Planta vs Leaftide: Plant care app or garden planner?
Planta and Leaftide solve different problems. Planta is a plant care app that helps you keep houseplants alive. Leaftide is a garden planner that helps you grow vegetables and track fruit trees. Here's how they compare if you're deciding between them.
At a glance
Choose Planta if you need
- 💧 Smart watering schedules for houseplants
- 📸 Plant identification from a photo
- 💡 A light meter to find the right spot for each plant
- 🩺 Disease diagnosis for sick plants
Choose Leaftide if you need
- 🌳 Fruit tree and perennial lifecycle tracking
- 📐 A visual drag-and-drop garden bed planner
- 📅 Sowing calendars and harvest predictions
- 🆓 A free tier that doesn't expire
Feature comparison
| Feature | Planta | Leaftide |
|---|---|---|
| Smart watering reminders | ✓ | ✗ |
| Plant identification (photo) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Light meter | ✓ | ✗ |
| Plant disease diagnosis | ✓ | ✗ |
| Visual bed/plot planner | ✗ | ✓ |
| Planting calendar (sow/transplant dates) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Harvest predictions (GDD-based) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Permanent plants (fruit trees, shrubs) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Pruning schedules and age tracking | ✗ | ✓ |
| Companion planting | ✗ | ✓ |
| Succession planting | ✗ | ✓ |
| Container planner | ✗ | Dedicated mode |
| Garden journal | ✓ | ✓ |
| Task lists and reminders | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom plant varieties | ✗ | ✓ |
| Web app | ✗ | ✓ |
| Native mobile apps | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free tier | Very limited | Free forever |
| Lifetime purchase option | ✗ | ✓ |
| Keep data if you cancel | ✗ | ✓ |
Pricing: Planta Premium is $7.99/month or $35.99-47.99/year (subscription only). Leaftide is free forever, with paid plans from £5/month or £45/year. Lifetime option available.
Key differences explained
🎯 Different tools for different gardeners
Planta is built for indoor plant parents. It excels at keeping houseplants alive with smart watering schedules, light recommendations, and disease diagnosis. It has over 7 million users and a polished mobile experience.
Leaftide is built for people who grow food. It helps you plan vegetable beds, schedule sowings based on your local climate, predict harvest dates, and track permanent plants like fruit trees and berry bushes across years.
🌳 Fruit trees and perennials need a different approach
Planta can remind you to water a potted lemon tree, but it doesn't track pruning schedules, age, bloom cycles, or predict when your apple tree will fruit based on growing degree days. Leaftide treats permanent plants as first-class citizens with lifecycle tracking, care routines, and year-over-year history.
📐 Plan your garden, not just care for it
Planta doesn't have a garden bed planner. If you want to lay out raised beds, plan companion planting, schedule succession sowings, or figure out when to start seeds indoors based on your frost dates, that's what Leaftide is built for. Harvest predictions use growing degree days from your specific location, not generic timelines.
🔒 Free tier and data ownership
Planta's free version is quite limited — you get basic watering reminders but plant identification, the light meter, disease diagnosis, and custom schedules all require a premium subscription. There's no lifetime option; it's a recurring subscription.
Leaftide has a free tier that works forever with no time limit. If you cancel a paid plan, your data stays accessible. There's also a lifetime purchase option if you prefer not to subscribe.
🖥️ Mobile-only vs web + mobile
Planta is a mobile-only app (iOS and Android). Leaftide works on the web and has native iOS and Android apps, so you can plan your garden on a laptop and check tasks on your phone. The plot designer in particular is much easier to use on a larger screen.
⚖️ Where Planta does better
Planta is genuinely excellent at what it does. If your main need is keeping houseplants alive, it's the better choice:
- Its watering algorithm uses 30+ parameters including local weather to schedule watering, misting, fertilising, and repotting. Leaftide has task-based reminders but not smart watering schedules.
- The plant identification feature recognises thousands of species from a photo. Leaftide doesn't have plant ID.
- The built-in light meter helps you find the right spot for each plant. Leaftide doesn't have this.
- Dr. Planta can diagnose plant diseases from photos. Leaftide doesn't offer this.
- Planta has a massive community of 7M+ users and a very polished mobile experience.
If you grow both houseplants and a vegetable garden, you might find value in using both apps.
Growing food? Give Leaftide a try.
If you're planning a vegetable garden or tracking fruit trees, Leaftide was built for you.
Try Leaftide FreeFree forever. No credit card required.