Point your camera at a find.
Lupa turns a photo into a short, honest list of candidates, then a few field checks narrow it down. A real answer when there's one. “No good match” when that's the truth.
Free to start · 5 identifications every month · no account required
From photo to proof, in four steps.
Every find follows the same honest path: no upload forms, no guesswork dressed up as certainty.
Snap a photo
Point your camera at a rock, mineral, or crystal. That's the whole first step.
Get honest candidates
A short, ranked list with the reasoning behind each one, not a single confident label.
Run a field check
A scratch, a streak, a drop of vinegar, a magnet. The same checks a geologist reaches for.
Save it
Log the find with a photo, a note, and a location. It joins your collection and your map.
Built like a field guide, not a toy.
Every part of Lupa exists to answer one question honestly: what did you actually find?
Honest identification, not a single guess
Every photo is checked against a curated reference of 268 rock, mineral, and crystal species. You get a ranked shortlist and the reasoning behind it, and a plain “no good match” when nothing fits well enough to say so.
Field checks that actually work
Streak, hardness, an acid test, a magnet. Each one explained in plain language, the same checks a geologist would reach for.
Hazard-aware, before you touch anything
Specimens worth handling carefully are flagged before Lupa ever suggests picking them up.
A map of everywhere you've collected
Every find sits on a personal map, alongside a geology layer showing the rock formation, and its age, under your feet.
A collection that adds up
Species, finds, and places, tallied automatically, plus a shareable yearly retrospective of your best finds.
Private by default
Your collection lives on your phone, not an account. Sharing a find is a choice you make per find, and location is left out by default: collecting spots are worth keeping to yourself.
Built for people who actually go looking.
Most rock identification apps do one thing: return a single confident label and move on. That's a bad match for how rockhounding actually works. Two minerals can look nearly identical in a photo and completely different under a streak test. An honest tool says which candidates are worth checking, then tells you how to check them: a scratch on unglazed porcelain, a drop of vinegar, a magnet, a hardness pick. Lupa was built around that field-guide logic instead of a single AI verdict.
It's also built around the part that comes after the identification. A find without a location and a date is just a photo. Lupa keeps a real collection: species confirmed, places visited, a map that fills in over seasons of collecting, and the geology underneath every spot you've stood on. Whether you're a weekend rockhound, a student learning mineral properties in the field, or someone who picked up a strange rock on a hike and wants a real answer, that's the tool this app tries to be.
Questions people actually ask.
Is Lupa free?
Yes. Every account gets 5 identifications a month with no sign-up required. Lupa Pro removes that monthly cap and adds the geology layer, full data export, and a 3-day free trial.
What if Lupa doesn't recognize what I found?
It says so. You get a short list of plausible candidates with the reasoning behind each one, or an honest “no good match,” not a single confident label standing in for a guess.
Is my location shared with anyone?
No. Lupa takes one location fix when you save a find, stores it on your device, and uses it to look up the geology at that spot. Sharing a find is opt-in and per find, with location left off by default.
Does Lupa work on Android?
Not yet. Lupa is starting on iPhone; a wider release depends on how this first version lands.
Do I lose my collection if I stop paying for Pro?
No. Everything you've already saved stays on your phone and stays visible whether or not you subscribe. Pro only affects the monthly identification cap and a few extra views.
Where does the identification come from?
Each photo is checked against a curated reference of 268 species, cross-referenced with open geological data (Macrostrat, RRUFF, Wikidata) for the formation under your coordinate. Read more in the Privacy Policy.
Your rock collection deserves a proper field guide.
Free to start. No account required for your first identifications.