Scalemates Alternatives: 5 Stash Apps Tested

Scalemates isn't broken, it's just not a build tracker

Let me get this out of the way. Scalemates is not dying or abandoned. I pulled up their feature request board on September 2, 2026 and found fixes shipped within the last week plus a redesigned project layout that went live August 25. The database holds 650,000 products, 31,000 paints, 29,000 books, and 15,000 tools, it's 100% free with no premium tier, and it claims 90,000+ registered modelers.

Nothing in this hobby comes close. When I'm in a shop trying to remember whether the Tamiya 1/48 Corsair on the shelf is the 1994 tooling or the newer one, Scalemates answers in ten seconds. Keep using it for that. I do, almost daily.

The problem starts after you buy the kit. Your stash gets eight status options: stash, wishlist, completed, for sale, for trade, traded, gift, and lost. Projects get four states, which are idea, workbench, on hold, and completed. That's the whole vocabulary. There's no way to record "waiting on the Eduard seatbelt set," no paint list attached to a specific build, and no running cost total.

I hit that wall on a 1/35 Chieftain last winter. The kit was $52. By the time I'd added a metal barrel, a workable track set, and two decal sheets I'd spent $141, and the only record was a pile of PayPal emails.

The other honest gaps: offline access isn't supported (the FAQ points you at CSV, TSV, or PDF export instead), the trade list caps at 500 items, and the interface is a dense desktop-era layout people bounce off. On the Modelers Social Club forum, one modeler called it "very clunky to use until you get really used to it" and another said it "doesn't give me all the fields i wish to have on each kit" (both March 2024). The next post over praises it for beating Excel on speed. Both are true.

Here's what works alongside it in September 2026, with prices I verified myself.

Quick verdict

• Best kit database, still unbeaten? Scalemates. Don't replace it, supplement it.
• Fastest way to stop buying duplicates? KitSort. Photograph the box, get an answer at the counter.
• Best paint inventory for the money? paintRack at $5.99 for the full unlock, no subscription.
• Best free paint tracker with build timers? Brushrage. 50,000+ installs, actively updated.
• Paints organized by build stage? Hobby Rack, $9.99 a year.
• Cost, materials, and a real build log per project? Costumary. Web only, free tier covers two builds.
• Cheapest option? A spreadsheet. It works, it just won't remind you of anything.

1. KitSort

Platforms: iOS, Android Price: Free tier (3 AI scans per month, no card). Paid is $29.99/year early bird for the first 100 members, $49.99/year after, or $9.99/month Best for: Anyone whose stash has outgrown their memory

KitSort does one thing with conviction. You photograph a box, OCR reads the kit number, manufacturer, and scale, you confirm with one tap, and it tells you whether that kit is already in your collection. Their pitch says three seconds. It took me closer to eight on a creased secondhand box, still fast enough at a swap meet table.

What it does well:

Offline search is what justifies it. Scalemates needs a connection, and the church-basement swap meets I go to have concrete walls and no signal. Filtering by category, scale, brand, status, and storage location matters once you pass about eighty kits, and the storage location field alone saved me from re-buying a 1/48 Hurricane I'd filed in the wrong bin.

Where it falls short:

Pricing. $49.99 a year is more than most modelers will pay to solve a duplicate-buying problem when Scalemates does the cataloging half for free, and three AI scans a month is a demo, not a plan. No paint tracking, no cost rollup, no real build log. It's a catalog with a camera on the front.

2. Hobby Rack

Platforms: iOS 17.1+, iPadOS, macOS (Apple silicon) Price: Free, with a $0.99/month or $9.99/year subscription Best for: Painters who think in stages rather than in lists

Hobby Rack came out of the miniature painting world but works fine for scale models. You scan paint labels with the camera, it builds your collection, then you assign paints to stages within a project.

What it does well:

Stages match how a build actually runs. On a 1/48 Bf 109 I had a preshade stage, a base stage, a mottling stage, and a weathering stage, each with its own short paint list. That's more structure than a flat inventory gives you. It covers 90+ paint ranges and generates a shopping list for what you're missing. Version 1.4.5 landed August 24, 2026.

Where it falls short:

Apple only, so Android users can stop reading. It's new enough that the App Store listing shows no ratings yet, which means trusting a solo developer with no public track record. Paint stages are the whole product: no kit database, no cost tracking. I went through this category in more depth in the roundup of miniature painting apps.

3. paintRack

Platforms: iOS, iPadOS, macOS (M1+), Apple Vision, Android Price: Free, $5.99 one-time full unlock Best for: Anyone who has bought the same bottle of paint twice

paintRack is the paint app most modelers land on eventually, and the $5.99 unlock is the best value on this list. It carries over 29,000 paints across 70+ brands including Vallejo, Tamiya, Humbrol, and Mr. Color, with barcode scanning to add them. Cross-brand matching is the reason to buy it: find the Humbrol equivalent of a Tamiya shade in two taps.

