One photo. Every answer. All in your hands. Zählwerk reads your electricity, gas and water meters from a photo — and turns columns of numbers into a usage overview you actually enjoy looking at. No account. No forced cloud. Your data stays on your device.
Many households have perfectly ordinary analogue meters — and write down their electricity, gas and water readings by hand, month after month: scraps of paper, Excel, photos somewhere in the camera roll. And every year the annual bill still comes as a surprise. There has to be a smarter way.
That is where Zählwerk comes in: you photograph the meter, the recognition reads meter number and reading — you confirm, done. Every reading keeps its photo as proof, and your numbers become a picture you understand at a glance: what the month costs, where the trend is heading and what your bill will say at the end of the year.
Point the camera, done. The recognition knows mechanical drum counters including their decimal drums, finds the meter number and suggests the reading. The app takes the reading date from the time the photo was taken: even last week's forgotten photo ends up in the right month.
Every photo stays attached to its reading as proof. And if you take two readings on the same day, Zählwerk tells you in time, before your statistics go off.
Photo → reading
The app reads the capture date from the photo's EXIF data.
Shown without motion — you see the final state.
Camera button, photo, done: the recognition reads the value and assigns it to the right meter — checked against the last known reading. If it is not sure, it does not guess; you have the final say. If you prefer typing, that works too. A monthly reminder makes sure you never miss a reading date again.
The overview shows every meter as a card: the reading as a drum counter, the last six months as bars, plus cost per month, usage per day and the change against the previous month and the average. In the analysis you compare months, years and several addresses — and the forecast tells you what your annual bill will say in the end.
Zählwerk needs no account and no server. Everything is stored locally on your device, locked with Face ID or fingerprint if you like. The only thing that ever travels is a meter photo for recognition — and you decide which route it takes: Zählwerk recognition, your own API key or your own Ollama model on your home network.
Every meter gets a card: the reading as a mechanical drum counter, next to it the meter number. Below, the last six months as bars — the last full month in colour, the current one dimmed with a trend arrow.
And the three numbers that really matter: what the month costs, how much runs through per day and how that has changed against the previous month and the average. The address comparison puts several flats or houses side by side.
Enter your unit price, standing charge and monthly instalment. Zählwerk converts your usage into money — month by month, price changes included — and draws up the bill your supplier only sends at the end of the year: expected cost minus all twelve instalments, and there is your expected credit or amount to pay.
Zählwerk connects to your Easee wallbox and separates charging from household usage: a meter card of its own for charging, charging usage and cost per session in the analysis — and, if you like, the household “without wallbox”, so your base usage stays comparable.
Recognition is the only moment when anything can leave your device — triggered by you, never in the background. You decide which of the three routes it takes. After that the photo is discarded.
The photo goes to the recognition service, and two numbers come back: meter number and reading. Photos are discarded after recognition and are not used to train AI models.
You enter your own API key for Gemini, Mistral or OpenAI. Recognition then runs under your contract — nothing at all goes to us.
With an Ollama model on your own network, even the photo stays at home. No third party, no trip across the internet.
Exclusively on your device, in a local database. Zählwerk has no server. With the backup function you can export everything — database and proof photos — as a zip file at any time.
No. There isn't one. Install the app, add your first meter, get going.
Yes — the recognition is built for drum counters, knows decimal drums and checks every recognised value against the last known reading. If a photo cannot be read, you simply type the reading in; the photo is still saved as proof.
For recognition, yes — only this one photo, triggered by you. By default it goes to Zählwerk recognition and is discarded afterwards. Alternatively you enter your own API key for Gemini, Mistral or OpenAI, or you use an Ollama model on your home network — then even the photo stays at home.
It works with your measured usage of the last twelve months, your prices per month and all twelve instalments of the billing year. After a full year of readings it is a good rough figure; before that the app marks the amount as uncertain. What your supplier charges is decided by their bill.
Export the backup zip, import it on the new device — complete, including all photos. Switching between iPhone and Android works the same way.
Yes, via CSV import in the settings under “Export/Import” → “Import data”. Download the template, enter your readings in Excel or Numbers and save them as CSV: Vorlage (Deutsch) · Template (English) · Modèle (Français). The import creates meters and addresses that do not exist yet; readings that are already there are skipped.
Zählwerk manages any number of addresses with an address comparison of their own. When a meter is replaced, you join the old and the new meter cleanly — the history stays complete.
You buy the app once — no account, no ads. Photo recognition is included for the first month, after that it is a small monthly subscription: cancel any time, and everything else keeps working without it.
