The best Roast alternative for better coffee.
Roast is a catalog for browsing coffees. Filtru is for brewing them: guided timers, fourteen scale brands, live graphs, espresso tools, and an on-device bag scanner.
Available for iPhone and iPad. Free to download.
Roast - Specialty Coffee, on the App Store
First, some honesty.
Roast gives you a free, tiny catalog of offerings from well-known roasters, and you can save and rate what you find.
That's the entire app. No timers, no recipes, no journal beyond ratings, no scales, no scanning, iPhone-only on iOS 18.6, brand new, unrated. Filtru is where the coffee you found actually gets brewed.
Filtru vs Roast,
feature by feature.
Based on each app’s public App Store listing and documentation, as of July 2026.
| Feature | Roast |
 Filtru
★ Recommended
|
|---|---|---|
| Guided step-by-step brew timers | No. No brewing features | Yes. Guided timers for 15 methods |
| Brew recipes | No. Not offered | Yes. Baseline + community recipes, 15 methods |
| Coffee discovery | Yes. Catalog of named roasters | Partial. Roaster pages + bag scanning |
| Bluetooth scale support | No. Not advertised | Yes. 14 brands with live weight + flow rate |
| Espresso tools | No. Not advertised | Yes. Dial-in, shot recording, TDS + extraction |
| Coffee journal | Partial. Save + rate coffees | Yes. Full journal with brew history |
| AI bag scanning | No. Not advertised | Yes. AbolBuna, on-device, 50,000+ bags |
| iPad support | No. iPhone only | Yes. iPhone & iPad |
| Languages | Partial. English only | Yes. 14 languages |
| Price | Yes. Free | Yes. Free · optional PRO from $3.49/mo |
| Track record | Partial. Launched 2026 · no rating yet | Yes. 4.8★ from 11,914 ratings · est. 2016 |
“This has become an essential companion for my daily routine as I prefer to brew coffee with a pour over method.”— App Store review of Filtru
Why people switch from Roast to Filtru.
Browsing isn't brewing.
Roast helps you window-shop coffee. Filtru helps you make it: fifteen guided methods, live scale data, and a journal that remembers how each bag actually tasted.
The bag becomes a brew in seconds.
Scan any bag with AbolBuna and Filtru fills in roaster, origin, variety, process, and tasting notes, then hands you a recipe for it.
Ten years versus two sentences.
Roast's listing is two sentences long and the app is months old. Filtru has been refined since 2016 and holds 4.8 stars from 11,914 ratings.
What you get when you switch.
Guided brewing for fifteen methods
AeroPress, V60, Chemex, French press, espresso, siphon, and more. Each has a baseline recipe and a guided timer that keeps pace with you. See every brew method →
AbolBuna, the on-device bag scanner
Point your camera at any coffee bag and the label becomes a journal entry. No server, no cloud AI, no typing. See the scanner →
Accessibility is a feature, not a checkbox
Filtru works properly with VoiceOver, including live spoken readouts of your scale's measurements while you brew, as often or as rarely as you like. And you can switch the whole app to fonts like OpenDyslexic, Lexend, or Atkinson Hyperlegible.
The answer is YES
Switching from Roast? These all have the same answer:
- Can I discover new coffees with Filtru? Yes
- Can I brew coffee with Filtru? Yes
- Can I use Filtru on iPad? Yes
- Does Filtru work with VoiceOver? Yes
- Is Filtru free to try? Yes
Filtru is free to download and works with the gear you already own. No subscription needed to start brewing.
Compare Filtru with more coffee apps.
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Roast is a trademark of its respective owner; Filtru isn’t affiliated with or endorsed by it. Feature and pricing information comes from public listings and documentation as of July 2026. Spotted something out of date? Tell me and I’ll fix it.