Growli vs RHS Grow — the honest comparison.

RHS Grow has a free tier (the Discover feed, a My Garden list, and browsable A-Z plant profiles) and a premium subscription at £5.99 per month or £39.99 per year after a free trial, per the RHS's own page. Premium unlocks Plant ID, tailored care tips, the Journal, the Garden Planner and the ChatBotanist AI assistant. RHS Grow is separate from RHS membership and is available to everyone. Growli splits it differently rather than more generously: its free tier is the garden plan, weather-timed care tasks, frost warnings and growing guides, while photo ID, photo diagnosis and unlimited chat sit in Growli Plus at £34.99 a year. Both apps charge for photo identification.

Yes. Both are app-led plant advisors popular with UK gardeners, and they split on what each gives away rather than on price. RHS Grow gives away browsing — the A-Z plant profiles, Discover articles and podcasts — and puts plant ID, care advice and its ChatBotanist AI behind £5.99 a month or £39.99 a year, a subscription separate from RHS membership. Growli gives away the garden plan, weather-timed daily care tasks, frost warnings and growing guides, and puts photo identification, photo diagnosis and unlimited chat in Growli Plus at £34.99 a year. Neither app gives photo identification away free, and this page claimed otherwise until 29 July 2026. Growli also localises to the US as well as the UK and pushes a daily weather-tied briefing that RHS Grow does not.

RHS Grow is built around UK growing conditions and RHS hardiness ratings, so it is most useful to UK gardeners; there is no USDA-zone localisation for US users. Growli is native to both — USDA zones and frost dates for the US, RHS H1a–H7 ratings for the UK — so it suits gardeners on either side of the Atlantic, or anyone who moves between them.

RHS Grow carries the institutional weight of the Royal Horticultural Society — 200 years of horticultural science and expert-written profiles — which is a genuine strength. Growli's guidance is written by its editorial team and sourced against authorities including the ASPCA (pet toxicity), USDA and the RHS itself, with a stated fact-check standard. If a single trusted institution's name is decisive for you, RHS Grow has the edge; if you want free AI dialog and daily plans grounded in cited sources, Growli is built for that.

Many UK gardeners will. RHS Grow's free browse tier is a fine reference for the RHS plant profiles, while Growli's free tier covers the day-to-day work — the garden plan, weather-timed care tasks and frost alerts — without a subscription. Using RHS Grow for its A-Z reference and Growli for weather-tied prompts and the daily briefing is a reasonable free combination; add Growli Plus if you want photo identification and diagnosis on top.