If you want to know what that awesome plant you just come across is, you’ll be pleased to know that there’s an app for that. So, check out the very best apps to help you ID that plant, they’re awesome and many are completely free too!
Find The Plant Identification App That Makes It Easy For You To Identify Plants Quickly
What Is The Best Free App For Identifying Plants?
We don’t think that there is a “best free plant identification app” but we do think that there are several great options for free plant identification apps that might meet your needs.
PlantNet Plant Identification
PlantNet is a beast of a plant identification app and it makes it so easy to identify plants. All you need to do is grab an image of the unknown plant species and then upload it to the app.
They use image recognition technology to help work out which particular plants you’re looking at and it works using any part of the plant – the flower, the fruit, the bark, etc.
Once you’ve done that, it provides a list of “near matches” and you select the one that is closest to what you have.
The only downside of this app for plant enthusiasts is that the app identifies only 20,000 species at the moment – though the database is constantly growing.
And if you have this plant identification app installed then you can help grow the database too, every time you offer up new plant species for identification. Plant lovers are going to really like using this plant identification app.
You can download PlantNet Plant Identification from google play.
You can download PlantNet Plant Identification from App store.
LeafSnap
LeafSnap makes plant identification easy too and we really like the User Interface (UI) because it’s very simple and intuitive to work with and it’s one of the reasons this app comes near the top of our best plant identification apps list.
They claim that it can identify up to 90% of all plants and tree species. This makes identifying unknown plants a “snap” as it were.
As general plant recognition apps go, this is a great option for most people. As free apps go it has enough distinctive features to make it a no-brainer.
However, if you want to keep the free version then you’re going to need to put up with ads as you use it – there is a small fee to remove them.
Sadly, at this moment, only the Apple iOS version is available at the app stores.
You can download LeafSnap from App store.
PlantSnap
PlantSnap claims to be able to identify up to 625,000 different plants! That’s incredible and we like that it supports the identification of edible and medicinal plants too.
One thing we absolutely love about this app is that as you identify plants, PlantSnap pays to plant new trees!
However, we would note that this isn’t a 100% free app even though it’s a very popular plant identification app.
You can only upload 25 images a day before you have to view ads to keep uploading. If you want to get rid of this constrain, you’re going to have to pay to do so.
You can download PlantSnap from google play.
You can download PlantSnap from App store.
Google Lens
OK, this isn’t one of your usual plant identification app choices but it works really and it could easily be the best plant identification app going, in fact.
You see, Lens allows you to snap a photo of something and then it checks through the huge archive of images indexed by Google for near matches.
This makes plant ID very easy indeed. The downside is that you have the best plant identification tool around but you’ll then have to Google to find out anything about the plant you’ve identified – we think that’s a small price to pay. And this tool is 100% free, always.
You can download Google Lens from google play.
You can download Google Lens from App store.
Seek
This app was developed by iNaturalist and it doesn’t just help plant identifiers, it also works for identifying animals too!
It’s one of our top plant identification app choices because it has a huge database of public observations that can draw on the iNaturalist data pool too!
We found it to be a worthy choice for our best plant identification app list because it rarely misses an ID.
However, on the downside, it can be quite slow to respond and there’s no facility for you to confirm whether the ID is correct or not. This isn’t the end of the world but it is a bit frustrating at times.
You can download Seek from google play.
You can download Seek from App store.
Agrobase
This is one of the most powerful plant app options that we’ve come across. It’s meant for garden management but it could easily be used in a small farming environment too.
Not only does this make a great plant identifier but it also offers plant care tips, recognizes plant diseases, and much more.
The visual recognition software is absolutely first-rate in this app and we can’t believe the quality of images that it provides in the results, either.
It’s free for now, but we’d expect this to end up as paid in the future. Sadly, for now, at least, it’s only for Android devices.
You can download Agrobase from google play.
Plantix
This is a great little app for plant photos not just for plant identifier purposes but also as a sort of social network around plants.
That means not only can you share and identify the plants you’ve found but then you can discuss any problems with a plant.
It’s currently in beta, however, and there’s only Android support and a fairly limited database. It’s an app to keep an eye on for the future, we think.
You can download Plantix from google play.
The Best Paid Plant Identification Apps
If you don’t mind paying for even better services then there are many mobile apps happy to take your cash but we think these are the best of them.
PictureThis
There is a 7-day free trial before you have to pay for this app and unlike other apps, it has a massive database – 27 million plants and they say they can give 99% accuracy when identifying them.
It’s a one-year subscription though, so be sure before you pay.
You can download PictureThis from google play.
You can download PictureThis from App store.
Get PictureThis here.
FlowerChecker
This is a fantastic service that has a human being go and research each image that you upload but at the cost of $1 per ID and it takes an hour or more to give a result.
You get the first three uploads for free to give it a try though.
You can download FlowerChecker from google play.
You can download FlowerChecker from App store.
Get FlowerChecker here.
Smart Plant/Garden Compass
Also offering a human checking service, this too costs $1 per plant identified.
It also offers a “task reminder list” for gardeners which is handy.
It’s very good but also quite pricey.
You can download Smart Plant from google play.
You can download Smart Plant from App store.
Get Smart Plant here.
Final Thoughts On Plant Identification Apps
So, there you have it, it’s almost as if there are too many apps for this task but once you start playing with them – you’ll find that there are one or two apps that best suit your needs rather than one app that works for most plant identifiers.
The list above, we feel, represents the best of the best, so why not download a couple and give them a try today?
If you’ve found this article to be helpful you may also enjoy these awesome apps for plant lovers, these excellent free garden planning tools, and our guide to perennial vegetables.
