Is there a free hatch tracker with reminders?

Yes, several. Coop Companion sends free candling and lockdown reminder emails for one active hatch, with no trial and no card. FarmKeep's free Basic plan allows up to three active breeding groups, and its breeding calendar sends lockdown and hatch notifications. Eggspert's free tier covers two active hatches with optional browser notifications. Eggtrackr is a free iPhone download with candling, lockdown and hatch-day reminders, though some advanced features need Premium. Flockstar's hatching reminders are paid only. If you want no app at all, the hatch calculator's .ics download puts the dates in your phone's calendar.

Does a hatch tracker work for quail and ducks?

Most do, but check the schedule it uses. Coturnix quail lock down on day 15 and hatch around day 17–18. Most domestic ducks lock down on day 25 and hatch around day 28, and Muscovies take about 35 days with lockdown on day 31. An app that sends a chicken-style day-18 reminder on a duck hatch is a week early. In Coop Companion, the projected hatch date follows the species you pick, but the reminder days default to 7/14/18, so change them for quail or waterfowl when you set up the hatch.

Are email or push reminders better for hatching?

It depends on how you use your phone. Push and browser notifications are quicker to notice, but only if you allow them, keep the app installed, and the phone isn't on Do Not Disturb. Email reaches any device, survives a phone change and leaves a written record. It's slower if you don't check email daily. If day 18 is the one you can't miss, back up whichever app you use with a calendar event.

What's the cheapest paid hatch tracker?

Of the apps we checked on October 7, 2026, Eggtrackr Premium was the cheapest at $28.49 a year on the App Store. Coop Companion's Breeder plan is $49/yr, FarmKeep Premium $95.99/yr and Flockstar Breeder $79.99/yr. BroodBook is pay-what-you-want. Most hatchers with one incubator don't need a paid tier: the free options above cover one or more active hatches with reminders.

Do I need an app to track a hatch at all?

No. Paper and a calendar work if you're disciplined. Write the set date on the incubator, mark the candling and lockdown days, and set an alarm for lockdown. An app earns its place when you run more than one hatch, stagger batches, or want your fertility and hatch-rate record kept from season to season without retyping it.

The Best Hatch Tracker Apps for 2027

Coop Companion · October 7, 2026

Answer in 30 seconds

If you want reminders that cost nothing and land in your inbox, use Coop Companion's free hatch tracker: one active hatch with candling and lockdown reminder emails, never paywalled. For an iPhone app with in-app reminders and a cheap upgrade, try Eggtrackr, a new app with a $28.49/yr Premium tier. For a whole farm (goats, rabbits and birds), FarmKeep's free Basic plan covers up to three active breeding groups, and its breeding calendar sends lockdown and hatch notifications. Flockstar is a polished breeder app, but hatching and its reminders sit on the $79.99/yr Breeder plan, with no free tier. And if you don't want an account at all, put the hatch calculator's dates into your phone calendar. Whatever you pick, check that the lockdown date matches your species: day 18 for chickens, day 25 for most ducks and turkeys, day 15 for coturnix quail.

Key takeaways

A hatch tracker only does one thing that paper doesn't: it reminds you on candling and lockdown day. Judge each app by whether that reminder actually reaches you, and whether it uses your species' days.
Free options with reminders exist: Coop Companion (email, 1 active hatch), FarmKeep Basic (notifications, 3 active breeding groups), Eggspert (browser notifications, 2 active hatches) and Eggtrackr (free download, Premium for advanced features).
Flockstar has strong hatching features (per-source fertility and hatch rates), but they are on the paid Breeder plan, $9.99/mo or $79.99/yr, after a 1-week trial.
Email reminders work on any phone and keep working if you switch devices. Push and browser notifications are faster to see, but only if you allow them and keep the app installed.
Lockdown day isn't the same for every bird. Running a chicken schedule on a duck or quail hatch is an easy mistake to make, so check the lockdown day before you rely on any reminder.

What a hatch tracker should actually do

Strip out the dashboards and a hatch tracker has three jobs. First, turn a set date into a schedule: candling days, the day to stop turning (lockdown) and the hatch window, using your species' numbers. Second, remind you on those days in a way you'll see. Plenty of people know exactly when lockdown is and still miss it, because day 18 fell on a Tuesday with an early shift and nobody pulled the turner. Third, keep the result: how many you set, how many were fertile at candling, how many hatched. That record is what tells you, three seasons on, which pen or which egg supplier is worth hatching from.

Anything past that (temperature graphs, egg-weight logs, photos, a journal) is nice to have. Those extras are worth paying for once you're running several incubators or hatching to sell. For a family hatching a dozen eggs in April, the schedule and the reminder are the product. So we put those first when we compared the apps.

