The Best Site Diary Apps in 2026 (UK & Worldwide)

Disclosure: this guide is published by Site Pal, and Site Pal is one of the apps below. Every factual claim about pricing and features is checkable — go and check them.

Straight answer first

Site Pal — our pick for anyone working on site

£19/month per user. 14-day free trial, no card needed. Cancel anytime.

Every other app on this page asks you to fill something in. Site Pal writes it for you.

Take a photo. That's the entry done.

Photograph the works and the AI writes the diary entry — activity, operatives, PPE, housekeeping — with GPS, timestamp and weather attached automatically. You don't type a word.

Or just walk the job and talk.

Hit record and walk the site describing what you see, the way you'd describe it to your foreman. Site Pal matches what you said to each photo and hands you a client-ready branded PDF at the end. A full progress report in the time it takes to walk the level.

Mark up the photos as well.

Draw straight on the image — lines, arrows, circles, boxes — to point at exactly what you're talking about. Handy when you're recording a defect, a delay or a piece of hidden work and you want no argument about which bit you meant.

It kills the admin, not just the diary.

This is the point. If you're writing up diaries, progress reports, delay records and photo logs by hand, that's hours every week — usually at night, usually when you're finished and knackered. Site Pal takes the bulk of it off you completely.

Every photo is a timestamped, GPS-stamped record, and you can say what you see as you shoot — so when someone argues about who caused what and when, you've already got the record, in your own words, with time and location attached.

Works for whoever's holding the phone.

Site managers, main contractors, subcontractors and individual tradesmen running their own jobs. If you need to prove what happened on site — to a client, a main contractor, a QS or an insurer — it does the same job whether you're running a £30m fit-out or a two-week bathroom.

One price. Everything in it.

£19 a month. No tiers, no add-ons, no "contact sales," no per-project escalation. Unlimited projects, unlimited entries, unlimited walkthroughs, branded exports — all of it from day one.

Built by someone who does the job.

Written by a working senior construction manager, for people doing the same work. Not by a software company guessing at what a site looks like.

And it's moving fast.

Site Pal is in active development with new features shipping regularly, driven by what users actually ask for. Tell us what would save you time and there's a real chance it turns up in the app.

SymTerra — for contractors with a team

No public pricing. You'll need to book a call with a salesperson.

Aimed at teams and enterprise, strong on connecting site to office and producing a defensible record.

Strong: built for multiple users, established, good for organisations that need central oversight.

Not for you if: you're one person or a small firm. You'd pay for coordination features you'll never open, and go through a sales process just to find out the number.

Sitemate / Dashpivot — for large organisations

Enterprise pricing. No public price — expect a sales process.

The most heavily funded player in this space, with around $27.5m raised and thousands of customers across large contractors internationally. Endlessly configurable forms, workflows and analytics. Recently added AI that populates report fields from photos and voice notes.

Strong: genuinely powerful, proven at scale, configurable to almost anything.

Not for you if: you want to be working tomorrow morning. It's a platform that needs setting up, administering and budgeting for.

Procore — the enterprise construction platform

Enterprise pricing, quoted per project value. No public price list.

Daily logs are one module inside a very large construction management platform covering financials, drawings, RFIs, submittals and more.

Strong: the most complete construction platform there is, and standard on many large projects.

Not for you if: you only want a diary. You'd be buying a cathedral to store a bike.

Viewpoint Field View (Trimble) — enterprise field management

Enterprise pricing. No public price list.

Long-established field management platform used on large projects for forms, inspections, quality and handover, now part of Trimble.

Strong: proven on major projects, deep on forms and quality processes, strong in the UK tier-one market.

Not for you if: you're not a large contractor. This is bought by organisations, configured by administrators, and rolled out to teams.

Site Diary (Script&Go) — the free place to start

Free tier available, paid tiers above it.

Long-established, on both app stores. Task management built in so entries can be pre-filled from planned tasks. Automatic weather, photo attachment, email sharing.

Strong: free to begin with, so it's the obvious first thing to try if you've never used a diary app at all.

