What each field GIS ships, and what it does not
The table compares our GIS with the three most used open mobile GIS for field work.
Measured on 2026-09-13.
Capabilities of each mobile GIS
| SIG Campo Aplicado beta en desarrollo | QField 4.3.1 | Mergin Maps Mobile 2026.5.0 | NextGIS Mobile Android 3.2.1 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Field capture | ||||
| Data capture forms | Ships with it | Ships with it | Ships with it | Ships with it |
| Georeferenced photographs | Ships with it | Ships with it | Ships with it | Ships with it |
| The photo stays tied to the parcel and the crop | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Sketch that imports the selected feature and draws it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Geometric construction with metric offsets and legend | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Voice notes | Ships with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Barcode and QR reading | Ships with it | Ships with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it |
| NFC tag reading | Ships with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| External device sensors | Ships with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Offline work | Ships with it | Ships with it | Ships with it | Ships with it |
| Screen lock for working in the rain | Ships with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Layers and project | ||||
| Layer styling from the phone | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Ships with it |
| Feature labelling | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Ships with it |
| Querying online layers without freezing the map | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Side by side layer comparator | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| File comparison by SHA 256 fingerprint | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Merging official parcels while keeping data and provenance | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Geometry editing that keeps the data and recomputes the area | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Official layers in Shapefile | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Files of millions of features without freezing the interface | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Data thumbnail viewer | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| KML and KMZ support | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Ships with it |
| Creating projects and layers from the phone | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Ships with it |
| Change detector for official files | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Backups with a fingerprint | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Position and receivers | ||||
| External GNSS receiver | Ships with it | Ships with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it |
| RTK corrections over NTRIP | Ships with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Bluetooth low energy receivers | Ships with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Serial, TCP and UDP receivers | Ships with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Geofences and parcel entry alerts | Ships with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Navigation to a point | Ships with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Road routing to the parcel | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Track recording | Ships with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Ships with it |
| Spanish official data | ||||
| Offline SIGPAC parcels | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Province wide parcel download | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Crop declared in the subsidy application | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Cadastral reference | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| IGN and PNOA imagery | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| IGN geodetic network built in | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| REGENTE geodetic network vertices | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| CartoCiudad address search | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Spanish official reference systems | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Agroclimate | ||||
| AEMET observation and forecast | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| SIAR agroclimatic stations | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| RIA agroclimatic network of Andalusia | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Open reanalysis series | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Stations over API with your own credential | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Hybrid climate series, observed plus API | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Chill hours by five different models | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Seven day forecast over the parcel | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Remote sensing | ||||
| Sentinel 2 L2A as agronomic data, not as a backdrop | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Any instance layer connects, displays and downloads | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Quality mask with local raster post processing | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Two published mask methods, SCL and S2Cloudless | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Value computed locally and checked against the server | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Stable analysis geometry with an edge buffer | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Index formulas parameterised with their coefficients | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Series with statistics and traceability per observation | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Manual points to complete the series | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Comparison of two dates in the same series | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Four remote sensing providers | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Daily interpolated Kcb feeding the balance | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Agronomic calculation | ||||
| Reference evapotranspiration | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Dual coefficient with soil evaporation | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Phenological stages from growing degree days | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Irrigation scheduling | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Crop planning | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Nutrient uptake and fertigation | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Greenhouse structure | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Variable rate application maps | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Nutrient solution chemistry | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Crop catalogue with their coefficients | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Crop response to salinity | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Yield response coefficient | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Open models the user can parameterise | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Error and agroclimatic calculation log | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| The technician's work | ||||
| Work and crop units straight from the parcel | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Tool bound to the feature, georeferenced on its own | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Sampling grid over the parcel | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Sampling and visit schedule | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Traceability analysis | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Per layer change log | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Holding database | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Project distribution to field staff | Ships with it | Ships with it | Ships with it | Ships with it |
| GIS tools | ||||
| Staking out and coordinate geometry | Ships with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Angle and azimuth measurement | Ships with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Geoprocessing algorithms | Ships with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Map printing | Ships with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Elevation profile | Ships with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Measurement over the map | Ships with it | Ships with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it |
| Indexed and cascading search | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| 3D view | Does not ship with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
| Plugins | Does not ship with it | Ships with it | Does not ship with it | Does not ship with it |
Where your data ends up
The other three lean on a service with an account, optional in some and built in for another. Here the project comes down from the panel, the work stays on the phone, and nobody watches it on the way.
| SIG Campo Aplicado | QField | Mergin Maps Mobile | NextGIS Mobile Android | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Requires an account on an external service | No | Optional | Yes | Optional |
| Data travels through someone else's server | No | Optional | Yes | Optional |
| Sends the technician's live position | No | No | No | Optional |
| Sends usage telemetry | No | Yes. Telemetry can be switched off in settings. | Yes. Telemetry can be switched off in settings. | Yes. Telemetry can be switched off in settings. |
The part nobody else ships
The three GIS compared here collect data in any country. None of them knows what a SIGPAC parcel, a cadastral reference or a SIAR station is, and there is no reason they should. That is the difference: here the field work already arrives with the Spanish official data inside.
