Compare / Best garden planning apps in 2026
Best garden planning app in 2026
Grow To Eat is the one to pick if you want a plan you use every week rather than one you draw once. The sowing plan, the weekly list and every growing guide are free, with no cap on any of them.
Most garden apps identify plants or store photographs. A planning app has to answer harder questions: when do I sow this where I live, what needs doing this week, and where does it go in the beds. Here is how five apps do against those three tests.
Last updated September 2026
Quick picks
- Best overall, and best free plan: Grow To Eat — A sowing plan from your location, a weekly task list, and nothing capped on the free tier.
- Best for crop rotation: GrowVeg — Warns you when a family repeats in a bed, using five years of your own plans.
- Best for Almanac readers: Almanac Garden Planner — The same layout engine as GrowVeg, tied to the Almanac's own frost data and guides.
- Best square-foot planner: Planter — Illustrated tiles on a grid of squares, with a free garden to start in.
- Best for a quick climate-zone lookup: Gardenate — What can go in this month where you live, with no account to make.
What makes it a planning app, not a gardening app
- ✓Scheduling. Does it know when to sow where you actually garden, or does it hand you the same window as everyone else in your zone?
- ✓Tasks. Does it tell you what needs doing this week, or does it leave you to read the plan and work it out? A monthly email and a weekly list are not the same thing.
- ✓Layout. Can you say where things go, and does the app do anything with that afterwards — spacing, rotation, what is in which bed right now?
This is our page. Grow To Eat is our app and it is first on this list, so read the ranking as ours. What we can do is name what it does not do, which is the section headed where the others do it better below. If something here is wrong, tell us: contact@growtoeat.app.
Grow To Eat
Best for a plan you use every week
Pricing: Free with no time limit. Premium 7.49 euros a month or 44.99 euros a year.
Pros
- ✓The sowing plan, the weekly view, harvest tracking and every growing guide are free, with no cap
- ✓Dates set from your location rather than a zone you pick off a list
- ✓A weekly list, not a monthly email
- ✓120+ crops, all edible, each with a full A-Z guide from propagation to preservation
- ✓Crop filters for shade, pollinator value and difficulty
- ✓Native iPhone and Android apps
Cons
- ✗The bed planner and succession planting are Premium
- ✗No crop rotation or plant spacing warnings
- ✗Beds are rectangles and squares, with no square-foot grid
- ✗Northern hemisphere only, and English only today
- ✗No push notifications yet, and no export of your data
A sowing plan for your garden, free
Dates from your location and a weekly list of what to do next. No credit card required.
GrowVeg
Best for crop rotation
Pricing: $35 a year recurring, or $50 for a single year. 7-day trial, no card.
Pros
- ✓Crop rotation warnings drawn from five years of your own plans
- ✓Plant spacing calculated as you place crops
- ✓A square-foot mode that fills each square with the right plant count
- ✓408 plant types and thousands of named varieties
- ✓Frost dates pulled from your nearest weather station
Cons
- ✗Runs in a browser — nothing native to carry out to the beds
- ✗Reminders arrive by email twice a month rather than as a weekly list
- ✗No free tier: a 7-day trial, then a subscription
- ✗Your plans go when the subscription does
- ✗The library spans ornamentals and trees, so a food grower reads past much of it
Almanac Garden Planner
Best for Almanac readers
Pricing: 7-day trial, then about $50 a year. The separate planting calendar is free.
Pros
- ✓The same layout engine, rotation warnings and spacing as GrowVeg
- ✓Frost dates and growing advice from the Almanac's own data
- ✓A large plant library covering food and ornamentals
- ✓A separate free planting calendar on almanac.com needs no account
Cons
- ✗Browser-based, with no native phone app
- ✗The same 7-day trial and no free tier on the planner itself
- ✗The free calendar is US postcodes only
- ✗Nothing here that GrowVeg does not already do, since it is the same engine
Planter
Best square-foot planner
Pricing: $24.99 a year, or $99.99 once. Free tier with one garden.
Pros
- ✓The free tier includes a garden, a calendar and your own custom plants
- ✓A square-foot grid built for raised beds
- ✓Companion and spacing warnings while you lay the bed out
- ✓A one-off lifetime price instead of a subscription
- ✓iPhone, Android, Fire and the web
Cons
- ✗No weekly task list — the help largely stops once the layout is drawn
- ✗No crop rotation tracking
- ✗Planting dates are less specific to where you are than the schedulers here
- ✗Named varieties sit in a list rather than driving the dates
Gardenate
Best for a quick climate-zone lookup
Pricing: Free on the web. The full app is about $2, once.
Pros
- ✓Free on the web, and about $2 once for the full app
- ✓Six countries, including Australia, New Zealand and South Africa
- ✓Sowing depth, spacing, companions and weeks to harvest per plant
- ✓Scan a seed packet to save the variety
- ✓Works offline, with no account to make
Cons
- ✗The list is the same for everyone in your climate zone, wherever you are inside it
- ✗No bed planner and no layout of any kind
- ✗A monthly email rather than a weekly list
- ✗Planting records only — nothing works forward from them
Where the others do it better
GrowVeg and the Almanac Garden Planner
Crop rotation is the clearest gap. Both warn you when a family returns to a bed too soon, using years of your own plans, and Grow To Eat has nothing like it. They also calculate plant spacing as you draw, and both carry a square-foot mode. If the layout is the part of planning you care about, they do it better and it is not close.
Planter
The square-foot grid is the thing to go there for, and the free tier is generous: a whole garden, a calendar and your own custom plants without paying. Grow To Eat's bed planner is Premium, and its beds are plain rectangles with no grid at all.
Gardenate
Nothing here beats it for getting an answer in ten seconds with no account, and it works in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, where Grow To Eat does not work at all. The seed packet scanner is a nicer piece of design than anything we have for recording a variety.
All four of them
Every one of them works in both hemispheres or across more countries than we do. Grow To Eat is northern hemisphere only and English only, and if you garden south of the equator none of the rest of this page matters.
Planning features compared
| Planning feature | Grow To Eat | GrowVeg | Almanac | Planter | Gardenate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where the sowing dates come from | Your location | Nearest weather station | Nearest weather station | Frost dates | Climate zone |
| What to do this week | Weekly list in the app | Email, twice a month | Email, twice a month | No | Monthly email |
| Visual bed planner | Premium | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Square-foot mode | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Crop rotation warnings | No | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Plant spacing worked out | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Guides only |
| Succession planting | Premium | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Harvest tracking | Free | No | No | No | Planting records |
| Full growing guide per crop | Free, all 120+ | Yes | Yes | Basic | Yes |
| Native phone app | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Where it works | Northern hemisphere | Both hemispheres | Both hemispheres | Both hemispheres | 6 countries |
| Free tier | Whole sowing plan, uncapped | 7-day trial | 7-day trial | 1 garden | Everything |
| A year costs | 44.99 euros | $35-50 | About $50 | $24.99 | About $2, once |
Frequently asked questions
What is the best garden planning app in 2026?
Is there a free garden planning app?
What makes something a planning app rather than a gardening app?
Which garden planning apps use your location?
Do garden planning apps tell you what to do each week?
Are GrowVeg and the Almanac Garden Planner the same thing?
Which garden planning app has a proper phone app?
What should a garden planning app cost?
Plan your season without paying first
The whole sowing plan, the weekly view and every growing guide are free. No credit card required.
Head-to-head comparisons
Last updated: September 2026