Most comparisons of plant apps are written by people who never opened them. This one is not. Everything below about PictureThis, PlantIn and Gardenix is tested, checked on official websites, in 2026, and where they are better and worse than others. Prices and features change, so treat the numbers as a snapshot and check the store before you buy.
Three apps, three different bets about what a plant owner needs. Here is what each one is for.
What PictureThis is good at
PictureThis is the biggest name in this category and it has earned that position. It carries a 4.8 star rating from around 1.1 million ratings on the App Store, holds an Editors' Choice badge, and is made by Glority Global Group.
Its own listing claims identification of over 400,000 plant species with "over 98% accuracy". That figure is the company's own, but the size of the review base tells you the identification works well enough for a very large number of people.
Its feature list includes plant identification, disease diagnosis with treatment plans, watering and fertilising reminders, toxic plant warnings for pets and children, weed identification, a light meter that measures how much sun a spot gets, collection management with a wishlist, and chat with experts.
What PlantIn is good at
PlantIn carries 4.6 stars from around 228,000 ratings and is made by Vortemol Limited. It supports 19 languages.
Its strongest card is the human one. "Ask the Botanist" connects you to a real botanist rather than an automated answer, and the app extends the same idea to fungi with mycologist support. It also has a mushroom identifier that works offline, a watering calculator, an augmented reality light meter, a global community to compare notes with, and care notifications.
Those care notifications matter for this comparison, because PlantIn's listing explicitly promises "special weather notifications so that you will be warned in case of storms, freezing temperatures, and other unfavorable conditions that may harm your outdoor oasis". If weather warnings are what you came for, PlantIn has them.
What Gardenix is good at
Gardenix is the newest of the three and aims at a narrower target: identification and diagnosis that work the same for a houseplant and a garden bed, then tracking what happens to that plant over the weeks after. A few of its features only matter outdoors; most of them do not.
Weather built into the free tier
As of 1 September 2026, PictureThis's App Store listing mentions no weather feature at all. PlantIn's does. So this is a real difference against one of the two, not both.
Gardenix makes rain delay and frost alerts free forever rather than a paid extra. If rain is forecast, the watering reminder moves itself rather than nagging you to water a bed that is about to get soaked. If a cold night is coming, the warning arrives while there is still time to fleece something. Storm and severe wind warnings for outdoor plants are part of Premium. An hourly and seven day forecast is free.
If everything you own lives on a windowsill, this section is worth nothing to you and the rest of the app still is. If you have a balcony, a vegetable bed or fruit trees, it is the feature that earns its place fastest.
A chat that already knows your plants
What the app adds, and what neither competitor advertises, is memory of your actual garden. Ask why a monstera keeps struggling and the answer takes into account that specific plant, its scan history and whether its health score has been drifting down for three weeks. There is no re-explaining the situation to a blank box every time. A chat can also be opened attached to one specific diagnosis, so the conversation starts from the photo that was taken a moment earlier.
A health score you can watch over time
Every scan produces a score from 0 to 100, and those scores build a timeline chart that can be tapped through point by point. That turns a vague sense that a plant looks a bit better into something you can check.
When a score climbs back up, the app says so, which is a small thing that matters more than it sounds when you have been nursing something for a month. When it drops, that decline can be taken straight into the chat. Plants that needed attention get a gentle check-in later asking how they are doing, and a progress card showing the photo and the score journey can be shared.
Treatment plans sized to the actual problem
A healthy plant with one yellow leaf does not need an eight step protocol, and a badly infested one is not helped by three vague lines. The plans scale with severity, from two or three steps for something minor up to eight for something serious, and the steps refer to what is visible in the photo you took rather than to a generic species article.
Alongside the main plan there are home remedy suggestions, the traditional household approaches, for people who would rather try something from the kitchen cupboard before buying a product.
Honest about uncertainty
Every identification comes with a confidence score, and the app will say when a photo is unclear or is not a plant at all instead of confidently naming something wrong. An identifier that produces an answer every time is not more accurate, it is less willing to admit when it does not know.
The small things that add up
Folders and tags for the collection. Notes on each plant and each individual scan. Full scan history that stays revisitable. A merge function for when the same plant has been photographed twice, with photo based disambiguation for collections holding several of the same species. Renaming, acquisition dates, substrate and light recommendations, repotting guidance and overwintering advice per species. Reminder intervals that can be adjusted by hand, and a postpone button for the days when that is all you can manage.
An account is optional and free. Signing in with Apple, Google or a one-time code backs up the whole garden including photos to the cloud. Skip it and everything works exactly the same, stored only on the device.
Pricing, plainly
Here are the numbers. The Gardenix figures are exact. The PictureThis figures come from its US App Store listing and published subscription terms. All prices are US pricing, checked 1 September 2026, and will differ by country.
- Gardenix: $4.99 a month, or $29.99 a year. A pack of 25 extra scans is $2.99 with no subscription at all.
- PictureThis: $39.99 a year. It offers other plans at other intervals as well; check the store for current terms.
On the annual plan that is $29.99 against $39.99.
The structural difference matters more than the ten dollars. Gardenix gives 3 scans free for life. Not a trial, not seven days, not a countdown. They do not expire, and nothing converts into a subscription when they run out. PictureThis runs a 7 day free trial that automatically becomes the $39.99 annual subscription unless cancelled at least 24 hours before it ends, and its free tier carries ads and upgrade prompts. Both models are entirely legitimate and clearly disclosed. They suit different people, and the automatic conversion is the single most common thing users complain about in the reviews.
Gardenix is also the only one of the three with a way to pay once and never subscribe. If 25 scans is all you need this year, $2.99 buys them and that is the end of it.
For PlantIn no head to head numbers are printed here. Its listing shows several overlapping plans and the annual price matches Gardenix, so a comparison would be either a tie or a cherry pick depending on which plan was chosen. Check the store page.
A young app, moving quickly
Gardenix is a young app. PictureThis and PlantIn have years of head start, far larger teams and review counts it will not match for a long time.
What it has instead is pace. The app is worked on every day and has shipped meaningful updates steadily since launch. Referrals, storm alerts, folders, the health timeline, progress cards and the optional cloud backup are all live now, and most of them landed because someone asked for them. Messages reach the people building it rather than a queue.
So which one should you install?
It depends on what you grow.
Pick PictureThis if you want the largest species database and the biggest track record, if a light meter or weed identification solves a real problem for you, or if you need a family plan.
Pick PlantIn if you want a real botanist to answer you, if you forage mushrooms, if you want a community, or if you need a language the others do not support.
Pick Gardenix if you grow indoors, outdoors or both, since identification, diagnosis and health tracking work the same for a windowsill monstera and a row of onions; if you want to watch whether a plant is recovering rather than guess; if you want advice that remembers your specific plants; if three permanent free scans and a cheap one-time top-up suit you better than a trial with a deadline attached; if you also garden outside and want frost, rain and storm handled at no extra cost; or if you want an app that is still being built quickly, where a suggestion has a real chance of shipping.
One last thing, in the interest of fairness
Full disclosure: this comparison was written by the team behind Gardenix. That is precisely why the sections above stick to what PictureThis and PlantIn publish about themselves, quote them directly, and say plainly where the other two do something Gardenix does not. If any of it stops being accurate, tell us and it gets corrected.
Whichever you choose, the diagnosis is only the start. To understand what you are looking at rather than only treat it, our guides on why plant leaves turn yellow and telling spider mites from mealybugs and fungus gnats cover the two problems people misdiagnose most often.
Gardenix is free to download on Apple iOS and Android, and the first 3 scans are free for life.
