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Agriculture · head to head

Lely Horizon vs METER Group ZENTRA

Lely Horizon logo

Lely Horizon

Agriculture

Dairy herd management software billed per lactating cow that only runs a Lely robot barn

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
METER Group ZENTRA logo

METER Group ZENTRA

Agriculture

Research-grade soil, plant and atmosphere sensors with the ZENTRA Cloud data platform

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Lely Horizon billing is per lactating cow, so the software cost grows with the herd indefinitely and a farm that expands from 120 to 200 cows takes a permanent software cost increase it did not budget when it bought the robots.; METER Group ZENTRA hardware costs several times what commodity soil probes cost, so a farm that only needs a rough irrigation trigger is paying for calibration accuracy it will never use.
  • They diverge on capability: Lely Horizon covers Per-cow milking data, METER Group ZENTRA covers TEROS soil sensors.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Lely Horizon and METER Group ZENTRA actually diverge.

Attributes where Lely Horizon and METER Group ZENTRA differ
AttributeLely HorizonMETER Group ZENTRA
Pricing modelquotePer device subscription
PlatformsWeb, iOS, Android, WindowsWeb, iOS, Android

Identical on both: starting price (On request), 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 Lely Horizon

  • Per-cow milking data
  • Health and fertility alerts
  • Work list generation
  • Feed management
  • Farm Management Support
  • Multi-site view
  • Mobile alerts
  • Reporting and benchmarking

Only in METER Group ZENTRA

  • TEROS soil sensors
  • Water potential measurement
  • ZL6 data loggers
  • ZENTRA Cloud
  • Threshold alerts
  • Open API
  • ATMOS weather stations

What people use each for

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

Lely Horizon

  • A 180-cow dairy running four Astronaut robots that needs the attention list to replace walking the barn twice a daynot METER Group ZENTRA
  • A farm adding Vector automatic feeding that wants ration delivery driven by the same cow data as milkingnot METER Group ZENTRA
  • A dairy manager tracking transition cow health across two sites from one accountnot METER Group ZENTRA
  • A Lely advisor benchmarking a client's robot utilisation against comparable farms before recommending a fourth boxnot METER Group ZENTRA

METER Group ZENTRA

  • A university soil physics group that needs measurements defensible enough for peer reviewnot Lely Horizon
  • An irrigation district accounting for water applied and lost across a schemenot Lely Horizon
  • A vineyard managing deficit irrigation from water potential rather than volumetric moisture alonenot Lely Horizon
  • An environmental consultancy monitoring a remediation or drainage site where the data may be contestednot Lely Horizon

Where each one falls short

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

Lely Horizon

  • Billing is per lactating cow, so the software cost grows with the herd indefinitely and a farm that expands from 120 to 200 cows takes a permanent software cost increase it did not budget when it bought the robots.
  • Horizon is not optional: the barn equipment depends on it, so the subscription cannot be cancelled in a difficult year the way a discretionary analytics tool can, which removes any negotiating position at renewal.
  • It manages Lely equipment and effectively nothing else, so a farm running a Lely robot alongside a conventional parlour or another manufacturer's feeder ends up with two systems and no combined cow record.
  • The migration from the older T4C system was compulsory and rebuilt the interface and reporting, and farms that had years of T4C reports and custom lists found the equivalents either missing or shaped differently, costing retraining time.
  • Everything is bought and supported through the local Lely Center, so pricing, response time and the quality of advice vary by dealer with no published rate card, and a farm with a weak local centre has no practical alternative supplier.

METER Group ZENTRA

  • Hardware costs several times what commodity soil probes cost, so a farm that only needs a rough irrigation trigger is paying for calibration accuracy it will never use.
  • ZENTRA Cloud is a per-device subscription, so a large sensor network carries a recurring bill that grows linearly with every probe added and is easy to underestimate at design stage.
  • The three-year subscription bundled with the ZL6 Pro means the renewal decision arrives exactly when a typical research grant has ended, which is how long-running datasets get abandoned.
  • METER sells measurement rather than recommendations; there is no irrigation scheduling engine, so someone has to turn the numbers into decisions or buy a second platform that will.
  • Installation quality dominates results with soil sensors, and a badly installed TEROS probe produces confidently wrong data, so the accuracy you paid for depends on field technique the vendor cannot supply.

