app comparison
Best Free Plant Apps UK 2026 — 4 That Stay Free
Which UK plant apps are actually free, not free-for-seven-days? PlantNet, RHS Grow, Seek and Growli tested — plus the four that convert to a paid plan.
"Free" is the most abused word in the plant app category. Almost every app in the UK App Store is free to download, which is not the same thing as free to use — and the gap between those two is where the unexpected charges come from.
This page separates them properly. An app counts as free here if you can keep using its core purpose indefinitely without paying. An app that gives you seven days and then bills you £34.99 does not count, however it is labelled on the listing.
The four genuinely free apps
PlantNet — free forever, no in-app purchases at all
PlantNet is the only app in this comparison with no paid tier whatsoever. It is built by a French research consortium — Cirad, INRAE, Inria and IRD — as a citizen-science project rather than a business, which is why there is no paywall and no advertising to fund one.
What it is best at: wild plants, trees, hedgerow species and European natives. It shows you its confidence scores rather than hiding them behind a single confident-looking answer, and your observations feed a genuine research dataset.
What it is not: a care app. PlantNet answers "what is this plant?" and stops. There are no watering reminders, no diagnosis, no schedules.
Verdict: if you want one free app for identifying things on a walk, this is it, and nothing else comes close on principle.
Seek by iNaturalist — free, and the best for British wildlife
Seek is free, run by iNaturalist alongside the California Academy of Sciences and National Geographic. It identifies plants, insects, fungi and animals, works offline for common species, and is deliberately designed to be safe for children — it does not require an account and does not publish your location by default.
What it is best at: logging British biodiversity in a garden or on a walk, and getting children interested in what is growing around them.
What it is not: precise on cultivated ornamentals and houseplant cultivars, where PictureThis and Planta are considerably stronger.
RHS Grow — a free tier funded by the Royal Horticultural Society
This is the one most UK gardeners do not realise is free, and the question we are asked most: yes, RHS Grow has a free version, and no, you do not need to be an RHS member.
The free tier covers the A-Z plant profiles drawn from the RHS's own plant database, the Discover articles and podcasts, and your garden and wishlists. It is genuinely usable as a reference because the RHS funds it as part of its public work rather than as a lead magnet.
What is behind the paywall: Plant ID, tailored care tips, the Journal, the Garden Planner and the ChatBotanist AI assistant. That subscription is £5.99 a month or £39.99 a year after a free trial (per the RHS's own page, checked 29 July 2026), and it is separate from RHS society membership — paying for membership does not include it, and you do not need membership to subscribe.
Verdict: the strongest free option for British garden plants, native species and traditional UK varieties. Worth having installed regardless of what else you use.
Growli — a free tier that does not expire
We build Growli, so read this section with that in mind. The honest version: the free tier is not a trial and does not convert. It covers the garden plan, weather-timed daily care tasks, frost warnings ahead of cold nights, and step-by-step growing guides. Those keep working indefinitely.
What is behind the paywall: photo plant identification, photo diagnosis with a treatment plan, and unlimited chat. That is Growli Plus at £34.99 a year or £6.99 a month, with a 7-day free trial on the yearly plan.
We say that plainly because a page about free apps that quietly describes paid features as free is worse than useless — and an earlier version of our own comparison pages did exactly that, which we corrected on 29 July 2026.
Verdict: the free tier is worth it if your problem is keeping plants alive through a British year — the frost alerts and weather-timed tasks are the part that costs nothing. If your problem is identifying a plant from a photo, use PlantNet, which is free and excellent at it.
The four that are not free
| App | What "free" actually means | Cost after |
|---|---|---|
| PictureThis | 7-day trial, converts automatically | £34.99/year |
| Planta | Limited free tier; ID, diagnosis and light meter gated | £32.99/12 months |
| PlantIn | Limited free tier; most features gated | £29.99/year |
| Blossom | 3 identifications, then a 2-day trial | $59.99–$79.99/year |
GB App Store, checked 29 July 2026. Blossom's UK figure was not published on the listing we checked, so its US price is given — it is the most expensive app in this category either way, despite frequently being described as a budget option.
The auto-renewal trap is real and it is concentrated here. PictureThis's UK reviews are dominated by people charged after a trial they believed they had cancelled. If you start any of these trials, cancel through your phone's subscription settings — deleting the app does not cancel anything.
And avoid weekly plans. PlantIn lists weekly tiers up to £8.99. That is over £460 a year for an app whose own annual plan is £29.99. Weekly pricing exists because the number looks small at the paywall.
Which free app for which job
- "I want to know what this plant is, on a walk." PlantNet. Free, accurate on natives and trees, no account needed.
- "I want to log what is living in my garden." Seek by iNaturalist.
- "I want proper British horticultural advice on a garden plant." RHS Grow's free tier — the RHS A-Z is the best free reference in the UK.
- "I keep forgetting to water things, and I lost plants to frost last year." Growli's free tier — the weather-timed tasks and frost warnings are the free part.