Disclosure and how we compared

We make Coop Companion, one of the apps on this list. Read our entry with that in mind. We've tried to describe every other product the way it describes itself, and to say where we fall short. We checked every price and free-tier limit on October 7, 2026, against each product's own pricing page or App Store listing, linked in the sources at the bottom. App pricing changes often and App Store prices can vary by country, so confirm before you subscribe. Where a listing didn't say something (for example, whether reminders are push or email), we say it isn't listed rather than guess.

We compared five things: what the free tier really includes, how reminders reach you, which species it handles, whether it records hatch rate, and the paid price. We didn't score them on looks, and we didn't count features you'll never use.

Hatch tracker apps compared

Coop Companion: Free tier: 1 active hatch run, free forever, no card. Reminders: email on the days set for the hatch (default day 7, 14 and 18, editable for other species). Species: chicken, duck, Muscovy, goose, turkey, guinea, coturnix and bobwhite quail, pheasant, peafowl. Hatch-rate stats: set, fertile, lockdown and hatched counts, with % of fertile hatched for each run. Paid: Breeder $6/mo or $49/yr for unlimited hatches and pens. Platform: web, installable on a phone home screen.

Eggtrackr Hatching & Poultry: Free tier: free download; the listing says some advanced features need Premium. Reminders: candling, lockdown and hatch-day reminders in the app (delivery method not specified on the listing). Species: chickens, ducks, quail, geese, turkeys and other poultry. Hatch-rate stats: hatch statistics and results by batch. Paid: Premium $3.49/mo or $28.49/yr (App Store). Platform: iPhone.

Eggspert: Free tier: 2 active hatches, 1 completed hatch kept in history, 1 incubator profile, no card. Reminders: milestone schedule with optional browser notifications. Species: common poultry species via built-in, editable species presets. Hatch-rate stats: hatch-rate results in history; full statistics are Premium. Paid: Premium price not listed on the homepage. Platform: web dashboard, mobile-friendly.

FarmKeep: Free tier: Basic, $0, up to three active breeding groups, unlimited animals. Reminders: the App Store listing describes a breeding calendar with notifications for incubation lockdown and hatch dates; the pricing page limits Basic by number of breeding groups, not by notifications. Species: over 1,200 species and breeds, including custom ones. Hatch-rate stats: not specifically listed. Paid: Premium $9.99/mo or $95.99/yr. Platform: iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android and web.

Flockstar: Free tier: none, 1-week trial. Reminders: candling, lockdown and hatch-day reminders on the Breeder plan, with device notifications. Species: poultry (the listing doesn't itemize species). Hatch-rate stats: per-source fertility and hatch rates. Paid: Breeder $9.99/mo or $79.99/yr (the Keeper plan, $49.99/yr, doesn't include hatching). Platform: iOS, Android and web.

BroodBook: Free tier: pay what you want, with a free trial; no subscription. Reminders: fertility-window and treatment reminders are listed; candling and lockdown reminders aren't. Species: any poultry breed, built with exhibition birds in mind. Hatch-rate stats: not listed. Platform: browser app, and your data stays on your device unless you back it up.

Best for: which one to pick

Best free hatch tracker with reminders that reach any phone: Coop Companion. The reminder is an email, so it works on any phone or computer, it doesn't depend on notification settings, and it's still there if you replace your phone mid-hatch. It's free for one active hatch, permanently, not a trial that runs out on day 12. The honest limits: reminders are email only (no push), and they fire on the days set for that hatch. The default is the chicken schedule, 7, 14 and 18, so for ducks, quail or turkeys you change the reminder days when you set up the hatch. The projected hatch date already follows the species you pick. A second hatch at the same time needs the Breeder plan.

Best iPhone app on a budget: Eggtrackr. Its listing covers natural (broody) and incubator hatches, tracks fertile, doubtful, removed and hatched eggs, and links chicks back to the hatch they came from. At $28.49 a year it's the cheapest subscription here. It's new (one rating when we checked) and iPhone only, so Android households should look elsewhere.

Best for logging conditions on a big screen: Eggspert. If you like recording temperature and humidity readings through a hatch and reviewing them on a desktop, Eggspert is built for that, with saved incubator profiles and species presets. Reminders are browser notifications, so you need to allow them and they're only as reliable as your browser. The free tier keeps only one completed hatch in history, so your record from past seasons needs Premium.

Best if you keep more than birds: FarmKeep. It works out incubation and gestation periods for a long list of species, and its free Basic plan allows three active breeding groups, with the breeding calendar sending lockdown and hatch notifications. It's a general farm-records app rather than a hatching tool, so expect more setup. We compare it with Coop Companion in detail separately.

Best polished paid app for breeders who want it all in one place: Flockstar. If you're already paying for a flock app, Flockstar's Breeder plan is strong on hatching: multi-source hatch runs, incubator presets, and fertility and hatch rates per source, which shows you which pairings are working. Reviewers have praised its support. The catch for a hatch tracker is cost: there's no free tier, and reminders need the $79.99/yr Breeder plan.

