Artisan or Rostoc: when to stay, when to switch, and how to bring your roasts.

Direct Answer

Stay on Artisan if it already does what you need: one machine, a few roasts a week, and a logger you are happy to configure yourself. It is free, and a paid tool is hard to justify for that job.

Consider Rostoc if the curve is no longer the whole problem: you need each roast tied to the green lot it used, stock that falls when you roast, reusable roast plans with per-machine setups, and a record the rest of the team can open in a browser.

• Choose Artisan if logging and tuning the roast is the whole job, and free matters.
• Choose Rostoc if the roast record has to connect to lots, stock, plans and batch history.
• Run both for a while if you are unsure: keep Artisan, and import a few reference roasts into Rostoc's 30 free roasts.

Artisan, On Its Own Terms

Artisan is free and open source. What it supports is best read on its own site rather than restated here. If it covers your roastery, it is a strong free choice, and this page will not argue otherwise.

What Rostoc Is Built Around

Rostoc starts at the same place, the machine connection, and records the roast against a plan. Its catalogue holds 263 roaster models across 93 brands, of which 198 are supported (counted 2026-09-24). What it adds is the production record around the curve.

• Roast plans with reference curves and per-machine setups, reusable across roast days.
• Automatic Charge and Drop marking, and Dry End and crack marks against your plan's targets.
• Batch codes you can print as QR labels and scan back to the record.
• Phase stats, a consistency score against the reference curve, and a written analysis of each batch.
• On Growth: green coffee lots and warehouses with a stock ledger, where each roast deducts from the lot it used.
• On Foundation and Growth: your batches, plans and inventory in any browser at web.rostoc.co.

Bringing Your Artisan Setup And Roasts

Your machine setup comes over from an Artisan .aset settings file. Rostoc reads the connection details and how each channel is decoded, including signed and BCD register readings, and creates the Machine. If your setup drives a PID setpoint over Modbus, that slider becomes a setpoint control in Roast Studio. Anything ambiguous in the file is flagged for review rather than guessed.

Saved roasts come over from .alog files. Each one imports as a Reference Curve on a plan and joins your history as a batch. The slider moves you recorded (gas, air, drum, or anything you named yourself) come in as action curves under your own labels, with their notes. Imports run one roast at a time today, so start with the references you actually roast against. The switch-from-Artisan guide walks through each step.

Running Both Side By Side

You do not have to switch in one go. The practical limit is the connection: only one application can hold a serial port or a Modbus connection at a time, so close Artisan before connecting Rostoc to the same machine, and the other way round.

Rostoc runs on macOS, Windows and Linux (x86_64). It does not run on ARM boards such as the Raspberry Pi, so if your Artisan setup lives on one, plan for a laptop or desktop.

What It Costs

Artisan is free. Every new Rostoc account starts with 30 roasts at the top plan, with no card and no time limit. After that, Hobby is free for 30 batches a month on one machine, Foundation is $19 a month, and Growth is $39 a month with unlimited batches and machines, green coffee inventory and no volume charge.

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