If you’ve been running RainDrop on an iPhone, Rain Tally is the app to switch to. RainDrop’s home screen shows raw totals across recent windows. Rain Tally’s pairs the past seven days with the three-day forecast on one chart, so you can see at a glance whether you need to water.

Past rainfall, the three-day forecast, and a weekly watering target sit on one home-screen chart. Log a reading from your own rain gauge and every total recomputes using your number. Plus is $19.99 a year for 10 locations against RainDrop’s $29.99 Minimum tier for four.

Rain Tally Pros

Past 7 days, the 3-day forecast, and a weekly target on one screen
Log your own rain-gauge reading and every total recomputes using it
Forecasted days update to measured amounts as the storm passes
Address-free pin-drop locations on the map
Plus is $19.99 a year for 10 locations

Rain Tally Cons

iPhone and iPad only
No separate snowfall tracking (snow rolls into precipitation as melted-water equivalent)
No custom rain alerts

RainDrop Pros

Runs on iPhone, iPad, Android, and the public web
Snowfall tracked as its own dimension
Custom threshold-based rain alerts

RainDrop Cons

No way to log your own rain-gauge reading
No past-7-plus-next-3 watering-decision view on the home screen
February 2026 paywall change pulled the previously-free 2-saved-location tier
Entry paid tier (Minimum) is $29.99 a year for 4 locations

At a glance

	Rain Tally	RainDrop	Precip
Platforms	iPhone, iPad	iPhone, iPad, Android, web	iPhone, iPad, Android, web
Free tier	1 location, Recent screen, log your own readings	1 saved location plus your current location	1 location, account required
Entry paid tier	Plus, $19.99 a year or $1.99 a month, 10 locations	Minimum, $29.99 a year, 4 locations	$24.99 a year, 4 locations
Top-tier location cap	Pro, $49.99 a year, 50 locations	Premium, $99.99 a year, 75 locations	$79.99 a year, 35 locations
Supports locations without addresses	Yes	Yes	Yes
Log your own rain-gauge reading	Yes	No	No
Water year (Oct–Sep)	Yes	No	No

A water year runs October through September. Many growers and water-resource users track rainfall that way rather than by calendar year, so a full wet season sits in one period. Rain Tally can total by either; neither RainDrop nor Precip offers it.

Features

Rain Tally is built around the watering decision; RainDrop is built around the rainfall number. The difference shows the moment you open either home screen.

The Recent screen. Rain Tally’s home view shows the past seven days of rainfall as a bar chart, with the three-day forecast extending the same chart to the right. A weekly rainfall target sits underneath, alongside a list of the next three days with amounts and chance-of-rain percentages. RainDrop’s home view shows current totals across short recent windows: last day, last two days, last three days, and month-to-date. Rain Tally’s screen answers the watering decision in one glance. RainDrop’s surfaces the number and leaves the decision to you.

Multi-location and pin-drop. Both apps support multiple locations, and both let you drop a pin anywhere on the map to add one without a street address. Price is where they diverge: Rain Tally Plus runs 10 locations for $19.99 a year, while RainDrop’s Minimum tier caps at 4 for $29.99 a year.

Your own rain gauge. Rain Tally lets you log a reading from your gauge for any day, and every chart and total recomputes using that number. RainDrop has no equivalent. The gap shows up in RainDrop’s own App Store reviews. Pulaskigirl (July 2025) wrote that “there is no way to manually record it so that it goes into the totals for the record. We are ranchers and really watch the rain, this app isn’t much help.” SethGebers (May 2025) asked for the feature inside an otherwise positive review: “If there was some way in the future to add a feature that one could input actual rainfall from a real rain gauge into the system to help with deviations, that would be awesome.”

What RainDrop wins on. RainDrop runs on Android and the public web, where Rain Tally is iOS-only. It tracks snow as its own dimension rather than folding it into precipitation. And it sends custom alerts when a set amount of rain falls, which Rain Tally doesn’t do.

Each of those differences carries a price. Here is the math.

Pricing

Rain Tally Plus is $19.99 a year for 10 locations and full history and trends features. RainDrop’s paid tiers differ only in location count: Minimum at $29.99 for 4 locations, Plus at $49.99 for 15, Premium at $99.99 for 75.

Rain Tally Plus runs about a third less than RainDrop Minimum and includes 2.5 times the locations. At $49.99 the price matches, and Rain Tally Pro carries 50 locations against RainDrop Plus’s 15. The $99.99 Premium tier has no Rain Tally equivalent, because most people tracking multiple properties don’t need 75 locations.

For Android readers, Precip’s free tier covers one location, after you create an account. Paid tiers are named by location count, annual billing only: Four Locations runs $24.99, Fifteen Locations $39.99, Thirty-Five Locations $79.99.

In late February 2026, a RainDrop update removed the previously-free two-saved-location tier. The developer partially walked back to one saved location plus your current location after a wave of negative App Store reviews. The change sent users looking for an alternative, and one of them, JS73976 (February 25, 2026), made the switch explicit: “Switched to an app called Rain Tally.”

Rain Tally isn’t the right pick for everyone.

Limitations

Rain Tally has no Android app, no web version, and no Apple Watch app. If you’re looking for an Android app, install Precip instead. It was the Android pick in a broader roundup of the best rainfall tracking apps.

Rain Tally records snow as melted-water equivalent: the amount of water it leaves once it melts. Snow density varies widely, so the same depth can melt down to very different amounts of water. The melted number is the one that tells you what reached the ground. It also keeps winter totals on the same scale as summer rain. If you’d rather see raw snow depth in inches, RainDrop and Precip both report it that way.

The forecast horizon stops at three days, by design. Rainfall-amount accuracy degrades past 72 hours, so Rain Tally doesn’t show longer horizons. If you want a 7- or 10-day rainfall outlook, those numbers are approximate at any source, and a traditional weather app is a better choice.

Owning a personal weather station doesn’t replace Rain Tally; it pairs with it. Your station’s app is built around its live sensors (wind, temperature, humidity) and reads rain at a single point in real time. Rain Tally turns that rainfall into a decision. Log your station’s reading and you get the combined past-and-forecast view, a weekly target, and season history built around rainfall. Use the station’s app for everything else, and Rain Tally for the rain.

Verdict

For an iPhone owner leaving RainDrop, Rain Tally is the stronger tool. It wins on the decision that sent you searching: whether you need to water. The home screen puts the past seven days, the next three, and a weekly target on one chart. Plus covers 10 locations for $19.99 a year, about a third less than RainDrop’s entry tier and more than twice the locations. You can log your own gauge reading and have every total recompute using it, and forecasted days settle into measured amounts as each storm passes.

The trade-offs are platform and scope: iPhone and iPad only, no custom rain alerts, and snow counted as precipitation rather than its own depth.

If you’re replacing a RainDrop setup on an iPhone or iPad, install Rain Tally. If you’re on Android, install Precip.

Free for one location. Plus is $19.99 a year or $1.99 a month for 10 locations, with full history and trends. Requires iPhone or iPad, iOS 17.2+.