Grow To Eat vs Seedtime: which garden planner is right for you?
Grow To Eat vs Seedtime is the closest comparison on this site: both build your sowing dates from your location, both handle succession planting, both have iPhone and Android apps. The differences are what you pay, and what gets capped.
Seedtime is the bigger product — 2,650+ built-in varieties, a garden journal, a winter-gardening algorithm for row covers, inventory tracking, and a classroom and community attached. It costs $84 a year on Basic and $168 on Unlimited. Grow To Eat does less on purpose: sowing plans from your location, a weekly view of what to do next, 120+ food crops, and a garden planner — for €44.99 a year, with nothing metered.
At a glance
What they share
- ✓Sowing and harvest dates built from your location
- ✓Succession planting to keep beds producing
- ✓Visual garden bed planner (paid in both)
- ✓Native iPhone and Android apps
- ✓A free tier you can keep using indefinitely
- ✓Step-by-step growing guidance for each crop
Where Grow To Eat differs
- ●€44.99 a year against $84 — roughly half the price
- ●Nothing metered: sowing dates and guides are never credit-limited
- ●Berries, bushes and perennials on the free tier, not behind a paid plan
- ●Unlimited beds inside your garden, included with Premium
- ●Built only for edible crops — no ornamentals to wade through
- ●Crops, not thousands of varieties — add the ones you actually sow (Premium)
- ●Automatic dates across the northern hemisphere, no frost dates to look up
- ●One job: growing food, not inventory, analytics or a store
Grow To Eat vs Seedtime: feature comparison
| Feature | Seedtime | Grow To Eat |
|---|---|---|
| Once the season starts | ||
| Seeding-date suggestions | Credit-metered: 10/mo free, 100/mo Basic | Unmetered |
| Weekly “what to do now” view | Partial | ✓ |
| Harvest tracking | Partial | ✓ |
| Winter gardening / row cover estimates | ✓ | – |
| Garden journal with photos | ✓ | Notes only — no journal |
| What you can grow | ||
| Crops in the library | Vegetables, herbs, perennials | 120+ edible crops |
| Named varieties built in | 2,650+ | No — by design, you add your own |
| Perennials, berries and bushes | ✓ | ✓ |
| Crop filters (shade, pollinators, difficulty) | – | ✓ |
| A–Z guides: propagation to preservation | Partial | ✓ |
| Where and how you use it | ||
| Automatic dates without manual setup | US locations | Northern hemisphere |
| Where it works | Global, manual frost dates outside US | Northern hemisphere |
| Gardens you can create | 1 on Basic, unlimited on Unlimited | 1, with unlimited beds |
| What it costs | ||
| What's behind the paywall | Layouts, custom crops, perennials, companion planting | Garden planner, succession planting, custom crops |
| Free tier | 1 calendar, 10 credits/mo | Uncapped sowing plan + all guides |
| Yearly price | $84 Basic / $168 Unlimited | €44.99 |
Prices and features checked August 2026. Seedtime pricing shown in USD, Grow To Eat in EUR. Sources: . Seedtime features and pricing taken from get.seedtime.us and help.seedtime.us, August 2026. Prices shown in the currency each app charges in.
A full sowing plan, with nothing metered
Free sowing plans and full A–Z growing guides. No credit card required.
The key differences explained
What a year actually costs
Seedtime has two paid tiers. Basic is $7 a month billed annually — $84 a year — and gives you one garden layout, custom crops and companion planting. Unlimited is $9.10 a month annually, $168 a year, and adds multiple calendars and layouts, inventory and analytics. Month-to-month is $10 and $13. There is a 7-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Grow To Eat Premium is €7.49 a month or €44.99 a year — roughly half the price of Seedtime Basic, and around a quarter of Unlimited. For that you get the garden planner with unlimited beds, the bed-by-bed overview and succession planting.
Seedtime is the larger product and some of that difference is features you may genuinely want. But if what you need is a sowing plan and a garden layout, you are paying about twice as much for them.
Credits, and what happens when they run out
Seedtime meters its seeding-date suggestions with monthly credits: 10 a month on the free tier, 100 a month on Basic, unlimited only on the $168 plan. To be fair to them, this caps one specific feature — planting schedules, tasks and journal entries are unlimited even on Free, and the free tier is more generous than most.