The calculation happens there, not later
A capture GIS returns points and photographs, and the calculation waits for the office. Here evapotranspiration, irrigation and the nutrient solution are resolved in the parcel itself, with the station and the crop already loaded.
Agronomic calculation
With the crop, climate, soil and management data of each parcel, on the phone.
Water and irrigation
- Reference evapotranspiration from a station, reanalysis or temperature only
- Initial, single and dual crop coefficient
- Evaporation from the soil surface layer
- Root depth, depletion and water stress
- Daily water balance and irrigation scheduling
- Daily basal coefficient from the satellite series
Climate and phenology
- Chill hours by five models
- Degree days by four methods
- Phenological stages by degree days
- Station series completed with open data
- Seven-day forecast over the parcel
Nutrition and fertigation
- Crop and nitrogen planning
- Nutrient uptake by stage
- Fertigation scheduling
- Nutrient solution formulation
- Greenhouse structure
Crop and yield
- Crop response to salinity
- Yield response to water deficit
- Vegetation indices calculated on the phone
- Variable rate maps
- 412
- crops with a single coefficient
- 344
- crops with a basal coefficient
- 353
- crops with rooting depth and depletion
- 230
- crops with growing degree day thresholds
- 102
- crops with a salinity response
- 30
- crops with a yield response
Capabilities adapted to the work
What the app handles at each stage, from preparing the project to delivering the results.
-
Project creation and configuration
Creates projects, GeoPackage layers, fields, constraints and official reference systems directly on the device.
-
Work by layers and features
Combines official attributes with technical observations. Editing and merging retain data and provenance, and recompute area when geometry changes.
-
Official mapping offline
Downloads SIGPAC by province, IGN mapping and geodetic networks. Fingerprint comparison detects changes in official files.
-
Capture linked to geometry
Forms, photographs, sketches, voice notes, codes and NFC tags remain linked to the feature. Identification queries visible layers without blocking the map.
-
Positioning and geodetic calculations
Supports Bluetooth, serial, TCP and UDP receivers, along with RTK corrections over NTRIP. Final accuracy depends on the receiver, corrections and observation conditions.
-
Agroclimatic integration
Integrates AEMET, SIAR, the RIA network of Andalusia and open reanalysis series. Observations are stored on the device to maintain calculations offline.
-
Local Sentinel 2 processing
Applies quality masks and raster post processing on the device. Each observation retains statistics, geometry, date and calculation method.
-
Water balance and irrigation scheduling
Integrates reference evapotranspiration, dual coefficient, soil evaporation, satellite Kcb and degree day phenology.
-
Nutrient solutions and fertigation
Formulates the nutrient solution from uptake by stage, concentration targets and available fertilisers.
-
Variable rate application maps
Converts vegetation indices and crop units into parameterised rate maps on the device.
-
Sampling and traceability
Generates sampling grids, organises visits and maintains traceability for each sample through to analysis.
-
Data persistence and control
Changes are written to disk and backups are verified by fingerprint. Project data remains local except for external queries initiated by the user.
What gets checked
Checks run by each application's test suite.
SIG Campo Aplicado
2.174153 cases
QField 4.3.1
1.435375 cases
They check the result against the FAO 56 calculation annexes, SIAR station series and Sentinel series over known parcels.
Size of the program
Lines of application code. Build output, dependencies, tests, documentation and translations are excluded.
SIG Campo Aplicado
252.100
QField 4.3.1
136.388
MapLibre GL JS 6.9.0
127.927
OpenLayers 10.10.0
116.778
NextGIS Mobile Android 3.2.1
93.521
Mergin Maps Mobile 2026.5.0
72.809
MapLibre GL JS and OpenLayers are web mapping libraries, not field applications: they appear only as a size reference.
What this buys
Fewer steps between the visit and the decision. The technician goes out with the parcel, the weather and the calculation on the same phone, and comes back with the work done instead of a list of data to process.