The best free landscape design apps, and where each paywall falls

Free means five different things in this category: free forever with a daily cap, free for one project, free until a bonus runs out, free with half the catalog, and free as in a trial that wants a card. Here is the exact line for each app, from our own run or from the vendor's pricing page, so you know what you will hit before you hit it.

The front yard is a brick ranch with a concrete and brick walkway between two bare pine-straw beds, under pine trees, in Raleigh, zone 8a. The brief was cottage style, part sun, low maintenance, keep the walkway. Neighborbrite's free result is on the left and Sow's free result is on the right, both from the web, both 1024 by 1024 pixels, both watermarked bottom right.

Neighborbrite took about a minute from signup to its first screen, inferred Raleigh, zone 8a and a flat slope, and guessed full sun, which was wrong for a bed under pines; we changed it to partial sun.

It wrote a text plan in about 60 seconds with five named cultivars, Annabelle hydrangea, Concord Grape spiderwort, Northern Exposure Sienna coral bells, Evergold sedge and Big Daddy hosta, all sensible for part shade in 8a, and then drew the image in about 33 seconds. House, walkway, bird feeder and pine straw were kept.

The counter read 4 of 4 free designs left today before we started and 2 of 4 after the backyard run.

Sow's web signup took about 10 seconds. One Style Design in the Cottage style used 5 of the 50 free credits, and the result, Romantic Cottage Walkway, named five plants linked to catalog pages: Buff Beauty rose, Duchesse de Nemours peony, Camelot Lavender foxglove, Baltic parsley and Snowflake catmint.

The render itself took under a minute; the gallery showed it after 90 to 150 seconds. The same photo on the phone, with the sun chip set, came back with foxglove, anemone and daffodil.

On the backyard, both photo apps did the same thing: a planted border along the fence, the two young trees kept, and the patchy lawn left exactly as photographed. If the lawn is the problem, say so in the brief.

Usually, and the detail that matters is which paid tier removes it. Neighborbrite stamps every free image bottom right, and its in-app billing page lists watermark removal under Business at $49.99 a month, not under Pro at $24.99. If you upgrade to Pro for clean downloads you will be disappointed; Pro buys unlimited designs, text edits, unlimited plant lists and element placement.

Sow stamps a Made with Sow mark bottom right on free-tier designs. Klora has nothing to watermark because it does not render a picture; its output is a scaled plan, and the PDF of that plan is paid. SketchUp Free exports without a watermark. For Planner 5D and iScape we could not confirm either way, so the table shows unverified rather than a guess.

The two backyard results in this section show what the free output actually looks like with the mark in place. Both are usable for deciding what you want; neither is something you would print for a client.

The three we tested do, in different ways, and the two 3D tools do not. This is the question that separates a free design from a free picture.

Neighborbrite inferred the hardiness zone (8a) from our location before drawing, showed it on the confirm step with the sunlight and slope, and let us correct the sunlight. The palette it chose fit the corrected light, and the plant list header read Raleigh, NC, Zone 8a, Partial sun.

What the list did not show was mature size or spacing, and we could not confirm how deep the data behind each plant goes.

Klora's library is 1,422 real species, each with a photo, botanical name and icons for sun, deer resistance, pollinators and bloom colour, with filters by sun and zone and chips for trees, shrubs, grasses, flowers, groundcovers, vines and ferns.

It also models the plan through four seasons and four growth stages (Year 1, Year 5, Year 10, Mature) and has a bloom timeline. Its sun and shade model needs lidar heights, which our test address did not have, so that part was skipped.

Every plant in a Sow design is a catalog entry with zone, sun, mature size, bloom and care data. On the phone, each saved space carries its sun and zone, and the design starts from them. On the web, Design Studio's Help Me Choose panel recommends plants from your zip code and a sunlight preference.

Zone matching covers the US, Canada, the UK and Australia; weather-aware care after planting is US-only.

Planner 5D's outdoor catalog is objects, not species, with no zone or climate data. SketchUp has no plant intelligence at all. iScape has a named plant library but no zone or climate check.

Yes, with Klora. Its start screen offers an address box, a plot-plan upload, or a blank canvas, and choosing the address took us straight into the editor with a Frame your lot dialog.

It pulled aerial imagery and parcel lines, offered to measure building and tree heights from the public lidar point cloud for its sun model, and had the view imported, scaled and contoured in about 30 seconds. The design auto-saved in the browser.

The toolbar covers beds, paths, structures, lot boundary, measure and notes, with a layers panel, season and growth-stage controls and the plant library.

The other two free photo apps want an account but not money. Neighborbrite uses an email login code with no password and took about a minute to the first screen. Sow uses an email and password with no verification step and had us on the dashboard in about 10 seconds. Planner 5D and SketchUp Free both need a free account to save work.

If no account at all is the condition, Klora is the only tool on this page that meets it, and it happens to be a good one.

Partly. iScape's pricing page, captured October 13, 2026, lists a Free tier, Pro at $29.99 a month or $299.99 a year, and an Enterprise tier priced by contacting sales. The free tier is described as a limited database with reduced access to plants, hardscapes and products. On every tier the page marks 2D and 3D design as iOS only, so on Android the free app is narrower still.

From its pages, iScape is a placement tool, not a redesign tool: you drag plants and objects onto your photo yourself, with AR on iPhone, and nothing is generated for you. For a quick picture of your yard, Neighborbrite's limited free tier does more before you pay. For free AR placement on an iPhone, iScape is the only option here.

