Planter Free vs Premium vs Lifetime: What You Get at Each Tier

Planter (planter.garden) has three tiers: Free ($0 forever), Premium ($24.99/year), and Lifetime ($99.99 one-time). The decision comes down to one question — how many gardens do you plan to lay out at once? Free caps you at a single garden. If one garden is all you need, Free is genuinely usable long-term. If you want to plan multiple beds, succession plantings, or next season alongside this one, you need Premium or Lifetime, and the only real difference between those two is whether you pay once or every year.

The three tiers side by side

All three tiers share the core planning tools: the drag-and-drop garden layout, the growing calendar that tells you when to start seeds, transplant, and harvest, the library of 80+ plants and 1,000+ varieties, and the ability to add your own custom plants. The seed box is available at every level too.

What Free actually gives you

Free is not a crippled demo — it's a complete planner restricted to one garden. You get the growing calendar, custom plants and varieties, and the seed box. For a first-season gardener with a single raised bed or a small plot, that covers the whole job.

The trade-offs are the one-garden limit and ads. The one-garden cap is the constraint that matters. It means you can't keep a finished plan for reference while starting a fresh one, and you can't plan a second bed separately. If you garden in one space and replant it through the seasons, Free may never feel limiting.

What Premium adds, and when it's worth it

Premium removes the garden cap and the ads, and adds notes and events, custom backgrounds, and access to the Planter web app. The web app matters if you'd rather plan on a laptop screen than a phone — laying out a large garden with a mouse is a different experience from dragging on a touchscreen.

Notes and events let you record what you actually did and when, which is what turns a plan into a record you can learn from next year. If you're the type who wants to note "transplanted tomatoes here on May 12, they struggled," that feature earns its place.

At $24.99/year, Premium pays for itself against Lifetime in about four years. If you expect to use Planter for fewer than four seasons, or you're not sure yet, Premium is the lower-commitment choice.

What Lifetime changes

Lifetime is everything in Premium with no subscription — you pay $99.99 once and stop. There are no feature differences beyond that; the table above shows the two tiers are otherwise identical.

The math is simple: Lifetime costs roughly the same as four years of Premium. If you've used the app for a season or two and expect to keep gardening, Lifetime removes the annual renewal decision. If you're brand new and testing whether you'll stick with it, paying four years up front is a bet you don't have to make yet.

How to decide

• One garden, tight budget: Stay on Free. It's a full planner for a single space.
• Multiple beds or want the web app, not ready to commit: Premium at $24.99/year.
• Committed for the long haul: Lifetime at $99.99, which breaks even against Premium at about four years.

One practical note from the pricing page: purchases are made within the app, and the listed prices are in US dollars. Check the app itself to see pricing in your currency, since the dollar figures may not be what you're charged locally.

A reasonable path is to start Free, upgrade to Premium once the one-garden limit actually gets in your way, and move to Lifetime only after you're confident you'll keep using it — that way you never pay for capacity you haven't needed yet.