pro costs $5–10/month or $30–60/year, charging for official forms, group calibration and export. For multi-person sessions, the host pays and guests join free.
How to get users: first find that community's associations, training courses and competitions, and try to get listed in their recommended tools or course materials. Offer free Pro in exchange for instructors using it in class; one class is a table of new users. Target store keywords with the sheet's official name.
When this window closes: there is no hard deadline. Watch which communities are changing their sheets. In the year or two of a change, paper and Excel both work badly, and a new tool is most readily adopted.
Signs you're reading this wrong: ① Cupping got rated or recommended by SCA in 2027 before March 50, which means the "all five sheets" route actually works in coffee, so you should bump the grade up; ② The community you picked already has an association's official app giving away the same sheets for free, so don't build it; ③ Three months after launch, paid users from classes and association channels are still under 20, which means the paying crowd in this circle is even smaller than you thought.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one Catador Cupping / Catador CVA iOS 2012 / 2023-06 Old version $14.99, US store 6 ratings; CVA version Play 1K+; 2024-05 officially recommended by the SCA Has SCA backing and many Latin American users, but only does the old SCA forms or CVA, with no consumer logging; Cupping covers all five forms plus a free log Quantify CVA iOS 2025-06 Named an SCA recommendation 2026-07; during beta 18,000 evaluations and 1,100 evaluators; 8 languages; Play 1K+ Only CVA, but with official PDF forms and SCA backing, about an order of magnitude bigger; Cupping wins on the number of protocols and its consumer side Tastify Web About 2013 SCA 2024 official partner, aimed at roasters and green bean sellers B2B sample library plus flavor wheel reports; Cupping is phone-first, personal plus group, and cheap TheBeanGeek Web 2026 Named an SCA recommendation 2026-07, completely free, with a TikTok account Free, CVA only, with a community; Cupping charges a subscription and covers all protocols Cuppy iOS 2025–2026(Beta) Unknown Most similar feature set (SCA forms, blind tasting, QR, PDF, offline, AI summary, in French, English and Spanish); Cupping adds CoE / Q forms and a free log Cuptrace Android 2026-09 beta In internal testing Also a solo, offline-first project with CVA, SCA 2004, green bean grading and team mode, all free, Android only Cropster (Cup module) Web Early on Industry-standard roasting software (scale unverified) Enterprise roasting plus traceability suite at a high price; Cupping is a lightweight personal or group tool Beanconqueror / iBrewCoffee / Filtru and other coffee journals iOS From ¥2018 US store ratings: Beanconqueror 139, iBrewCoffee 48 Logs brew parameters and taste notes, no formal cupping protocol SensoCup CVA / Cupscore / SCA official website calculators Web 2025–2026 Free utilities Scoring only, or CVA only, with no logging, collaboration, or subscription - Where users come from
- Verified Public indie dev posts on Reddit (r/buildinpublic, r/iosdev): "Building Cupping in public: I made a demo video…" (search snippet shows 1 upvotes), "I replaced my coffee tasting spreadsheets with an iOS app"
- Verified LinkedIn company page updates: a post for each release, 6 followers, 1–5 likes; one post claims 1.6.0 100+ users
- Verified Website SEO: coffeecupping.app is bilingual English/Spanish, targets SCA scoring keywords in titles, and App Store links carry ct=web attribution
- Verified In-app invites (link / QR; host pays, guests free): 1.2.1 release notes: invite links take people who don't have the app to the App Store; free accounts can join Pro cuppings
- Verified Store cross-recommendations: appeared in the "You Might Also Like" section of Grind Size Coffee in the Costa Rica store
- Inferred Paid ads / TikTok / X / media: nothing found on TikHub, x-radar, or search engines
Cupping: Coffee Rating Journal (ios_6798304368) research report
Research date 2026-11-06. Sources: our appstore database (chart_rank / app_day / app_profile, from 2026-10-28), iTunes lookup, the official site, the App Store page, LinkedIn, the SCA website, Exa / Jina / Brave search, TikHub. Reddit post bodies were blocked; we only got search snippets.
Bottom line
It hasn't broken out yet. A coffee cupping app built as a side project by a full-time engineer in Madrid, Spain (Alejandro Bailo, Senior Product Engineer at Prowler), launched 2026-09-09. By Oct 21 it claimed "over 100 users", with only 1 ratings worldwide. The "#21 in Latvia Food & Drink Top Grossing" seen during recall says little about revenue: that chart is thin enough that an app with 0 ratings can get in. It 11-01 jumped to #2, then fell every day (3 → 11 → 16 → 18 → 21), which most likely means one or two Latvian users paid. What's worth noting is the category's timing and approach: SCA replaced its old 100-point table with the new CVA, which spawned a wave of digital cupping tools. Its angle is offering all five formal protocols in one app, plus a free personal tasting journal. So far that angle hasn't translated into growth.