- "I want one free app that does everything." It does not exist. Every app that tries to do everything charges for it. Two free apps together — PlantNet plus RHS Grow, or PlantNet plus Growli — cover more ground than any single subscription.
What free costs you instead
Free tiers are funded somehow, and it is worth knowing how before you choose.
PlantNet and Seek are funded by research institutions and non-profits. Your observations become part of a scientific dataset — that is the trade, and for most people it is a good one.
RHS Grow's free tier is funded by the Royal Horticultural Society, a charity, as part of its public horticultural work. It is also, plainly, a route into the paid tier and RHS membership.
Growli's free tier is funded by people who upgrade to Plus. We are not pretending otherwise.
The apps that are not free are funded by subscriptions, which is fine — but several are funded specifically by people who forget to cancel a trial, which is the part worth being careful about.
Related reading
If you decide a paid app is worth it after all, we checked every UK price against its own App Store listing — see how much plant apps cost in the UK. The feature-by-feature comparisons are in best plant care app UK and best plant identifier app UK.
Related articles
- How much is the RHS Grow app? Cost and free tier — the price, the free tier, and the membership confusion
- Growli vs RHS Grow — honest 2026 comparison — against the official Royal Horticultural Society app
- How much do plant apps cost in the UK? 8 verified — every GB price read from its own App Store listing
- Best plant care app UK 2026 — free and paid, 7 tested — the full care-side comparison
- Best plant identifier app UK 2026 — tested and ranked — the ID side in depth
- PictureThis alternatives UK — 7 plant ID apps compared — when the auto-renewal stops being worth it
- Growli pricing — what is free, what is Plus, and what it costs
Every price and free-tier claim on this page was checked against a primary source on 29 July 2026. Reviewed by the Growli editorial team.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best free plant app in the UK?
It depends on the job, and the honest answer is that no single free app does everything. PlantNet is the best free identifier — completely free with no in-app purchases at all, run by a French research consortium, and strongest on wild plants, trees and European natives. RHS Grow's free tier is the best free reference for British garden plants, funded by the Royal Horticultural Society and open to non-members. Growli's free tier is the best free option for ongoing care through a British year, covering the garden plan, weather-timed tasks and frost warnings. Most UK gardeners are best served by two free apps rather than one.
Is the RHS Grow app free?
Yes, there is a genuinely free version, and you do not need to be an RHS member to use it. The free tier covers the A-Z plant profiles from the RHS's own database, the Discover articles and podcasts, and your garden and wishlists. Plant ID, tailored care tips, the Journal, the Garden Planner and the ChatBotanist assistant sit behind a subscription of £5.99 a month or £39.99 a year after a free trial. That subscription is separate from RHS society membership — membership does not include it. Checked against the RHS's own page, 29 July 2026.
Is there a completely free plant identifier app with no subscription?
PlantNet. It has no in-app purchases at all — not a limited free tier, not a trial, no paid version to upgrade to. It is funded as a citizen-science project by Cirad, INRAE, Inria and IRD rather than run as a business. Seek by iNaturalist is the other genuinely free identifier, better for insects, fungi and wildlife alongside plants, and designed to be safe for children to use without an account.
Is PictureThis free?
No. PictureThis is free to download and offers a 7-day trial, but it is not a free app in practice — unlimited identifications, disease diagnosis and care reminders all sit behind a subscription of £34.99 a year in the UK (checked 29 July 2026). The trial converts to a paid subscription automatically, and unexpected charges after a trial people believed they had cancelled are the single most common complaint in its UK reviews. Cancel through your phone's subscription settings rather than by deleting the app.
Is Growli free?
Growli has a free tier that does not expire and does not convert to a paid plan: the garden plan, weather-timed daily care tasks, frost warnings ahead of cold nights, and step-by-step growing guides all cost nothing indefinitely. Photo plant identification, photo diagnosis with a treatment plan and unlimited chat are on Growli Plus at £34.99 a year or £6.99 a month, with a 7-day free trial on the yearly plan. If photo identification is what you want and you want it free, PlantNet does that better than any free tier of a paid app.
Why do free plant apps ask for so many permissions?
Camera access is unavoidable for identification. Location is the one worth checking: identifiers use it to weight results towards species that actually grow near you, which genuinely improves accuracy, but it is also the most commonly shared data point. Seek by iNaturalist is the most conservative here — it does not require an account and does not publish your location by default. If an app asks for contacts or unrestricted photo library access to identify a plant, that is not a technical requirement.
Are free plant apps accurate enough to trust on toxic plants?
Not on their own, and this is the one case where you should not rely on any app alone. Identification confidence drops sharply on seedlings, damaged leaves and closely related species — and several genuinely dangerous plants have harmless-looking relatives. If a pet or a child has eaten something, treat any app's answer as a starting point and call your vet. The UK also has the Animal PoisonLine on 01202 509 000, run by the Veterinary Poisons Information Service and open 24 hours — note that it is a paid service, £35 on weekdays between 8am and 8pm and £45 at all other times, so your own vet is usually the first call. Use an app to narrow down what a plant might be, never to decide that it is safe.