Best Breast Pumping Apps: Track Your Milk and your Output

Breast pumping apps can be a great tool to keep track of how much you are pumping and how much your baby is eating. But what apps on the market are the best breast pumping apps for tracking pumping sessions and output?

Before deciding which app to get, you have to decide what you want it to use it for. Do you want to just track how much you pump at each session? Or is tracking your stash of milk more important?

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I decided to play around with some pumping apps and ending up buying the top four in the App Store in a quest to find out. (Note: I bought all of these myself and wasn’t asked by anyone to review them; I just did this for fun. Additionally, this post was originally written in 2014 but was updated in 2020 with current pumping apps on the market.)

Milk Maid

Price: $2.99

Platforms: Apple (iPhone, iPad)

Features:

Allows you to track pumping time and output, your stash, and the use of milk. You can see how much milk you have in the different locations that you can set up (Home Fridge, Daycare Fridge, etc.), and you can view and export pumping and feeding stats. It also has an alarm to remind you that it’s time to pump.

Pros:

• The ability to see exactly how much milk you have at any given location.
• Capability to calculate how many days of milk you have stashed based on your baby’s intake and how much you have stored.
• Stats that show you trends on how much you’re pumping on each side, how much you’re feeding your baby, how much time you’re pumping and the length of your pumping sessions. (Being able to see the trends can make a huge difference in being able to make adjustments to your pumping schedule, etc., when necessary, so I think this is a great tool.)
• It has a Settings section where you can configure things like how much your baby eats per day and what time your pumping day starts.

Cons:

I don’t have a lot of complaints about this app. The only thing I would say is that it is great for anal people (like me) who like lots of data. But if you don’t want to deal with moving your milk from daycare to home and back in the app all the time, it might be a little too much.

Bottom Line:

If you are exclusively pumping, this is probably the best app for you.

Milk Stash

Price: Free.

Platforms: Apple (iPhone, iPad)

Features:

The app allows you to create different “stashes” and calculate how much milk you have stored in each. So, for example, you might have a refrigerator stash, a freezer stash, and a cooler in transit home from work. You can also track the amount of time that you pump and how much you get from each session. The app developers are also working on a milk storage solution via KickStarter that integrates with the app.

Pros:

• It allows you to see how much your pumping output fluctuates from day to day, which means you can identify gradual supply drops easily and address them.
• You can also connect your account with a caregiver, so that you can track your breast milk elsewhere as well.
• You can access the app via the web in addition to the app. It’s free, and there are no ads.

Cons:

I think that the recommended storage times are overly conservative (for example, 56 days for deep freeze), but you can change them in Settings.

Bottom Line:

If your primary interest is tracking your stash (versus your pumping sessions), this is the best free app.

Pump Log

Price: Free for the first 50 pump session records, and then $8.99 to continue using it after that.

Platforms: Apple (iPhone).

Features:

Allows you to track the start time, duration, output, and notes for pumping sessions. You can set alarms to remind you for the next time that you should pump. There is a Countdown Calculator that allows you to determine when you have enough of a freezer stash to stop pumping. It also graphs pumping stats – both output and time spent pumping.

Pros:

This is a pretty simple app that does a few things but does them mostly really well.

• I like that the alarm setting functionality is flexible – you can set the next time, versus it going off every X number of hours (which might not be your schedule).
• You can log sessions after the fact.
• The graphing feature so you can see your stats works well.
• There are no ads.

Cons:

The Countdown Calculator is pretty cool, I just have minor complaints like you can only modify your production in 0.1 increments so that’s a lot of clicks to get from the 0 oz default, to, say 30 oz. You should just be able to type it in. However, you only have to set that once, so like I said, it’s minor.

Bottom Line:

If your primary focus is tracking sessions (versus stash), I would try this one and Pumping Work (below) out before deciding which to buy.

Pumping Work

Price: Free; Pro version is $1.99.

Platforms: Apple (iPhone).

Features:

Allows you to track the start time, duration, output by side, and notes for pumping sessions. You can also indicate whether the milk is fresh, frozen, or has been fed to your baby. When you start a pumping session, you can set a countdown for when the session should end. There is reporting that allows you to see trends for duration and output. The free version has ads but the Pro version does not.

Pros:

• This app is flexible with how it allows you to log pumping sessions (either by the Start button or by logging it later)
• I like the log view that shows you your past sessions (time and output)

Cons:

• The ads on the free version are a bit intrusive when you try to look at the reporting; I kept getting sent to a game center and wasn’t able to see the charts. When I upgraded to the Pro version, the ads went away.
• I would probably also suggest different metrics that what the app currently reports – right now it does average, min, and max for output and duration over the last 7 days, 30 days, and forever. This doesn’t allow you to see fluctuations that might happen when you have your period, for example, because it would just be averaged in with a 30 day total.

Bottom Line:

If your primary focus is tracking sessions (versus stash), I would try this one and Pump Log out before deciding which to buy.

Have you used any of these apps? Do you have an opinion about which are the best breast pumping apps?