1. What the product is
- A coffee tasting / cupping record app, iPhone and iPad only (plus visionOS), in English and Spanish. The website says Android is in development. Sources: website, App Store
- Free Cupping, free forever: unlimited sessions, up to 50 samples per session; five-star overall score plus aroma / acidity / body intensity 1–10, flavor descriptors, full history, shareable cards; invite friends into a live cupping session via link or QR code.
- Cupping Pro: $5.99/month (7-day trial), or $29.99/year (14-day trial). Includes five formal scoring sheets: SCA Traditional, CVA 2024, Cup of Excellence, Q Arabica, Q Robusta, plus calibration, analytics, and PDF / CSV export and printing. Pro hosts can invite free accounts into professional cuppings.
- Photograph the coffee bag label to fill in origin / variety / roast info, processed on-device with Apple Intelligence, no scan fee; works offline and syncs once you're back online.
- Website pitch: "every protocol follows the real scoring rules (no generic sliders relabelled as professional protocols)". For example, CVA is 1–9 points, 0.5 per tier; SCA is 6–10 points, 0.25 per tier; CoE marks the 86-point line; Q Robusta has its dedicated ratio items.
- Shipping fast: 9-09 released 1.0,10-28 with 1.7.1,7 versions in 14 weeks (App Store version history).
2. Data: how big it is now
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Rating | 1 worldwide (Colombia, appeared 11-05, 5 stars) | appstore database app_day; iTunes lookup (us) shows 1 5.0 |
| users | "we are already more than 100 users" (1.6.0 launch post, around 10-21) | LinkedIn company page |
| LinkedIn follows | 6 followers, 1 employees, headquartered in Madrid | Same as above |
| Latvia Food & Drink Top Grossing | 11-01 #2 → 11-02 #3 → 11-03 #11 → 11-04 #16 → 11-05 #18 → 11-06 #21 | appstore library, chart_rank |
| Top Free (Food & Drink) | lv 124(10-30), 193(10-31), 111(11-04), 187(11-05); bh 174(10-31); ec 158, gt 94(11-04); co 208, gt 148(11-05); gt 183(11-06) | appstore library, chart_rank |
How to read the Latvia Top Grossing chart: on 11-04, among the 200 slots on Latvia's Food & Drink Top Grossing chart, the apps ranked around it were mostly ones with 0 ratings (e.g. #2 Tea Master, #4 Robert Parker, #13 GuildSomm), plus a bunch of older paid apps (Jason Vale juice series, etc.). A single or two transactions can push an app into the top few spots on this chart. Its sudden jump to #2 followed by daily declines matches "a Latvian user downloaded it around 10-30 (it hit #124 on Top Free that day) and paid around 11-01". Which tier they paid for (monthly or annual) can't be confirmed. This can't be taken as evidence of meaningful subscription revenue; at most it shows someone was willing to pay.
Guatemala, Ecuador, and Colombia, Spanish-speaking coffee-producing countries, occasionally show it on Top Free, which fits its Spanish localization and its Spanish developer. Top Free in Food & Drink in these countries has a low bar too: a few downloads a day can get you on.
