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Agriculture · head to head

FieldView Plus vs SMARTBOW

FieldView Plus logo

FieldView Plus

Agriculture

Advanced digital agriculture by Climate

From
$29/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
SMARTBOW logo

SMARTBOW

Agriculture

Ear tag cow monitoring with real-time indoor location, from Zoetis

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: FieldView Plus fieldView Plus starts at $649 per year while the Basic plan starts at $0.00 per year, so the useful analysis features are all paid; SMARTBOW real-time location depends on receivers covering the whole barn plus an on-farm server, so the install is a building project and the price bears no relation to what a simple activity collar costs.
  • They diverge on capability: FieldView Plus covers Field health imagery, SMARTBOW covers Real-time location.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which FieldView Plus and SMARTBOW actually diverge.

Attributes where FieldView Plus and SMARTBOW differ
AttributeFieldView PlusSMARTBOW
Starting price$29/monthOn request
Pricing modelsubscriptionquote
PlatformsWeb, Ios, AndroidWindows, Web, iOS, Android
Founded2006Unknown

Identical on both: free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Agriculture).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in FieldView Plus

  • Field health imagery
  • Nitrogen advisor
  • Seed scripts
  • Scouting app
  • Variable rate
  • John Deere
  • CLAAS
  • Major equipment

Only in SMARTBOW

  • Real-time location
  • Heat detection
  • Rumination monitoring
  • Health alerts
  • On-farm server
  • Individual baselines
  • Herd software integration

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

FieldView Plus

  • Collecting planting, application and harvest data from the cab into the cloudnot SMARTBOW
  • Building variable rate seeding scripts for a planternot SMARTBOW
  • Comparing hybrid and field performance through yield analysis and field region reportsnot SMARTBOW
  • Scouting fields against satellite field health imagerynot SMARTBOW

SMARTBOW

  • A 1,500 cow freestall barn where finding a flagged animal by eye takes twenty minutesnot FieldView Plus
  • A dairy replacing visual heat detection with per-animal oestrus alerts to tighten calving intervalsnot FieldView Plus
  • A herd manager wanting rumination-based early warning of displaced abomasum or metritisnot FieldView Plus
  • A vet practice using behavioural data to audit transition cow management across client herdsnot FieldView Plus

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

FieldView Plus

  • FieldView Plus starts at $649 per year while the Basic plan starts at $0.00 per year, so the useful analysis features are all paid
  • Seed Scripts, Enhanced Scripting, Yield Analysis, Field Region Reports, Image-Enhanced Scouting, Field Health Imagery, Manual Scripting, Grain Futures, RemoteView and CloudSync are all excluded from the Basic plan
  • Local on-farm support is excluded from the Basic plan
  • FieldView Drive hardware is a separate purchase and its price is not shown on the pricing page

SMARTBOW

  • Real-time location depends on receivers covering the whole barn plus an on-farm server, so the install is a building project and the price bears no relation to what a simple activity collar costs.
  • It is an indoor system; a grazing or partly grazed herd loses the location capability that is the main reason to choose it over cheaper monitoring.
  • Ear tags are consumable and go missing with the tag, so the running cost includes replacements at a rate that depends on how rough your handling facilities are.
  • Zoetis ownership means a pharmaceutical company holds continuous behavioural data on every animal alongside your treatment records, and the integration roadmap favours other Zoetis products.
  • Nothing is published on price, and sales run through veterinary and dealer channels, so comparing it against DeLaval, Nedap or CowManager requires several quotes and there is no reference list price.

Pricing, plan by plan

FieldView Plus

$29/month
  • Plus$1199/year
    • Field health imagery
    • Nitrogen advisor
    • Seed scripts
  • Prime$1799/year
    • All Plus features
    • Advanced recommendations
    • Priority support

SMARTBOW

On request
  • SMARTBOW$undefined/year
    • Ear tags priced per animal
    • Barn receiver infrastructure and on-farm server quoted per building
    • Installation and commissioning quoted separately

Which should you pick?

Choose FieldView Plus if

  • You need field health imagery.
  • You work on Web, Ios, Android.
  • You also want nitrogen advisor.
FieldView Plus review

Choose SMARTBOW if

  • You need real-time location.
  • You work on Windows, Web, iOS, Android.
  • You also want heat detection.
SMARTBOW review

Questions people ask

Is FieldView Plus or SMARTBOW better?
Neither clearly leads. FieldView Plus starts at $29/month and SMARTBOW at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, FieldView Plus or SMARTBOW?
FieldView Plus starts at $29/month and SMARTBOW at On request.
Does FieldView Plus or SMARTBOW run on more platforms?
FieldView Plus runs on Web, Ios, Android. SMARTBOW runs on Windows, Web, iOS, Android.
What is FieldView Plus best used for?
FieldView Plus is most often used for collecting planting, application and harvest data from the cab into the cloud, building variable rate seeding scripts for a planter, comparing hybrid and field performance through yield analysis and field region reports, scouting fields against satellite field health imagery. Of those, collecting planting, application and harvest data from the cab into the cloud and building variable rate seeding scripts for a planter are not what SMARTBOW is typically brought in for.
What can FieldView Plus do that SMARTBOW cannot?
FieldView Plus covers Field health imagery, Nitrogen advisor, Seed scripts, Scouting app. SMARTBOW covers Real-time location, Heat detection, Rumination monitoring, Health alerts.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

SMARTBOW: What does SMARTBOW do that other activity monitors do not?

Real-time indoor location. It tells you where the flagged cow physically is, not just that she is behaving abnormally.

SMARTBOW: Does it work on grazing herds?

Poorly. Location depends on barn-mounted receivers, so animals out at pasture fall outside the system's coverage.

SMARTBOW: Who owns it?

Zoetis, which also owns Valley Agricultural Software and DairyComp. The technology came from Smartbow GmbH in Austria.

SMARTBOW: Is it cloud based?

Analysis runs on an on-farm server rather than in the cloud, which keeps it working during an internet outage but makes the server your responsibility.

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