Best if you don't want an account or a subscription: BroodBook. It's pay-what-you-want, runs in the browser and keeps your data on your device. It was built for breeders, with parents linked automatically when chicks hatch. Its listing doesn't mention candling or lockdown reminders, so pair it with a calendar entry, and back up your data, because it's stored locally.

The no-app option: a calculator and your phone calendar

You don't need an app to get a reminder. Our hatch date calculator takes your species and set date and lists the candling days, lockdown day and hatch day (or the start of the hatch window for species with a range). Then Add to calendar (.ics) downloads those dates as all-day events you can import into Apple Calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook. There's no account and nothing to subscribe to.

Two things to know. All-day events only alert you if your calendar has an all-day alert turned on, so check that setting or add an alert to the lockdown event yourself. And a calendar doesn't keep your results: when the hatch is done, put your set, fertile and hatched counts into the hatch rate calculator. Once you have more than a couple of hatches, keep them somewhere you can compare them.

Incubation days quick reference

Every app on this list is only as good as the days it's set to. Getting the lockdown day right matters most. These are the figures on our extension-sourced hatching pages, taken from Mississippi State University Extension's species table (and, for quail, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension). Chicken: hatch on day 21, lockdown day 18, candle around day 7–10 and again before lockdown. Domestic duck (Pekin, Rouen, Runner, Khaki Campbell): about 28 days, lockdown day 25. Muscovy duck: about 35 days (35–37), lockdown day 31. That's a week longer than other ducks, so don't put Muscovies on the standard duck schedule. Turkey: 28 days, lockdown day 25. Guinea fowl: most extension guides give 28 days, lockdown day 25. Coturnix quail: 17 days in the MSU table (Texas A&M lists 17–18), lockdown day 15.

For bobwhite quail, pheasant, chukar, geese and peafowl, use the individual species pages. Those birds have wider hatch windows and more variation between breeds and sources, so they deserve more than one line. If you're using Coop Companion for any species other than chickens, change the reminder days to that species' candling and lockdown days when you create the hatch. For a duck, that might be 7, 14 and 25.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free hatch tracker with reminders?: Yes, several. Coop Companion sends free candling and lockdown reminder emails for one active hatch, with no trial and no card. FarmKeep's free Basic plan allows up to three active breeding groups, and its breeding calendar sends lockdown and hatch notifications. Eggspert's free tier covers two active hatches with optional browser notifications. Eggtrackr is a free iPhone download with candling, lockdown and hatch-day reminders, though some advanced features need Premium. Flockstar's hatching reminders are paid only. If you want no app at all, the hatch calculator's .ics download puts the dates in your phone's calendar.
Does a hatch tracker work for quail and ducks?: Most do, but check the schedule it uses. Coturnix quail lock down on day 15 and hatch around day 17–18. Most domestic ducks lock down on day 25 and hatch around day 28, and Muscovies take about 35 days with lockdown on day 31. An app that sends a chicken-style day-18 reminder on a duck hatch is a week early. In Coop Companion, the projected hatch date follows the species you pick, but the reminder days default to 7/14/18, so change them for quail or waterfowl when you set up the hatch.
Are email or push reminders better for hatching?: It depends on how you use your phone. Push and browser notifications are quicker to notice, but only if you allow them, keep the app installed, and the phone isn't on Do Not Disturb. Email reaches any device, survives a phone change and leaves a written record. It's slower if you don't check email daily. If day 18 is the one you can't miss, back up whichever app you use with a calendar event.
What's the cheapest paid hatch tracker?: Of the apps we checked on October 7, 2026, Eggtrackr Premium was the cheapest at $28.49 a year on the App Store. Coop Companion's Breeder plan is $49/yr, FarmKeep Premium $95.99/yr and Flockstar Breeder $79.99/yr. BroodBook is pay-what-you-want. Most hatchers with one incubator don't need a paid tier: the free options above cover one or more active hatches with reminders.
Do I need an app to track a hatch at all?: No. Paper and a calendar work if you're disciplined. Write the set date on the incubator, mark the candling and lockdown days, and set an alarm for lockdown. An app earns its place when you run more than one hatch, stagger batches, or want your fertility and hatch-rate record kept from season to season without retyping it.

Sources

Important incubation factors (incubation period and turning table) — Mississippi State University Extension Service (University extension)
Incubating and Hatching Eggs (Table 1: japanese quail, 17–18 days) — Texas A&M AgriLife Extension (University extension)
Flockstar pricing — Flockstar (Reference)
Flockstar: Poultry Management (App Store listing) — Apple App Store (Marketplace listing)
Eggtrackr Hatching & Poultry (App Store listing) — Apple App Store (Marketplace listing)
Eggspert: Egg Incubation & Hatch Tracking Software — Eggspert (Reference)
FarmKeep pricing — FarmKeep (Reference)
FarmKeep (App Store listing) — Apple App Store (Marketplace listing)
BroodBook — itch.io (Marketplace listing)