Nofencevs
Halter
Halter: If you run an intensive dairy and want heat detection and health monitoring alongside fencing
Nofence
GPS collar virtual fencing for cattle, sheep and goats with no base station required
As of 1 September 2026, Nofence starts at $229/one-time. Norwegian virtual fencing where you buy the collar outright and pay a low annual subscription, with no on-farm towers because the collars use mobile networks directly. Softwr lists it under Agriculture. Nofence is available on iOS, Android, Web.
Overview
What Nofence does
Nofence sells GPS collars that create virtual paddocks for cattle, sheep and goats. The farmer draws a boundary in the app; the collar warns the animal with an ascending tone as it approaches the line and delivers a mild electric pulse if it continues. Unlike tower-based competitors, Nofence collars talk to the mobile network directly, so there is no base station or on-farm infrastructure to install. That removes the largest up-front line item and makes the system practical for conservation grazing, scrub clearance and common land where no fence exists and nobody would pay to build one. The pricing is published, which is unusual in this category. Cattle collars are around US$349 each for the first 24, dropping to about US$309 at 25 collars and above, with a five-year warranty and the first twelve months of subscription included. After year one the subscription is roughly US$45 per collar per year, or US$35 for herds of 100 or more, with monthly options at US$6.50 and US$4.50. Compare that to per-cow monthly subscriptions elsewhere and the lifetime arithmetic is very different: Nofence front-loads the cost into hardware you own and keeps the recurring charge small. Goat and sheep collars are cheaper again at around US$229. The buyer is a grazier with dispersed, awkward or unfenced land: conservation grazing on heath and moor, goats clearing scrub or firebreaks, cattle on rough ground where fencing is uneconomic, or a smallholder rotating a modest number of animals. It is much less compelling for a large intensive dairy, where the herd monitoring features of a tower-based system matter more than the fencing. The trade-off is mobile network dependence: in a valley with no signal the collar cannot receive a boundary change or report a breakout, and that is not a problem money can fix.
What people use it for
- A conservation body grazing cattle on open heath or moorland where fencing is prohibited or impractical
- A contractor running goats to clear scrub and maintain firebreaks on rotating sites
- A smallholder rotating a small mob through awkward parcels without building temporary fence
- A grazier renting seasonal parcels where investing in permanent fence makes no sense
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Nofence.
- Everything depends on mobile network coverage, so a farm in a signal shadow cannot change boundaries, receive escape alerts or rely on the fence at all, and no amount of spending fixes that.
- Collar purchase is a real up-front barrier at roughly $349 a head for cattle, so fencing a 200 cow herd is a five-figure hardware outlay before the first subscription renewal.
- Battery life depends on daylight and on how often the animal challenges the boundary; a busy animal in a Nordic or British winter runs the collar down faster than the headline figures suggest.
- Virtual fencing is restricted or unaccepted in some jurisdictions and by some welfare and organic certification schemes, which can rule the product out on eligibility grounds regardless of cost.
- It is a fencing product first, so herd health, rumination and reproduction monitoring are thin compared with dairy-focused collar systems, and a dairy will still need separate heat detection.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Nofence
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- NofencevsCattleMax
CattleMax: If you need herd records rather than fencing
- NofencevsDatamars Livestock
Datamars Livestock: If identification, weighing and traceability are the actual problem
Pricing
What Nofence costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Sheep and goat collar
$229 /one-time
- One-time collar purchase
- First 12 months subscription included
- Five year warranty
- Smaller collar for small ruminants
Cattle collar
$349 /one-time
- One-time collar purchase for 1 to 24 collars
- Approximately $309 per collar at 25 or more
- First 12 months subscription included
- Five year warranty
Annual subscription
$45 /yr
- Per collar per year after the first 12 months
- Approximately $35 per collar at 100 or more
- Monthly option around $6.50 per collar
- Includes app, boundaries, alerts and support
Capabilities
Features
Virtual paddocks
Draw and edit grazing boundaries in the app with no physical fence
No base station
Collars use the mobile network directly, so there is no tower install
Species range
Separate collar designs for cattle and for sheep and goats
Escape alerts
Notifies you when an animal crosses the boundary and shows where it went
Grazing history
Heat maps of where animals actually spent their time
Solar charging
Collar batteries top up in daylight, extending run time between charges
Multi-user access
Several people on the same farm account can move boundaries
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Do I need towers or a base station?
No. Nofence collars connect to the mobile network directly, which is the main structural difference from tower-based virtual fencing and removes the largest install cost.
What does the subscription cost after year one?
Roughly $45 per collar per year, dropping to about $35 for herds of 100 or more. Monthly options are around $6.50 and $4.50 per collar.
Is the first year of subscription really included?
Yes, twelve months of subscription come with each collar purchase, so the first renewal bill arrives a year after install.
Will it work for sheep?
Yes, with the smaller collar designed for sheep and goats, though horned and small-framed animals need care with fit.
Keep looking
Where to go from Nofence
- Nofence alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Nofence pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Nofence badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Agriculture softwareThe full category
- Best Agriculture softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Agriculture software for
Compare Nofence with
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- CattleMax
- Datamars Livestock
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- AgriWebb
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- Ag Leader
- fieldmargin
- Herdwatch
- Case IH AFS Connect
- CeresAI
- Cropin
- DJI Agriculture
- FarmCommand
- Farmers Business Network (FBN)
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Nofence, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
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