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Agriculture · head to head

Lely Horizon vs Soil Scout

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
Soil Scout logo

Soil Scout

Agriculture

Buried wireless soil sensors with a ten to twenty year battery and no cables to the surface

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.; Soil Scout sensors are unserviceable once buried, so a failed or drifting unit means excavation and the confidence you place in a single reading has no easy verification.
  • They diverge on capability: Lely Horizon covers Per-cow milking data, Soil Scout covers Fully buried sensors.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Lely Horizon and Soil Scout actually diverge.

Attributes where Lely Horizon and Soil Scout differ
AttributeLely HorizonSoil Scout
PlatformsWeb, iOS, Android, WindowsWeb

Identical on both: starting price (On request), pricing model (quote), 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 Soil Scout

  • Fully buried sensors
  • Ten to twenty year battery
  • Underground radio
  • Dual depth sensing
  • Moisture, temperature and salinity
  • Soil Scout Hub
  • Web service API
  • Long base station range

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 Soil Scout
  • A farm adding Vector automatic feeding that wants ration delivery driven by the same cow data as milkingnot Soil Scout
  • A dairy manager tracking transition cow health across two sites from one accountnot Soil Scout
  • A Lely advisor benchmarking a client's robot utilisation against comparable farms before recommending a fourth boxnot Soil Scout

Soil Scout

  • A golf course monitoring greens moisture where a surface-mounted probe would be hit by mowers and playnot Lely Horizon
  • A stadium pitch under a closed roof where hand-held probing is impractical during the seasonnot Lely Horizon
  • A research plot needing consistent multi-year soil data below cultivation depthnot Lely Horizon
  • An irrigated field where a surface logger would not survive tillage or a spray boomnot 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.

Soil Scout

  • Sensors are unserviceable once buried, so a failed or drifting unit means excavation and the confidence you place in a single reading has no easy verification.
  • No pricing is published at all, which makes it hard to justify against commodity probes that quote openly, and per-sensor cost is well above the alternatives.
  • It measures but does not control, so tying moisture readings to actual irrigation decisions requires either manual interpretation or a separate integration project with the control system.
  • Underground radio range depends on soil type and moisture; heavy wet clay attenuates the signal and can force more base stations than the headline kilometre figure suggests.
  • The company is small and Finland-based, so outside its established golf and sports turf distribution the support, spares and installation expertise depend entirely on whether a competent local distributor exists.

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

Soil Scout

On request
  • Soil Scout$undefined/year
    • Sensors and base station quoted per site
    • Hub subscription terms quoted with the hardware
    • No individual sensor data plans required

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 Soil Scout if

  • You need fully buried sensors.
  • You also want ten to twenty year battery.
Soil Scout review

Questions people ask

Is Lely Horizon or Soil Scout better?
Neither clearly leads. Lely Horizon starts at On request and Soil Scout at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Lely Horizon or Soil Scout?
Lely Horizon starts at On request and Soil Scout at On request.
Does Lely Horizon or Soil Scout run on more platforms?
Lely Horizon runs on Web, iOS, Android, Windows. Soil Scout runs on Web.
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 Soil Scout is typically brought in for.
What can Lely Horizon do that Soil Scout cannot?
Lely Horizon covers Per-cow milking data, Health and fertility alerts, Work list generation, Feed management. Soil Scout covers Fully buried sensors, Ten to twenty year battery, Underground radio, Dual depth sensing.

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.

Soil Scout: How long do the sensors last?

Up to ten years for the Happi100 and up to twenty for the Hydra100, buried, with no battery replacement.

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.

Soil Scout: Do the sensors need mobile data plans?

No. Sensors transmit to a base station through the soil, and only the base station uses a cellular modem.

Lely Horizon: What happened to T4C?

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

Soil Scout: Can it control irrigation directly?

No. It is a measurement and alerting system; controlling valves needs an integration with your irrigation controller through the API.

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.

Soil Scout: What happens if a buried sensor fails?

You dig it up. There is no remote service option, which is the trade-off for having nothing above ground to damage.

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