A personal wine memory app
Comparison
A Vivino alternative for a private wine journal in your browser
Vivino is a very good answer to “is this bottle any good?” It is a large community, a scanner, and a wine shop that also keeps personal wine history. If your priority is “what was that wine I loved, what did I pay, and where did I have it?”, iLovedThatWine offers a browser journal built around those details. Here is how to choose between them, including when keeping both makes sense.
The short answer
Keep Vivino if the value you get is other people’s opinions: you are standing in front of an unfamiliar bottle and you want to know whether it is worth buying, or you like buying wine inside the app.
Consider iLovedThatWine if you want your own restaurant notes, price paid, and buy-again decisions together in a browser. A useful entry might say “Malbec at our anniversary dinner, $58 for the bottle, would order again.” The value is in the details you save, whichever tool you choose.
Vivino vs iLovedThatWine, side by side
Checked September 22, 2026 against Vivino’s official app page. Features can change. A detail missing from that page is not proof that the app lacks it.
| Vivino | iLovedThatWine | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is built around | A shared database of ratings and reviews from a very large community, plus an in-app wine shop. | A private record of the bottles you personally liked. No feed, no shared reviews. |
| How you get to it | Mobile app; also has a website. This comparison covers the advertised app workflow. | A modern browser and an account. No app installation required. |
| Scanning the label | Bottle, shelf, and wine-list scanning. | Label photos can supply bottle details for you to review. No wine-list recommendations. |
| Price you paid | Merchant shopping is advertised; the cited page does not establish personal price-entry support. | Price and currency fields alongside your notes. Record glass or bottle context in the notes. |
| Where you had it | Supports restaurant wine-list scanning; the cited page does not establish venue-entry support. | Save a venue or purchase location and search for it later. |
| Whose opinion you see | Millions of other drinkers, which is genuinely useful for a bottle you have never tried. | Only yours. Useful for the bottle you already know you liked and cannot name. |
| Buying wine | Yes — shop directly in the app from its merchant network. | No. It tells you what to look for; you buy it wherever you like. |
| Wine history | Saves scans, ratings, reviews, and orders to your profile. | Keeps your entries private to your account, with favorites and a would-buy-again flag. |
| Cost | Free core features; optional Premium features. | Free for up to 25 wines, including label scanning (daily scan limits apply) and JSON export. Pro is $5 USD/month for unlimited entries. Compare Free and Pro plans. |
At a restaurant: choosing the wine and remembering it
Before ordering, Vivino can help with wine-list scanning. After tasting, iLovedThatWine gives you a place to save your own reaction, price, and venue. These are different emphases, not exclusive capabilities.
Start your restaurant entry with a clear bottle photo and the exact producer, cuvée, and vintage. Add the restaurant and whether the price was for a glass or bottle. For the checklist, including what to do when the bottle is already gone, read how to remember a wine from a restaurant.
The two fields that decide whether you can buy the wine again
Alongside the bottle name and your rating, save what you paid and where you had it. Those details give you a budget reference and a place to ask when you want the wine again.
A rating tells you the wine was good. The price tells you whether it is the $16 Tuesday bottle or the $70 anniversary one — a distinction that matters enormously when you are choosing something for Friday. The venue tells you where to actually go get it, which is the difference between a wine you loved and a wine you can drink again.
Those two fields are why the buy-again wines list works at all, and why favorite wines keep your personal shortlist close at hand. Check the saved prices when choosing for a budget.
No download, which matters more than it sounds
iLovedThatWine opens in a browser tab. There is no App Store step between deciding to keep a wine journal and keeping one. You need an account and a compatible browser; opening the site does not require a mobile app installation.
You can open your account from a phone or laptop and send a friend the site link at dinner so they can start their own journal. Browser and camera support can vary by device.
When Vivino is the better fit
Vivino reports 70 million+ users, 353 million+ ratings, 118 million+ reviews, 20 million+ searchable wines, and 3.5 billion+ scanned labels on its official app page (checked September 22, 2026). Those are company-reported totals, not an independent audit or app-store rating counts.
iLovedThatWine has no comparable community database. If outside opinions drive your choice, keep access to that resource. If your existing wine history already answers your questions, there is no need to move it just to start another journal.
What switching actually involves
Nothing dramatic. Open the site, create an account, and photograph the label of the next bottle you like. Request a label scan or type the details yourself, check them against the bottle, and add your rating, a line of notes, the price, and the place. There is no automatic Vivino import here; start with your next bottle or manually copy selected favorites you want to keep handy.
If you want the fuller picture of that workflow first, the wine journal app page covers the personal record, the wine tracker app page covers finding bottles later, and how to remember a wine from a restaurant covers the hardest version of the problem. If your comparison is with your phone’s notes app rather than with Vivino, wine tracker vs notes app is the closer read.
Vivino alternative FAQs
What is the best Vivino alternative?
Choose by the job you need done. Vivino offers community ratings and shopping as well as personal wine history. iLovedThatWine suits someone who wants an account-based journal in a browser, with their own notes, price paid, and restaurant attached to each bottle. You can use both.
Is there a wine app that does not require a download?
Yes. iLovedThatWine runs in a modern browser on a phone, tablet, or laptop. Create an account to save your journal; there is no App Store or Play Store installation step.
Can Vivino scan a restaurant wine list?
Yes. Vivino advertises wine-list scanning to help you choose before ordering. iLovedThatWine focuses on your record after tasting: the bottle, your reaction, what you paid, and where you drank it. Its label scanner is not a wine-list recommendation tool.
Can I keep my wine notes private instead of posting reviews?
Yes. iLovedThatWine has no public feed or shared reviews. Your journal entries are private to your account. That describes who can see your notes, not an absence of data processing: the service stores your entries and uses service providers to operate the app.
Does a Vivino alternative still scan labels?
iLovedThatWine includes label scanning on the free plan. Upload a clear label photo to request wine details, review the result, and correct anything missing or misread before saving. You can also enter the bottle details manually.
Takeaway
Pick the tool that matches the question you keep asking
Choose the workflow you will actually keep using. For a personal browser journal, save your own notes with the price and place attached. Read our privacy policy for how account data, analytics, and service providers are handled.