3. Competitors
Many products offer digital cupping sheets, and most have appeared in the past two years:
| Product | Platform | Launched | Scale | How it differs from Cupping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Catador Cupping / Catador CVA (Softlogic, Guatemala) | iOS / Android | 2012 / 2023-06 | Old iOS version was a $14.99 one-time purchase, 6 ratings in the US store; CVA version is free, 1K+ Play downloads; 2024-05 is one of the two digital CVA platforms SCA officially named | Established, backed by SCA, strong Latin American user base; only covers SCA's old sheets or CVA, with no CoE / Q sheets and no personal tasting journal for everyday people |
| Tastify | Web (also has an app) | About 2013 | SCA's official partner for 2024 years; web version handles sample library management, remote live cupping, flavor wheel reports | A B2B workspace for roasters and green coffee traders, focused on sample databases and flavor wheel reports for clients; Cupping is phone-first, for individuals and small groups |
| Quantify CVA (BP&Solution, South Korea) | iOS / Android | 2025-06 | SCA 2026-07 press release names it as a recommendation; beta ran 18,000 ratings, 1,100 active evaluators; 8 languages; Play 1K+; iOS US store 1 ratings | Covers CVA only, but has SCA backing, can export official PDF sheets, and syncs multiple users live; roughly an order of magnitude larger than Cupping |
| TheBeanGeek | Web | 2026 | SCA 2026-07 picks; free, no sign-up needed for the CVA three tables; TikTok account | Completely free, with a community and roaster reviews; no SCA classic sheets, CoE, or Q sheets |
| Cropster (Cup module) | Web / iOS | Early on | Industry-standard software for roasters and origins (scale not verified) | Enterprise-grade full roasting and traceability suite; cupping is just one module, priced much higher |
| Cuppy | iOS / Android(Beta) | 2025–2026 | Beta, scale unknown | French / English / Spanish, with SCA sheets, blind tests, QR sharing, PDF, offline mode, and AI summaries; features closest to Cupping's |
| Your CVA Flavor (South Korean indie developer) | iOS | 2024-10 | 0 rating | CVA only |
| Cuptrace | Android | 2026-09 beta | In internal testing | Also a solo-developer, offline-first app: CVA, SCA 2004, green coffee grading, team QR, PDFs for farmers, all free |
| SensoCup CVA(Garage Coffee Bros.) | Web PWA | 2026-06 | Unknown | Free, covers CVA's three sheets |
| Cupscore (La Familia), the SCA website's CVA calculator, Coffearium calculator | Web | 2025–2026 | Free utilities | Scoring only; no logging or collaboration |
| Roastr, Prism Coffee Lab, GiesenCloud | Web SaaS | 2025–2026 | Unknown | Cupping modules bundled into roastery QA / green coffee lab software |
| Personal coffee journals: Beanconqueror (139 US-store ratings, open source), iBrewCoffee (48 US-store ratings), Filtru, and assorted Coffee Journal apps | iOS / Android | From ¥2018 | US-store ratings for these range from a few dozen to a hundred or two | Logs brew parameters and taste notes; no formal protocols |
Bottom line: the recall rationale's claim that "the only protocol in the niche is single-protocol CVA" is inaccurate. Cuppy and Cuptrace also offer multiple protocols plus collaboration, and Tastify and Catador have official SCA backing. What Cupping really lacks is the combination of three things: all five protocols (especially CoE and Q Robusta) + a free personal tasting journal + offline multi-user sync. The whole category is small: Catador, the longest-running, has only single-digit US-store ratings, and Quantify's 1,100 evaluators already count as a big player.
4. Growth tactics (evidence found)
| Channel | Evidence | Confirmed? |
|---|---|---|
| Public indie dev post on Reddit | r/buildinpublic "Building Cupping in public: I made a demo video for my coffee tasting app. Does it work?" (search snippet shows 1 upvotes); r/iosdev "I replaced my coffee tasting spreadsheets with an iOS app". Post bodies were blocked; only search snippets were visible. | Yes (post confirmed it; the effect was small) |
| LinkedIn company page | One update post per version, 6 followers, post 1–5 likes | Yes |
| Website / SEO | coffeecupping.app has English and Spanish pages, with the "SCA scoring" keyword in the title; App Store links carry the ct=web attribution parameter | Yes (effect unknown) |
| Store search / related recommendations | It showed up in the Costa Rica store's "You Might Also Like" for "Grind Size Coffee" | Partial |
| In-product viral spread | Link / QR invites; if someone without the app taps an invite, they're sent to the App Store. Pro hosts can pull free users into a professional cupping, and one session can bring in several new installs. | Yes (mechanism exists, scale unknown) |
| Paid ads, TikTok, X, press | TikHub search for "coffee cupping app" and x-radar search for "coffeecupping" and "cupping app" returned nothing; no press coverage found | None found |
5. Why it's taking off (even if still small)
- Timing: the SCA scoring-sheet switch. CVA launched in April 2023, and Q Grader is moving to a "CVA for Cuppers" course for certification (Reddit r/Coffee, 2025-06 thread). In 2024-05 and 2026-07, the SCA issued two press releases recommending digital CVA platforms. Paper sheets and Excel, with old and new forms running side by side, left a real gap for "one app that covers all the forms."
- Real care for professionals in the product. Each sheet is built to the true scale and increments, with a timer during cupping, lock-screen timing, offline sync, and fast iteration (7 versions in 14 weeks). These are the details frontline cuppers care about, and they help word of mouth in a small circle.
- Generous free tier: From 1.2.0, free blind tests go from 5 samples to 50, with full history free. Free users can also be pulled into Pro-hosted pro tests. So one person at the table pays, and everyone else gets to use it.
- Spanish and Spanish-speaking authors. That gives it a natural way into Latin American origins (Guatemala, Colombia, and Ecuador have all charted on the free side).