Planner 5D and SketchUp Free, and neither is a plant tool. Planner 5D's free tier gives you unlimited projects with half the catalog on every platform, real 3D with walkthroughs, floor plans and hardscape layout. Its photo generator is built for interiors, and we could not confirm landscape output from a yard photo.

SketchUp Free runs in the browser with no watermark, offers maximum modelling control and a huge model warehouse, and expects you to know how to model a yard. Both are described from their official pages.

Sow is not a 3D tool. It has no 3D model, no AR view and no CAD; its hardscape is paving, mulch, gravel, fences, structures and water features placed as design elements on the photo. If you want a free model of a patio with a pergola, start in Planner 5D. If you want to know what to plant around it, come back to one of the three plant tools.

On Neighborbrite's free tier you regenerate. The result page offers Before and After, Download, Share, Generate again, Satellite view, View by season and Choose another style for free, and the tools that change a design in place (Add elements, Magic edit, Erase elements, Make changes) carry a Pro badge.

One free lever is worth knowing: at the plan step, before any image exists, a Want something different box lets you change the palette in text, and the image is drawn from the plan you approve.

In Sow, on mobile, every generated species can be removed, counted up or down, or swapped, and the Plant Editor lets you drag in plants, furniture, lighting and paving by hand, on a generated design or a plain photo; on the web, Design Studio places plants and objects over the render.

We saw the per-species Remove, Fewer, More and Swap controls on an iPhone signed into a Pro+ test account, and we did not separately test design editing on a free mobile account.

On the free web account, Continue editing opened the design in Design Studio with a plant and object library, quick filters for native, sun, shade and deer resistance, and Pro badges on part of the library.

Klora is manual from the first click, so everything is editable for nothing: move a bed, swap a species, change the season, change the growth stage. The paywall is the PDF and the second design, not the editing.

Neighborbrite's first free design opened a plant list page with the most useful free output in this test: 5 plant varieties, 41 plants total, botanical names, quantities and prices from its nursery partner, with buttons to order, print and share.

Hydrangea arborescens Annabelle x5 at $19.99, Tradescantia Concord Grape x15 at $19.99, Heuchera Northern Exposure Sienna x8 at $43.86, Carex hachijoensis Evergold x10 at $19.99 and Hosta Big Daddy x3 at $32.85, about $1,049 before shipping. Zone 8a and partial sun sat in the header; mature size and spacing did not appear.

The button that opened it carried a Pro badge, and we could not confirm whether lists stay free after the first design.

Sow's free web result listed its five plants with links to their catalog pages and a Shopping List button. That PDF is a plant schedule: one row per species with its quantity, a unit price and a line total, plus an estimated total.

The unit price is the lowest price listed by the online nurseries Sow tracks, shown as 'from', and Sow takes nothing from the sellers; a species with no current listing gets a typical price for its plant type marked 'est.', and one with neither is shown as 'no listing' and left out of the total.

On our backyard design, Romantic Cottage Haven, that came to 5 species, 39 plants and an estimated $644.74, with three species priced from listings (October Skies aster from $11.99, Dwarf Lady's Mantle from $10.80) and two marked est. Mature size and spacing are not in the PDF; they are on each plant page, and the lowest listed price is usually for the smallest pot.

The per-bed plan with an editable unit price per species lives in Planting Plans on the phone: each bed with its sun and area, each species with quantity, an editable unit price and an estimated cost, bed subtotals and a total. Our test plan ran to 602 plants and $8,919.70 before the PDF.

That is a paid feature, and we would rather you knew that here than found out after signing up.

Sow also checks 18 online nurseries every day for prices and deals, and every plant in a design links straight to where you can buy it at the lowest price it found.

Klora's free output is the scaled plan with its plant list on screen; exporting it as a PDF needs the paid tier. Planner 5D and SketchUp have no plant list because they have no plants.

Prices checked October 2026; the table carries the date each one was verified and a link to the source page. The cheapest step up from free is Klora's $24 pass for 90 days.

The cheapest ongoing plan is Sow Pro at $39.99 a year on the web, with Klora at $69 a year and Planner 5D Premium at $59.99 a year close behind. Neighborbrite's paid tiers are monthly, $24.99 or $49.99, and only the second removes the watermark. iScape Pro is $29.99 a month or $299.99 a year.

SketchUp's paid tiers start at about $129 a year, which we have not verified.

The question to ask before paying any of them is what you are paying for. With Neighborbrite Pro you buy unlimited designs and in-place edits. With Sow Pro you buy the full 12,000+ plant catalog, more spaces and boards, the planting plans with a priced schedule, and care after planting.

With Klora you buy a PDF and more than one design. With Planner 5D you buy the rest of the catalog and higher-resolution renders. None of those is the same product, which is why this page is sorted by what you get for free rather than by what the upgrade costs.

Both rank for free garden design software searches. Gardena myGarden is a free browser planner from the garden tool brand: a layout drawing tool rather than a photo redesign.

Canva's landscape plan templates are drawing templates inside a general design tool. They give you a tidy diagram for a presentation or a planning meeting, and they do not read a photo of your yard. If you only need a clean sketch to show a contractor, that may be enough. If you need to know whether the hydrangea in the sketch lives, use one of the three plant tools above.

Pick by what you want to walk away with today.