Grow To Eat meters nothing. Your sowing plan, the weekly view and all 120+ crop guides are open on the free tier and stay open, however many crops you look up and however often you change your mind in February.
Whether that matters depends on how you plan. If you settle your year in one sitting, 10 credits may be plenty. If you keep adjusting as the season goes on, a monthly allowance is a strange thing to have to think about while gardening.
A garden app, or a gardening platform
Seedtime is building a platform: alongside the calendar there is inventory tracking, a weather dashboard, records and analytics, multiple calendars, a classroom, a community and a seed store. For a market gardener or someone running several plots, that breadth is the point.
Grow To Eat is a garden app and intends to stay one. 120+ edible crops, dates from your location, a weekly view of what needs doing, and a planner for your beds. No inventory, no analytics, no store, no journal — that last one left out deliberately, because photographing your garden is not the same as growing more from it.
The same thinking runs through the crop library. Grow To Eat works at the level of crops rather than shipping thousands of named varieties, and lets you add the varieties you actually sow on Premium. Most people grow a handful they already trust; a list of 2,650 mostly adds scrolling between you and a decision.
More features is not the same as more harvest. Which of those you are buying is worth deciding before you subscribe to either.
Know what to do in the garden this week
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Where Seedtime does it better
Seedtime is a deeper product than Grow To Eat and there are good reasons to pick it. Six of them:
- A built-in variety library: 2,650+ named varieties, ready to pick from. Grow To Eat works at the level of crops and lets you add your own varieties on Premium — a deliberate choice, but if you want the varieties already there, Seedtime has them and Grow To Eat does not.
- A proper garden journal: Unlimited entries with photos and tags, linked to the plantings on your calendar — and included on the free tier. Grow To Eat has no journal and is not adding one.
- Winter gardening estimates: An algorithm that estimates harvest delays through winter based on your location and how many row covers you are using. Nothing in Grow To Eat does this.
- It works everywhere: Including the southern hemisphere, by reversing your frost dates. Grow To Eat covers the northern hemisphere only.
- A desktop browser version: Seedtime runs on the web as well as on phones, which is easier for laying out a plan on a big screen. Grow To Eat is mobile only.
- It is a genuinely good app: Seedtime is well built and actively developed, and its task lists, succession workflow and calendar are the work of people who garden seriously. This page argues it costs more than you may need to spend, not that it is weak.
- Teaching and community: Seedtime Classroom, an active community and a seed store, all reachable from the free tier.
If you plan by named variety, keep a photo journal, garden through winter under covers, or garden in the southern hemisphere, Seedtime is the better fit and the extra cost is buying you something real.
Choose Seedtime if…
- You want a garden journal with photos linked to your plantings
- You plan by named variety and want thousands to choose from
- You garden through winter with row covers and want harvest estimates
- You garden in the southern hemisphere
- You want to plan on a desktop as well as a phone
Choose Grow To Eat if…
- You want the lower annual price for the planning you actually use
- You don't want a monthly credit allowance on your sowing dates
- You are growing food and don't need inventory, analytics or a store
- You want unlimited beds in your garden without paying for a top tier
- You want a smaller app with less to set up before you start sowing
Grow To Eat vs Seedtime: the bottom line
Seedtime is the bigger product, and honestly the more capable one: 2,650+ varieties, a journal, winter-gardening estimates, inventory, analytics and a web version. If you want a platform to run your growing on, it is the stronger choice.
Grow To Eat is narrower and cheaper. €44.99 a year against $84 for Seedtime Basic, with nothing metered, unlimited beds, and 120+ edible crops rather than a library you have to search.
Both will tell you when to sow. The question is whether you want the rest of it — and whether you want to pay about twice as much for the parts you do.
Frequently asked questions
Is Seedtime free?
Which is cheaper, Grow To Eat or Seedtime?
What are Seedtime credits?
Does Seedtime work outside the United States?
Does Grow To Eat have a garden journal?
Which has more plants?
What are the best Seedtime alternatives?
Everything you need to grow more food, for €44.99 a year.
Free sowing plans and growing guides. No credit card required.
Head-to-head comparisons
Last updated: August 2026