But none of this has turned into visible growth yet: 100+ users, 1 ratings, and roughly one paid subscription from Latvia.
6. Differentiation, and whether that's why it took off
- Differentiation: ① all five protocols (SCA legacy sheet, CVA, CoE, Q Arabica, Q Robusta), implemented strictly to the rules; ② consumer tasting journal and professional cupping in one app, with a free tier for casual coffee fans and Pro for Q Graders and roasters; ③ offline-first, real-time multi-user cupping with "host pays, guests free"; ④ label photo recognition that runs on-device at zero cost.
- Is any of it actually the cause? It hasn't yet proven it has broken out, so the differentiation isn't validated either. As a category, the professional cupping audience is globally in the tens of thousands (Q Grader plus roasting QA, unverified), and Catador, Quantify, and Tastify, which carry SCA endorsement, already hold the channels. "Multi-protocol" has limited pull for the new generation of cuppers who only use CVA, and the consumer side is crowded with journaling apps like Beanconqueror and Filtru. Its biggest advantage right now is iteration speed and detail, not positioning.
7. Visibility and copycats
- Visibility: few people know about it yet. No press, no X discussion, no TikTok, and revenue isn't public. LinkedIn has 6 followers, and Reddit posts have barely any engagement.
- Copycats: nobody has directly copied it. But a cluster of similar products appeared in the same window: Cuptrace (Android, 2026-09 beta, solo, free), SensoCup CVA (2026-06), TheBeanGeek (2026-07 SCA recommendation), BeanGeek iOS (2026-07), Cuppy (beta), and the cupping modules in Roastr and Prism. Everyone can see the switch window, and this space will get crowded fast.
8. What others can learn
- Template: digitizing industry-standard scoring sheets. Find a small circle with an official standard scoring sheet that's being replaced (wine WSET/CMS tasting sheets, BJCP beer judging, whisky, tea evaluation, olive oil, chocolate), implement the rules accurately, and add offline use, multi-user sync, and PDF export.
- "Host pays, guests free" collaborative pricing. One person pays and the whole table can use it, and the invite link leads straight to the App Store. That's rare built-in viral distribution for a niche professional tool.
- A consumer free tier to feed Pro. The free journal attracts casual fans, and professional features are sold as a subscription.
- Cautionary lesson: this circle's channels are gatekept by associations (the SCA press releases). Without pursuing distribution through the association, training providers (SCA campus, Q course instructors), and trade shows (World of Coffee), building in public on Reddit alone barely brings users. Quantify reached 1,100 evaluators because of SCA endorsement and large-scale testing.
9. Uncertain
- How much subscription revenue there is, which tier the Latvian purchase was, and whether it was bought by the author's acquaintances: none of this can be verified.
- How many of the 100+ users are professional cuppers versus casual fans, and what retention looks like.
- The Reddit post dates and engagement counts (the body was blocked).
- When the Android version ships, and whether the author will apply for an SCA recommendation.
- The actual user scale of Cropster and Tastify.
Sources
- Website: www.coffeecupping.app/; terms (the author is an individual in Spain): www.coffeecupping.app/terms
- App Store:apps.apple.com/us/app/cupping-coffee-rating-journal/id679830… ;iTunes lookup(2026-11-06)
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/cupping-coffee-evaluation; author: es.linkedin.com/in/alejandro-bailo
- Reddit (search snippets): www.reddit.com/r/buildinpublic/comments/1xhpjox/, www.reddit.com/r/iosdev/comments/1wh3sdi/, www.reddit.com/r/iosdev/comments/1xi2amp/
- SCA 2024-05 press release (Tastify, CatadorCVA): sca.coffee/sca-news/the-coffee-value-assessment-and-tools-ex…
- SCA 2026-07-13 press release (TheBeanGeek, Quantify CVA): sca.coffee/sca-news/the-coffee-value-assessment-and-tools-ne…
- Cuppy:cuppy.coffee/ ;Cuptrace:www.linkedin.com/posts/volod%C5%B7myrkubiria_cuptrace-tester… ;SensoCup:garagecoffeebros.com/en/blogs/notizie/sensocup-cva-the-free-… ;Roastr:roastr.tech/cupping ;Prism:prismcoffeelab.app/prism/ ;Tastify:www.tastify.com/
- Play downloads (read via Jina, 2026-11-06): gt.com.softlogic.catadorcva 1K+, gt.com.cs.catador 1K+, com.bpns.cva 1K+
- Q Grader to CVA: www.reddit.com/r/Coffee/comments/1l4wuj9/
- appstore library: chart_rank (lv / gt / ec / co / bh, 10-30 to 11-06), app_day, app_profile (2026-11-06)