Not for you if: you don't want to type. Every entry is you filling in fields, every day. And free tiers have ceilings you'll hit.

CDR (Construction Daily Reports) — the mature American option

Around $20/month per user.

US company, on the app stores since 2017. Branded daily report PDFs, automatic weather, photo management, voice-to-text, and reports that auto-email to whoever you nominate once signed.

Strong: mature and dependable. Set your template once and it's mostly filling blanks after that. The auto-email-on-signature idea is a good one most rivals don't have.

Not for you if: you're outside the US. Built around American practice and terminology. Per-user pricing, and no AI writing — you're still doing the work.

Reo App — clever, Australian, expensive

Around $49/month for a single project.

Ambitious feature set: AI briefings, programme insights, procurement suggestions, diary.

Strong: genuinely smart.

Not for you if: you run more than one job. Per-project pricing climbs fast, and it's built around Australian compliance.

Raken — daily reports for US crews

Paid subscription, pricing on enquiry.

Well-established US daily reporting and time-tracking tool aimed at field crews and their office.

Strong: solid, proven, good time-tracking alongside the reporting.

Not for you if: you want UK terminology, or you're a single operator rather than a crew.

CompanyCam — photo documentation first

Paid subscription, per user.

Photo-led documentation with automatic timestamps and location, aimed largely at US trades and home improvement contractors. Reports are built around photo galleries.

Strong: excellent at organised photo evidence and sharing progress with clients.

Not for you if: you need a structured written diary rather than a photo library with notes.

BuildPass — Australian, site-focused

Paid subscription, pricing on enquiry.

Australian tool covering site diaries, inductions and site management.

Strong: clean and purpose-built for site work.

Not for you if: you need UK or US compliance framing.

LB Site Diary (Letsbuild) — dispute-focused

Pricing on enquiry.

Aimed at keeping a structured, secure log of site events that can act as proof in a dispute, with one-click customisable reports.

Strong: good on the evidence angle, established European product.

Not for you if: you want a published price and a card-free trial.

SiteLogs, 123onsite, Construction Site Diary, Site Records

Free to low-cost, mostly with in-app purchases.

A cluster of smaller, often single-developer apps covering the same ground: daily logs, photos, labour and plant records, PDF or Excel export. 123onsite is built around German practice and pulls weather from the German Weather Service. Site Records and Construction Site Diary are straightforward project-based photo-and-log tools.

Strong: cheap, simple, and often a one-off payment rather than a subscription.

Not for you if: you want AI, voice, or a product with a company behind it that will still be there in three years.

SiteSnapDoc — UK photo filing

Paid subscription.

UK product focused on organising and filing site photographs.

Strong: simple and UK-based.

Not for you if: you need a full diary and report output.

Site Audit Pro — the established audit and snagging app

Around £12.90 one-off for the app, plus roughly £6.99/month or £59.99/year per device for cloud sync.

Been on the app stores well over a decade and used by tens of thousands of businesses. Record an issue with photos, annotate them, assign it, organise issues into projects, and share a customised PDF or CSV report with your own logo. Optional timestamps and GPS on images. Several report designs to choose from.

Strong: genuinely mature, cheap, works across a lot of industries beyond construction, and the reports are properly customisable.

Not for you if: you want a daily diary. This is an issue logger — it tells you what's wrong, not what happened on site today, who was there, what turned up and what held you up. Cloud sync is charged per device rather than per person, which gets awkward if you use a phone and a tablet.

Site Report Pro — one-off payment, snagging and inspections

Around $17 as a one-off purchase. No subscription.

UK-built iOS app for punch lists, snag lists, site audits and inspections. Up to eight photos per issue with strong annotation tools, issue assignment, filtering, and a large choice of report themes exporting to PDF or Excel.

Strong: you pay once and own it, and Excel export is genuinely useful if someone downstream wants the data in a spreadsheet.

Not for you if: you need a chronological daily record rather than a list of defects. iOS only.

