The table below compares what five garden planning tools cost, what devices they run on, whether each has a free tier, and what each one is built around, for a home vegetable gardener deciding which one to pay for. The five are Seedtime, Planter, the GrowVeg Garden Planner, the Almanac Garden Planner and Row & Bed, which is this site. Every figure was read off that product's own site or app store listing rather than from a roundup.
Nothing here is ranked or scored. These tools are built around genuinely different jobs, which is the real difference between them: two of them are drawing tools for laying out beds, one is a planting calendar, one is a layout app that runs on a phone, and Row & Bed is a reference for the plants you are already growing. A price comparison between tools that do different work only helps once you know which job you are buying for. Details checked August 2026; follow the links for current pricing.
| Product | Price | Runs on | Free tier or trial | Built around |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seedtime | Basic $84 a year or $10 a month. Unlimited $168 a year or $20 a month. | Web browser, plus apps listed on the App Store and Google Play | Free plan, described as free forever with no trial period. Paid plans open with a 7 day free trial. | A planting calendar of seed, transplant and harvest dates, with tasks from it |
| Planter | Premium $24.99 a year. Lifetime $99.99 once. | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android, web browser | Free version limited to one garden. | Drag and drop bed layout on a square foot grid, with companion planting notes |
| GrowVeg Garden Planner | $35 a year on automatic renewal. $50 for one year or $85 for two years without renewal. | Web browser, on any device, with no download | 7 day free trial, with no payment details required. | Drawing a garden plan to scale and getting planting dates from the plan |
| Almanac Garden Planner | $35 a year on automatic renewal. $50 for one year or $85 for two years without renewal. | Web browser | 7 day free trial, with no payment details required. | Plan drawing like GrowVeg's, published by the Old Farmer's Almanac |
| Row & Bed | $59 a year or $10 a month. | Web browser, on phone or desktop | No free tier and no trial. A 30 day refund on a first purchase, on request. | Location aware reference for the plants you are already growing |
Seedtime
Seedtime is a planting calendar. You add crops and it lays out when to start seed, when to transplant and when to harvest for your area, then compiles a task list from that plan. It runs in a browser, and iPhone and Android apps are listed on the App Store and on Google Play, linked in the table above. Read the platform row from those listings rather than from the pricing page, whose FAQ still describes Seedtime as browser only. There is a free plan the site calls free forever with no trial period, and the paid plans are Basic at $84 a year or $10 a month and Unlimited at $168 a year or $20 a month, each opening with a 7 day free trial. It suits a gardener whose main question is what to start and when, and who wants that as dated items rather than as a drawing.
Planter
Planter is a layout tool you can use on a phone. You arrange beds on a square foot grid, and it carries spacing, a growing calendar and companion planting notes for a large plant list. It runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android and in a browser. A free version covers one garden, Premium is $24.99 a year, and a lifetime purchase is $99.99. It suits a gardener who plans in the garden rather than at a desk, and who wants layout and spacing settled first.
GrowVeg Garden Planner
The GrowVeg Garden Planner is a drawing tool. You lay your beds out to scale, drop crops in, and it handles spacing and crop rotation and turns the plan into planting dates. It runs in a browser on any device with no download. The trial is 7 days with no payment details required, and a subscription is $35 a year on automatic renewal, or $50 for a single year and $85 for two years without renewal. It suits a gardener who thinks in beds and rows and wants the plan itself to be the record.
Almanac Garden Planner
The Almanac Garden Planner is the same kind of plan drawing tool, sold through the Old Farmer's Almanac. Its subscription terms are identical to GrowVeg: a 7 day trial with no payment details, then $35 a year on automatic renewal, or $50 for one year and $85 for two years without renewal. If you are choosing between these two, you are largely choosing which site you would rather have an account with.
Row & Bed
Row & Bed is the tool this site sells, so read this paragraph knowing that. It is a reference rather than a planner: you give it a ZIP code and the beds you have, pick the plants you are growing, and it gives you a page per variety with growing detail, pest and disease galleries with photographs, and a citation on every fact, tied to your frost dates, your current soil temperature and your live forecast. It runs in a browser on a phone or a desktop, costs $59 a year or $10 a month, and is sold in the United States only.
It does not do several things the others do. There is no plant identification from a photograph. There is no task scheduling and there are no reminders, so nothing here tells you what to do on a given morning. There is no free tier and no trial: payment comes at the end of setup, with a 30 day refund on a first purchase if it is not what you wanted. If you want a drawing of your garden or a checklist to work through, one of the four above is the better fit.
What none of them can settle for you
Whichever of these you buy, the dates it shows you are only useful keyed to your own location, and the two numbers that decide that are your frost dates and your soil temperature. Alabama extension publishes germination conditions as a soil reading by crop, and taking that reading in the bed you intend to sow settles a planting date more reliably than any printed calendar does.1 A tool that knows your ZIP code is making that estimate for you, and it is still an estimate.
You can check both numbers without buying anything. The typical first and last frost dates by state table gives the medians the whole calculation hangs on, and what soil temperature each crop needs to germinate gives the reading each plant is waiting for. Growing detail for individual crops sits on the plant pages, which are open to read.