Drinqly vs Vivino: Which Drink App Fits You?
One is the best wine app in the world. The other is built for everything in the glass, wine included.
Vivino is the go-to app for wine: scan a label, see ratings, even buy the bottle. Drinqly is a check-in journal for every drink, wine, cocktails, beer, spirits, coffee, and mocktails, in one place, with a friends feed and a sober mode. Drink mostly wine and want to scan and buy? Vivino. Drink wine plus everything else and want to remember it all? Drinqly.
Drinqly is a free download for iPhone.
Get Drinqly on the App StoreVivino is really good at one thing: standing in a wine aisle, bottle in hand, trying to decide if it's worth buying. Point the camera at the label, get a score from a few million other people, and you've got your answer in about ten seconds. That's genuinely useful, and I'm not going to pretend it isn't. But that's not most of my drinking. Most of my drinking happens at a restaurant table or a friend's kitchen counter, holding a glass a server picked off a list I'll never see again. There's no label to scan. There's nothing to buy. I just want to remember I had it, and Vivino kind of goes quiet the second there's nothing for sale.
What each app is really for
Vivino went deep on one category and built the best wine database and buying experience anywhere. Its label coverage is real, its community scores are enormous, and if the thing in front of you is a bottle you might purchase, nothing touches it. Drinqly went wide instead. It treats a Barolo, a Negroni, a mezcal, and a Saturday matcha as equally worth logging, and it saves the place you had each one. Two habits. Two tools.
| Vivino | Drinqly | |
|---|---|---|
| Built around | Wine | Every drink, equally |
| Wine database & ratings | Best in class | Solid, general-purpose |
| Scan a wine label | Yes | No label scanner |
| Buy the bottle in-app | Marketplace | No marketplace |
| Cocktails, beer, spirits | No | First-class, rich details |
| Coffee, tea, mocktails (sober) | No | Full sober mode |
| Memory photo pairing | — | Drink photo + a separate memory photo |
| Social feed | Wine community | Friends + worldwide feed |
| Your personal journal | A wine log | Every glass you pour |
Notice the rows we handed Vivino. Wine depth, label scanning, and buying bottles are genuinely theirs, and no honest comparison pretends otherwise. One row above isn't a fight so much as a different idea: Drinqly pairs a drink photo with a separate memory photo, the friend, the table, whatever made the glass worth logging, kept alongside the same check-in but never shown to anyone you haven't connected with.
Where each one wins
Vivino wins if…
- Wine is your main thing
- You want to scan labels
- You want to buy bottles in-app
- You want the biggest wine database
Drinqly wins if…
- You drink across categories
- You want cocktails & spirits logged too
- You also drink non-alcoholic
- You want one journal for all of it
A quick gut check: picture your last ten drinks. If nine were wine and you like buying bottles from your phone, Vivino is your app. If it was a couple of wines, a cocktail, a whiskey, and a few coffees, that spread is the case Drinqly was built to hold.
The thing a wine app can't do
Most of us drink across a whole week. You might learn a grape on Sunday, build a cocktail on Friday, and pull a single-origin pour-over every morning, and a wine-only app can only ever hold a slice of that. The non-alcoholic side has it worse. The matcha, the zero-proof spritz, the afternoon tea have nowhere to land in Vivino at all. Drinqly keeps every one of them on the same timeline, with a full sober mode, so the wine you loved sits a scroll away from the espresso you rated four stars this morning.
Can you use both?
Sure, and some wine lovers do, keeping Vivino for scanning and buying bottles and a Drinqly journal for everything else they drink. There's no rule. But if you're tired of your drinking life being split across a wine app, a cocktail app, and a notes file, the point of Drinqly is that it's one place for all of it.
Common questions
What is the difference between Drinqly and Vivino?
Is Drinqly a good Vivino alternative?
Is there an app like Vivino for cocktails and other drinks?
Does Drinqly scan wine labels or sell wine?
Can I log more than wine in Drinqly?
