Horse management software is priced in four main ways: per horse, per user, in size-based tiers, or as one flat fee. Your real cost depends on which model you meet and how many horses and staff your yard has. Our own plan, EquiBETS Complete, is AU$9.99 per month with every feature included, and that covers unlimited horses and team members. Below we explain how the models work, what extra charges to look for, and how to judge whether a subscription earns its keep.
TL;DR
- Expect one of four pricing models: per horse, per user, tiered by yard size, or a single flat plan. The same yard can pay very different amounts depending on the model.
- Per-horse and per-user pricing grows as your yard grows. A flat plan stays the same when you add horses, staff or owners.
- Look beyond the headline price: add-on modules, extra users, onboarding, data import, support tiers and tax can all lift the total.
- EquiBETS Complete is AU$9.99 per month, with all features, unlimited horses and team members, and a free trial first.
- Judge cost against hours saved, fewer owner phone calls, fewer missed charges and less paper, not against the price alone.
Table of Contents
- The four pricing models you will meet
- What EquiBETS Complete costs
- What features sit in free and paid plans
- Extra costs that raise the total
- How yard size and team shape the price
- Is the cost justified? A simple way to test it
- Our perspective
- Try the full platform before you pay
- Questions to ask any provider before you sign
- FAQ
- Sources
The four pricing models you will meet
Most yard software lands in one of four buckets. Knowing which one you are looking at is half the job, because the sticker price on a pricing page is rarely comparable between them.
| Model | How it charges | Who it tends to suit | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per horse | A set amount for each horse on your books, usually monthly | Very small yards or a single private owner | Cost climbs with every new horse, including short-stay and spelling horses |
| Per user | A set amount for each staff login | Yards with a small, stable team | Casual staff, vets, farriers and owners may each count as a seat |
| Tiered | Bands based on horse numbers or features | Mid-sized yards that sit comfortably inside a band | One extra horse can push you into the next band |
| Flat plan | One price for the whole platform | Professional yards that grow, shrink and rotate staff | Check that every feature really is included |
There is no universally best model. Per-horse pricing feels cheap when you have six horses and expensive when you have sixty. Flat pricing feels like a larger commitment for a tiny yard but removes the arithmetic as you grow.
Per-horse pricing
Per-horse pricing is easy to understand and easy to forecast for a stable yard. The trouble is that yards rarely stay stable. Racing and sales yards turn over horses through the season, breakers and spelling operations take horses in and out, and boarding yards fill and empty. If you pay for each horse, you either pay for empty stalls or spend time archiving and re-adding records to keep the bill down.
Per-user pricing
Per-user pricing looks fair until you count who actually needs access. A professional yard commonly has a yard manager, riders, grooms, a bookkeeper, a farrier, one or more vets and sometimes casual weekend staff. Add owners who want updates and the seat count can double. A seat-based plan can push you to share logins, which undermines the audit trail and the security the software is supposed to give you.
Tiered pricing
Tiers bundle horses, users or modules into bands. They suit a yard that sits in the middle of a band. The risk is at the edges: if you are one horse over a limit, or you need one feature that only the higher tier carries, you pay for the whole next step.
Flat pricing
A single plan with every module included is the simplest to budget. This is the model we chose for EquiBETS: one monthly plan, all features, and no counting of horses or people. It matches how professional yards actually work, where headcount and horse numbers move around all year.
What EquiBETS Complete costs
EquiBETS Complete is AU$9.99 per month. It is the only plan, so there is no feature ladder to climb. It includes horse records, owner portals, team coordination, finance tracking, syndicate management, GPS ride tracking, nutrition analysis, feed planning, emergency plans, farm mapping, stable chat, the offline mobile app and AI-powered movement analysis. There is a free trial before you pay, and the plan covers unlimited horses and team members. You can see the current plan details on the EquiBETS pricing page.