What it does well:

Cross-brand equivalents saved a 1/48 Phantom build when I ran out of a discontinued Model Master shade halfway through a two-tone camo scheme. paintRack gave me three close matches and I finished without a visible break. Paint sets save a recipe per project, and the wish list kills the duplicate-bottle problem. Rated 4.9 across 217 reviews, last updated August 22, 2026.

Where it falls short:

Setup is a slog. Reviewers say it plainly and they're right: you add paints one at a time, and 200 bottles is an evening of work. Cross-device sync gets flagged as weak in reviews. It's strictly a paint app, with no kits, no build log, no cost. To plan a scheme before you buy paint, our free paint scheme planner does that in the browser without an account.

4. Brushrage

Platforms: Android, iOS, Wear OS Price: Free, with in-app purchases from $0.99 to $99.99 Best for: Builders who want paints, projects, and time tracking in one free app

Brushrage is the most feature-dense free option here: a 15,000+ paint library, bulk barcode scanning, custom paint mixing with real color math, project tracking, and build timers. It passed 50,000 installs on Google Play and was updated August 30, 2026, so it isn't a stale hobby project.

What it does well:

The timers are the part I didn't expect to use and now do. Start one when you sit down at the bench, stop it when you get up, and after a few builds you have real data on how long your work takes. My 1/48 aircraft builds average nearly double what I would have guessed, which changed how I plan for the IPMS regional. Custom paint mixing with proper color math is rare in free software, and the Wear OS companion lets you stop a timer without touching a phone with paint on your hands.

Where it falls short:

It's built for miniature painters first, so defaults lean Warhammer rather than aircraft or armor. The interface is busy, and an in-app purchase range topping out at $99.99 makes it hard to know what a full unlock costs before you're inside. Only 33 ratings on the iOS App Store, so that build has a much smaller user base than the Android one.

5. Costumary

Platforms: Web (responsive in mobile browsers) Price: Free (2 active projects, 100 reference uploads per project, 30 build log entries). Base $9/month for unlimited projects and build log. Studio $19/month adds commission workflow Best for: Builders who want cost, materials, references, and a real build log tied to one project

Full disclosure, this is our tool. Read the gaps section.

What it does well:

The materials list solves my Chieftain problem. Every item carries a status: need, ordered, arrived, owned, tested, or used. Aftermarket sets, paints, thinners, sanding sticks, and photo-etch live in the same list as the kit, and the budget updates from what you enter. When I finish a build I know it cost $141, not "around fifty bucks, probably." I broke down how those numbers land in the scale model build cost guide.

The reference board holds box art, walkaround photos, decal diagrams, and color call-outs on one annotated canvas, which beats a folder of screenshots. The build log is structured rather than free text, so six months later I can find the entry where I noted that part 34 fits backwards. The cross-project stash on Base tracks what you own across every build, the same problem I covered in checking your inventory before you shop. The scale model workspace page shows the layout.

Where it falls short:

There's no kit database. None. You type your kit in, or copy the details from Scalemates, and that's more work than clicking a green button on a fact sheet. Entering 200 kits by hand isn't realistic, which is why I keep my stash on Scalemates and only build a Costumary project for whatever is on the bench.

No native app, no offline mode, no marketplace, no social feed. The free tier is two active projects, fine if you build one thing at a time and tight if you have five going. And nothing here scans a barcode.

How they compare

No single tool covers every column, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling something. Most modelers I know run two: Scalemates for the database and the stash, plus one of the others for whatever is on the bench.

What about a Google Sheets stash template?

A spreadsheet is still the most common stash tracker in this hobby and it deserves respect. Google Sheets is free, syncs everywhere, and will still open in twenty years. Columns for kit, scale, manufacturer, price paid, date bought, status, and storage location cover most of what Scalemates does plus the cost fields it doesn't have.

The failure mode is maintenance. Every modeler I know who runs a sheet admits it drifts. You buy three kits at a show, tell yourself you'll enter them Sunday, and four months later nine are missing. Barcode scanning exists because typing is the thing people stop doing. Use a sheet if your stash is under fifty kits. Move on once entering rows feels like work.

What about HobbyTracker, KitBase, or Gunpla Archive?

HobbyTracker shows up in most alternative lists as an iOS stash app with a free Lite tier and a paid full version. On September 2, 2026 both of its App Store listings returned 404, and Apple search API lookups in six country stores came back empty. It appears to have been pulled. Don't plan your stash around it.

KitBase 2 from Suisoft is the veteran desktop option, a Windows database for kits, accessories, paints, and references with free iOS and Android companion apps. The trial caps at 30 records per table and a full license is $54.99. Modelers on that Modelers Social Club thread still recommend it, but the site's copyright line reads 2007 to 2021, so expect mature rather than actively developed software.

Gunpla Archive is free, browser-based, and covers Real Grade, Master Grade, and Perfect Grade kits with a browse view and an owned toggle. Fine as a Gundam checklist, useless for paints, cost, or build logs. I compared that side of the hobby in the Gunpla tracking tools roundup, and there's a Gunpla workspace page too.