Grow To Eat vs GrowVeg: which garden planner is right for you?
Grow To Eat vs GrowVeg comes down to where you use it. GrowVeg is a powerful browser-based planner for designing a whole garden at a desk. Grow To Eat is a phone app for growing food, built to be opened in the garden.
GrowVeg has been going since 2007 and it shows: 408 vegetables, herbs, fruit and flowers, 21,657 varieties, crop rotation warnings, and companion planting built from 502 scientific studies. It is the more powerful planning tool, and this page says so plainly. Grow To Eat is a different kind of product — a native iOS and Android app, focused only on edible crops, that tells you what to do in the garden this week.
At a glance
What they share
- ✓Visual drag-and-drop garden bed planner
- ✓Planting dates personalised to where you garden
- ✓Succession planting to keep beds producing
- ✓Companion planting guidance
- ✓Add your own crops and varieties
- ✓Step-by-step growing guidance for each crop
Where Grow To Eat differs
- ●A native app on both iOS and Android, not a browser tool
- ●Built only for edible crops — no ornamentals to wade through
- ●A weekly “what to do now” view: sowings, next steps and harvests together
- ●A free tier that never expires, rather than a 7-day trial
- ●Crop suggestions filtered by shade, pollinator value and difficulty
- ●Designed to be used standing in the garden, on a phone
Grow To Eat vs GrowVeg: feature comparison
| Feature | GrowVeg | Grow To Eat |
|---|---|---|
| Once the season starts | ||
| Weekly “what to do now” view | Partial | ✓ |
| Task list for what's due | – | ✓ |
| Harvest tracking | – | ✓ |
| Reminders for what's next | Email reminders | In-app, on the home screen |
| Succession planting for continuous harvest | ✓ | ✓ |
| Crop rotation warnings | ✓ | – |
| Plant spacing warnings | ✓ | – |
| What you can grow | ||
| Focus | Whole garden | Edible crops only |
| Plant types in the library | 408 incl. flowers & ornamentals | 120+ edible crops, incl. edible flowers and berries |
| Named varieties built in | 21,657 | No — by design, you add your own |
| Crop filters (shade, pollinators, difficulty) | – | ✓ |
| A–Z guides: propagation to preservation | Partial | ✓ |
| Where and how you use it | ||
| Personalised planting dates | Yes — 5,000 weather stations | Yes — your location |
| Where it works | Global, both hemispheres | Northern hemisphere |
| How you use it | In a web browser | Native iPhone and Android apps |
| What it costs | ||
| What's behind the paywall | Everything — there is no free tier | Garden planner, succession planting, custom crops |
| Free tier | None — 7-day trial | Uncapped sowing plan + all guides |
| Yearly price | $35 recurring / $50 one year | €44.99 |
Prices and features checked August 2026. GrowVeg pricing shown in USD, Grow To Eat in EUR. Sources: . GrowVeg features and pricing taken from growveg.com, August 2026. Prices shown in the currency each app charges in.
A garden planner that lives in your pocket
Free sowing plans and full A–Z growing guides. No credit card required.
The key differences explained
A phone in the garden, or a browser at the desk
This is the difference that matters most day to day. GrowVeg runs in a web browser. There is a companion app, Garden Plan Pro, but it is iOS only — there is no Android version — and the planner itself is designed for a large screen and a mouse. It is excellent for an evening of planning in January.
Grow To Eat is a native app on both iPhone and Android, and it is built for the other ten months: standing at the bed with muddy hands, checking what needs sowing this week. Planning a garden and running one are different jobs, and they suit different devices.
A whole garden, or the edible part of it
GrowVeg’s library is far larger: 408 vegetables, herbs, fruit and flowers, with 21,657 named varieties, plus ornamentals, trees, shrubs and tropical plants. If you want to design a whole garden — borders, hedging and the vegetable patch together — that breadth is the reason to choose it.
Grow To Eat carries 120+ crops and every one of them is food. Nothing ornamental, nothing you cannot eat. That makes the library smaller and the choosing faster, and it is why the crop filters ask the questions a food grower actually asks: what will crop in partial shade, what feeds pollinators, what is forgiving in a first season.
Bigger is genuinely better if you are planning a whole garden. Narrower is better if you only want to eat what you grow.
What you get without paying
GrowVeg gives you 7 days free, with no card required, and then the planner closes unless you subscribe: $35 a year on the recurring plan, $50 for a single year, or $85 for two. There is no permanent free tier.
Grow To Eat’s free tier does not expire. Your sowing plan, the weekly view and the full A–Z growing guides stay open for as long as you want them, with no cap. Premium adds the visual garden planner — drag-and-drop beds, the bed-by-bed overview and succession planting — at €7.49/month or €44.99/year.
Worth being straight about the money, though: on annual price GrowVeg is cheaper. $35 against €44.99 is a real difference, and if you are going to pay either way, GrowVeg gives you more planning tool for less.
Know what to do in the garden this week
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Where GrowVeg does it better
GrowVeg is the more capable planning tool, and it would be silly to pretend otherwise. Six things it does that Grow To Eat does not:
- Crop rotation warnings: GrowVeg tracks plant families across years and warns you when you are about to repeat one in the same bed. Grow To Eat has no equivalent — it is on our roadmap, not in the app.
- Plant spacing warnings: On-screen warnings when you place plants too close together. Again, not something Grow To Eat does today.
- A far larger plant library: 408 plant types and 21,657 named varieties, against 120+ food crops. If you want a specific heritage tomato by name, GrowVeg probably has it.
- Evidence-based companion planting: GrowVeg's companion planting was built by analysing 502 scientific studies, and it works inside the bed planner rather than only in the guides.
- Global coverage: 5,000 weather stations covering all major regions in both hemispheres. Grow To Eat covers the northern hemisphere only.
- Garden structures and rollover planning: Sheds, greenhouses and cold frames in the layout, and a one-click roll of this year's plan into next year's.
If you want the most capable garden design tool and you are happy to plan at a desk, GrowVeg is the better software and nearly twenty years of development shows.
Choose GrowVeg if…
- You want to design a whole garden, not just the edible part
- You want crop rotation and spacing warnings doing the thinking for you
- You want a specific named variety from a very large library
- You plan at a computer and like room to work
- You garden in the southern hemisphere
Choose Grow To Eat if…
- You want a real app on your phone, iPhone or Android, out in the garden
- You are growing food and don't need ornamentals in the way
- You want to open an app and see what to do this week
- You want to keep using it for free rather than subscribe to start
- You want to get growing without learning a design tool first
Grow To Eat vs GrowVeg: the bottom line
GrowVeg is the better planner. More plants, more varieties, crop rotation, spacing warnings, structures in the layout, and coverage in both hemispheres — all for $35 a year, which undercuts Grow To Eat. If planning is the part you enjoy, it is the stronger tool and the better value.
Grow To Eat is the better companion. It is a real app on both iPhone and Android, it carries only food crops, and it is built to be opened standing in the garden rather than sitting at a desk. It stays free for as long as you want it to.
So the question is which half of the job you want help with: designing the garden, or growing it.
Frequently asked questions
Is GrowVeg free?
Does GrowVeg have an Android app?
Does Grow To Eat have crop rotation?
Which has more plants?
What are the best GrowVeg alternatives?
Is GrowVeg worth it?
Which is better for a small vegetable garden?
Grow To Eat is built for growing food, on the phone already in your hand.
Free sowing plans and growing guides. No credit card required.
Head-to-head comparisons
Last updated: August 2026