To put that in a yard's terms, AU$9.99 a month is AU$119.88 over twelve months. Whatever the size of your yard, that figure stays the same.
What features sit in free and paid plans
When you compare plans, compare what you can actually do on each, not the plan names. In broad terms, software for horse businesses splits like this.
Free or entry-level plans usually cover the basics: a horse list, simple notes, a calendar and some reminders. They are a reasonable way to see whether digital records suit your yard. They commonly cap horses, users or storage, and the advanced modules sit behind a paid plan.
Mid-range plans tend to add the operational layer: task lists, feed charts, owner updates, document storage and simple invoicing.
Full plans bring in the heavier modules: finance tracking by horse, syndicate reporting, emergency information for vets and responders, performance analytics, and offline access for paddocks and trails where signal drops out.
When a feature matters to your daily work, test it in the trial. Offline access is a good example. A yard with a back paddock, a gallop track or a trail loop with no reception needs the app to work without signal and sync later. A cloud-only tool that looks fine in the office can fail you at the track.
Extra costs that raise the total
The monthly price is the visible part. Before you commit, ask about each of the following.
- Add-on modules. Finance, syndicate management or movement analysis may be priced separately. Add them up to get the real monthly figure.
- Extra users. Check whether vets, farriers, casual staff and owners count as paid seats.
- Horse caps. A cap is a price rise waiting to happen. Ask what happens when you go over.
- Setup and onboarding fees. Some providers charge to set up your account or train your team.
- Data import. If you have years of records in spreadsheets or paper, ask whether import is included or charged by the hour.
- Support tiers. Email-only support on the base plan and phone support at a higher price is a common split.
- Payment fees. If the software collects owner payments, the card processor will take its own percentage on top of the subscription.
- Contract length. Annual lock-ins can look cheaper per month but cost you if the software does not fit.
- Tax. If your business is registered for GST, you can generally claim credits on business purchases, so the net cost may differ from the sticker. The ATO explains the registration rules, and your accountant can tell you how it applies to your yard.
A quick test: write the question "What will I pay in month twelve, with my full team and every horse on my books?" and ask each provider to answer it in writing.
How yard size and team shape the price
Size changes the maths more than anything else. Here is how it plays out for three typical operations. The figures below are illustrative arithmetic using a made-up per-unit rate, not any provider's real price, so you can see how the models diverge.
| Yard | Per-horse model at AU$5 per horse | Per-user model at AU$12 per seat | Flat plan at AU$9.99 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 horses, 2 staff | AU$40 | AU$24 | AU$9.99 |
| 30 horses, 6 staff | AU$150 | AU$72 | AU$9.99 |
| 80 horses, 15 staff plus owners and vets | AU$400 | AU$180 or more | AU$9.99 |
The first two columns use an invented rate purely for comparison. The point is the shape: per-unit models rise with your yard, a flat plan does not.
Other factors move the price too:
- Turnover of horses. High turnover favours flat pricing, because you are never paying to add or remove records.
- Number of owners. If every owner needs a portal login, check how owners are counted. At a syndicate or multi-owner yard, this can be the biggest hidden line.
- Number of locations. A yard with two properties, or a lease facility, may need separate accounts on some systems.
- Type of business. A boarding yard needs billing and owner communication. A training yard needs ride logging and performance data. A breeding operation needs lineage and foaling records. Pick software built for your type, not the cheapest option that can be bent to fit.
- Connectivity. Remote properties benefit from an offline-first app. If you need to buy a separate tool to work around poor signal, add it to the cost.
Is the cost justified? A simple way to test it
The subscription is small next to the things it touches. A yard's real costs are feed, labour, farrier, vet and agistment. Software is worth the money if it trims waste in any of those or gives time back to people you already pay.
Try this four-step check in your trial.
- Count the hours. For two weeks, note how long you and your team spend on rosters, feed changes, handover notes, owner updates and invoices. Then run the same tasks in the software. Our own write-up on stable task management looks at where those minutes go.