Site Report 2 — simple one-off reports

Around £12 with in-app purchases.

Originally launched in 2014 and still going. Straightforward site reports and snag lists with photos, notes, signatures, iCloud sync and CSV export.

Strong: simple, cheap, one payment, and it's been used on some serious infrastructure work.

Not for you if: you want the record written for you, or a structured daily diary.

The other snagging apps — SnagBricks, Site Report Expert, Snag List

Roughly free to £12, often a one-off payment.

Worth knowing about because they surface in the same searches, but they solve a different problem. These are defect and punch-list tools: log an issue, assign it, track it to closed, export a report.

Strong: cheap and genuinely good at snagging.

Not for you if: you need a diary. They won't give you a chronological daily record of who was on site and what happened.

The real difference: typing versus not typing

Scroll back up this page and look at what nearly every app has in common. You open it. You tap into fields. You type what happened. You do it again tomorrow.

The tools differ in how nicely they lay those fields out, how good the PDF looks at the end, and how much they charge you for the privilege. But the work is the same work it was in 2014, and it's the same work as a paper diary — you're still the one writing it. The app just moved the paper onto a screen.

That's the bit Site Pal changes. You photograph the works and the entry writes itself. You walk the job talking and the report writes itself. The typing doesn't get easier — it stops.

It's the difference between a better notebook and not needing a notebook.

Some of the bigger platforms are moving this way too — Sitemate has added AI that fills report fields from photos and voice, and Reo App uses AI for briefings and insights. Both are worth a look if you're the size of company they're built for. If you're one person, or a small firm, or a tradesman running your own jobs, that's what Site Pal is for.

A word on snagging apps versus site diaries

These two things get lumped together in search results and they shouldn't. A snagging app answers what's wrong and who's fixing it. A site diary answers what happened on this site today.

If you're in a dispute about progress, delay or instructions, a snag list won't help you. If you're chasing a subcontractor to close out defects, a diary won't either. Plenty of people end up running both, and there's nothing wrong with that.

At a glance

How to choose properly

Try two, not fifteen. The one that suits your size and one alternative. Use both on the same week of real work. Whichever you actually reach for on a wet Tuesday is your answer.

Judge the PDF, not the app. Export a real report from each and picture sending it to your client, your main contractor or your QS. That's the only output that matters. If you're not sure what good looks like, we've written a full breakdown here: What Does a Good Site Diary Look Like?

Time one entry. Actually time it. Anything over two minutes won't survive a busy week, and you'll be back to a notebook inside a fortnight.

Beware "contact sales." If a company won't publish a price, it's because the price depends on how big you are. Fine if you've got a procurement department. If you're one person, you'll burn a week on calls to find out you can't afford it.

Don't pay per user or per project if you're neither. A flat single price nearly always works out cheaper for one person running several jobs.

Not ready for an app at all? Start with a paper or spreadsheet template and see whether you keep it up. We give ours away free: Free Site Diary Template (PDF, Word & Excel)

Common questions

What is a site diary?

A site diary is a dated record of what happened on a construction site each day — the work carried out, who was there, what plant and materials arrived, the weather, and anything that held things up. It's the primary evidence if there's ever a dispute about progress, delays or instructions.

Do I legally need to keep a site diary?

There's rarely a specific law requiring one, but most construction contracts require records of progress, delays and instructions, and a diary is how you produce them. If you're claiming for a delay or defending against one, contemporaneous records are usually what decides it.

What's the best free site diary app?

Script&Go's Site Diary has a free tier and is the most established free option. Several smaller apps are free with in-app purchases. Free tiers generally limit projects, entries or exports, so check before you rely on one.

Can an app write my site diary for me?

Yes. Site Pal writes the entry from a photograph, and can turn a spoken walk round the site into a finished report. Sitemate and Reo App also use AI to help populate reports.

What should a site diary include?

At minimum: the date, the weather, who was on site, what work was carried out and where, plant and materials, any delays or instructions, and photographs. Time and location stamps on the photos make the record far harder to argue with.