Pricing, plan by plan

Lely Horizon

On request
  • Horizon Basic$undefined/month
    • Core robot operation and monitoring
    • Per lactating cow subscription
    • Invoiced digitally by the local Lely Center
  • Horizon Control$undefined/month
    • Adds herd management and fertility tooling
    • Per lactating cow subscription
  • Horizon Advance$undefined/month
    • Adds analysis, benchmarking and advisor tooling
    • Per lactating cow subscription

METER Group ZENTRA

On request
  • ZENTRA Cloud$undefined/year
    • Priced per activated device, pay for what you use
    • Three year subscription included with the ZL6 Pro logger
    • Cellular data included in the device subscription

Which should you pick?

Choose Lely Horizon if

  • You need per-cow milking data.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android, Windows.
  • You also want health and fertility alerts.
Lely Horizon review

Choose METER Group ZENTRA if

  • You need teros soil sensors.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android.
  • You also want water potential measurement.
METER Group ZENTRA review

Questions people ask

Is Lely Horizon or METER Group ZENTRA better?
Neither clearly leads. Lely Horizon starts at On request and METER Group ZENTRA at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Lely Horizon or METER Group ZENTRA?
Lely Horizon starts at On request and METER Group ZENTRA at On request.
Does Lely Horizon or METER Group ZENTRA run on more platforms?
Lely Horizon runs on Web, iOS, Android, Windows. METER Group ZENTRA runs on Web, iOS, Android.
What is Lely Horizon best used for?
Lely Horizon is most often used for a 180-cow dairy running four astronaut robots that needs the attention list to replace walking the barn twice a day, a farm adding vector automatic feeding that wants ration delivery driven by the same cow data as milking, a dairy manager tracking transition cow health across two sites from one account, a lely advisor benchmarking a client's robot utilisation against comparable farms before recommending a fourth box. Of those, a 180-cow dairy running four astronaut robots that needs the attention list to replace walking the barn twice a day and a farm adding vector automatic feeding that wants ration delivery driven by the same cow data as milking are not what METER Group ZENTRA is typically brought in for.
What can Lely Horizon do that METER Group ZENTRA cannot?
Lely Horizon covers Per-cow milking data, Health and fertility alerts, Work list generation, Feed management. METER Group ZENTRA covers TEROS soil sensors, Water potential measurement, ZL6 data loggers, ZENTRA Cloud.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Lely Horizon: How is Lely Horizon priced?

As a subscription per lactating cow milked by the Astronaut robots, in Basic, Control and Advance tiers. Lely does not publish rates; the local Lely Center quotes them.

METER Group ZENTRA: Is ZENTRA Cloud included with the loggers?

A three-year subscription is included with the ZL6 Pro. Other loggers require a separate per-device subscription.

Lely Horizon: Can I run Horizon without Lely robots?

No. It is the control and management layer for Lely equipment and has no meaningful function without it.

METER Group ZENTRA: Do I need a separate cellular data plan?

No. Cellular data is covered within the device subscription rather than billed as a separate SIM contract.

Lely Horizon: What happened to T4C?

Horizon replaced it. Migration was required rather than optional, and reporting was rebuilt rather than ported.

METER Group ZENTRA: Will it tell me when to irrigate?

No. METER provides measurement, not scheduling recommendations. You either interpret the data yourself or feed it into a scheduling platform.

Lely Horizon: Does the subscription end when the robot is paid off?

No. It continues for as long as the robots are milking, which is the cost most robot business cases understate.

METER Group ZENTRA: Why is it more expensive than commodity soil probes?

Individual sensor calibration and documented measurement physics, which is what makes the data hold up in research, regulatory and legal contexts.

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