- Count the calls. Log how many owner calls and messages you take in a week. Owner portals are designed to answer "how is my horse?" without a phone call. Our guide to owner communication for horses sets out a system for this.
- Check for missed charges. Compare what you billed against what you did: extra feed, treatments, farrier visits, transport. A tool that ties costs to each horse shows what is slipping through. See our posts on per-horse cost tracking and per-horse profit and loss.
- Test the emergency scenario. Ask yourself whether a vet or responder could find a horse's medical details, owner contacts and your yard map in two minutes at 2 am. If the answer is no today, that is value the software can add that never appears on an invoice.
If the saving from any one of those exceeds the subscription, the software has paid for itself. At AU$9.99 a month, the bar is low. For a deeper look at the broader case, read our piece on offline horse management software for professional yards.
Budget around the software too
Software only helps your cash flow if you know what you are tracking. If your costs are not yet sorted into clear categories, start with the ten expense categories for stables and our cash flow guide for yard owners. Once your numbers are structured, any system becomes more useful.
Our perspective
We built EquiBETS around a simple observation: professional yards do not have a software problem so much as a scattered-tools problem. Rosters live in one app, invoices in a spreadsheet, vet notes in a notebook and owner updates in a group chat. Each of those tools carries its own cost, and none of them talks to the others.
That is why we chose a single monthly plan. When pricing depends on horse counts or seats, a yard is quietly penalised for growing, for hiring a casual rider or for inviting an owner into the loop. We would rather you add the vet, the farrier, the bookkeeper and every owner than ration logins to protect the bill.
We also designed the platform to work offline first, because paddocks, gallops and trails do not wait for a signal. Our AI movement and nutrition analysis is designed to be evidence-led, so it supports your judgement rather than replacing it. Data privacy and clear, task-focused design guide what we build.
So when you compare cost, we suggest asking one question first: what does the whole yard pay when everyone is connected? Our answer is AU$9.99 a month.
isaac
Try the full platform before you pay
EquiBETS Complete brings horse records, owner portals, finance tracking, syndicate management, GPS ride tracking, nutrition and feed planning, emergency plans, farm mapping and stable chat into one workspace, at AU$9.99 per month for unlimited horses and team members.
Start with the free trial, load a few horses, invite one staff member and one owner, and run a normal week. You can see the plan on the EquiBETS pricing page or start at equibets.app.
Questions to ask any provider before you sign
Whatever you choose, put these questions in writing and compare the answers side by side:
- What is the total monthly cost for my current horses and staff, and what will it be at double the size?
- Are owners, vets and farriers charged as users?
- Which features are not in the base plan?
- Is there a free trial, and does it include every feature?
- Can I export my data in a usable format if I leave?
- Does the mobile app work offline, and what syncs when I reconnect?
- Is onboarding or data import charged separately?
- What is the notice period for cancelling?
A provider that answers these plainly is usually one that will treat you plainly after you sign.
FAQ
How much does horse management software cost?
Prices run from free entry-level plans to monthly subscriptions charged per horse, per user or by tier. The final figure depends on your yard's size and the modules you need. EquiBETS Complete is a single plan at AU$9.99 per month, with all features and unlimited horses and team members.
Is there free horse management software?
Some providers offer free plans, normally limited in horses, users or features. They suit a small yard testing digital records. Professional yards usually outgrow them once they need owner portals, finance tracking or emergency plans. A free trial of a full plan is a good way to compare properly.
Does the cost go up as my yard grows?
It depends on the pricing model. Per-horse and per-user plans rise with each addition, and tiered plans rise when you cross a band. A flat plan does not change as you add horses, staff or owners, which is how EquiBETS Complete works.
Can I claim the subscription as a business expense?
Software used to run a yard is generally a business cost, and GST-registered businesses can often claim credits on business purchases. The rules depend on your structure and circumstances, so check the ATO's GST guidance and confirm with your accountant.