The best landscape design software, sorted by the job you need done

Most disappointment with landscape design software comes from buying the wrong kind, because the search term covers four products that share almost nothing. The first kind reads a photo of your yard and draws a new version of it with plants named.

The second draws a flat plan to scale, from an aerial or a survey, with beds, paths and a plant list. The third builds a 3D model you can walk through, usually from a floor-plan style editor, with hardscape and structures as objects.

The fourth is CAD for the trade: grading, drainage, dimensioned drawings, material take-offs, proposals, and the documents a contractor or a permit office will accept.

Pick the kind first. A homeowner deciding what to plant along a walkway does not need CAD, and a designer producing a bid does not need a pretty picture with no quantities. Here is the router, and then the rest of the page takes each kind in turn.

Tap or hover any cell for the note behind it. Then read the rows for the kind you chose above.

Sow, for a design you will act on; Neighborbrite, for a quick picture today. We ran both on the same front yard: a brick ranch with a concrete and brick walkway between two bare pine-straw beds, under pine trees, in Raleigh, zone 8a, cottage style, part sun, keep the walkway.

Neighborbrite's free result is on the left and Sow's free web result on the right, both 1024 by 1024 pixels, both watermarked bottom right, both with the house, walkway and bird feeder kept.

Neighborbrite inferred Raleigh, zone 8a and a flat slope, guessed full sun for a bed under pines (we changed it to partial), wrote a text plan in about 60 seconds with five named cultivars that fit part shade (Annabelle hydrangea, Concord Grape spiderwort, Northern Exposure Sienna coral bells, Evergold sedge, Big Daddy hosta), and drew the image in about 33 seconds.

The free tier allows 4 designs a day. The first design's plant list came with quantities and nursery prices, 41 plants for about $1,049; the in-place editing tools carry a Pro badge at $24.99 a month and the watermark only comes off on Business at $49.99 a month.

Sow on the web returned Romantic Cottage Walkway with five named plants linked to catalog pages (Buff Beauty rose, Duchesse de Nemours peony, Camelot Lavender foxglove, Baltic parsley, Snowflake catmint). The render took under a minute; the gallery showed it after 90 to 150 seconds.

The same photo on the phone, where the sun chip was pre-filled from the saved space, came back with foxglove, anemone and daffodil and quantities for each.

Hadaa is the third photo tool worth knowing. It charges $12 a render, or $9 each for three or more, with no subscription, and its site says every plant is verified against your USDA zone and that the output includes a plant list with quantities and a contractor blueprint with path widths and material volumes.

Renders are one-shot, and it is web only. OutdoorBrite ($29 to $149 a month, no free trial) and Gardenly ($54 or $84 a year) are the other photo subscriptions; both are described on our apps page.

Klora, if you want to draw it yourself, with one free design; Sow's Planting Plans, if you want the beds found and filled for you with a priced schedule at the end; and the desktop suites if the plan is one sheet in a construction set.

Klora is a browser tool with no account. We typed the test address and it imported aerial imagery at real scale (5.5 inches per pixel, from the state's imagery program), parcel lines and 5-foot contours in about 30 seconds, then offered a drawing toolbar for beds, paths, structures, lot boundary, measure and notes, with layers, season views from spring to winter, growth stages at Year 1, 5, 10 and Mature, and a bloom timeline.

Its library is 1,422 species with sun, deer-resistance and pollinator icons plus generic concept shapes with mature footprints. Nothing is generated; you draw every bed and place every plant. One design is free; a second and the PDF export need the $24 pass or $69 a year. Its sun model needs lidar heights, which our address did not have.

Sow's Planting Plans start from a saved address, find the beds on the satellite view and fill them. Our test property showed 17 beds across its spaces, one of them with 12 beds and 490 plants.

Each bed opens with its area, sun and plant count, four layout styles (Layered, Drifts, Rows, Edged), and the species as chips with counts, swap and remove, plus Reshuffle and New plants. The export runs through a Review Costs screen with quantity, an editable unit price and an estimated cost per species, bed subtotals and a total, before the PDF.

The plan is generated for you, which is the difference from Klora, and you can still change every species in every bed.

Realtime Landscaping and PRO Landscape both produce planting plans with real species and a plant list as part of a larger desktop package, described below. Planner 5D can draw a 2D outdoor layout, but without plant species or spacing data, so the plan is shapes. SketchUp can do the same with more precision and the same absence of plant knowledge.

Among the tools here, Realtime Landscaping is the deepest 3D for a yard, Planner 5D the easiest, and SketchUp the most flexible.

Realtime Landscaping, from Idea Spectrum, is Windows desktop software sold as a one-time purchase, with 3D, terrain and hardscape tools that the mobile tools do not attempt, real plant species, a planting plan and a plant list.

The editions are listed at $149 to $599 by tier in search results, a range we could not verify on the vendor's site, and a separate Photo product overlays objects on a photo rather than redrawing it. It is Windows only, with no mobile and a desktop learning curve.

Planner 5D is a home and floor-plan tool with an outdoor catalog, available on web, iPhone, Android, Mac and Windows, with real 3D walkthroughs and a free tier of unlimited projects with half the catalog. Premium is $19.99 a month or $59.99 a year and Professional $49.99 a month or $399.99 a year for 4K renders.

Its catalog items are generic plant objects with no species, zone or climate data, its photo generator is built for interiors, and we could not confirm landscape output from a yard photo. It ranks first for many of these searches on the strength of its interior tool.

SketchUp is general 3D modelling with a free browser tier and a huge model warehouse. Landscape work in it needs extensions and skill, and it has no plant intelligence; paid tiers start at about $129 a year, unverified. iScape offers 2D and 3D design on iPhone only, marked iOS only on every tier of its pricing page, alongside AR placement; it is a mobile app rather than desktop software and we cover it on the apps page. PRO Landscape includes 3D in its suite, described next.

Desktop suites, for the documents; and increasingly a phone or web tool for the planting and the client conversation. The two we list are the ones that come up most for a small firm.

PRO Landscape, from Drafix, is the established pro suite: photo imaging by placing objects, CAD, 3D and proposals, on a Windows desktop core with an iPad companion app and a Home app for consumers. Its site advertises a PRO Landscape+ feature with AI.

Pricing is about $90 a month according to search snippets; we could not verify that on prolandscape.com, and the table says so. Expect a steep learning curve and pro pricing.

Realtime Landscaping covers the design and plan side with deep 3D, terrain and hardscape tools and a one-time price, with client deliverables that its pages describe only in part. For dimensioned drawings and material volumes it is the stronger of the two on paper; for proposals, PRO Landscape is built around them.

Larger practices also use CAD-based suites such as Vectorworks Landmark, DynaSCAPE and Land F/X, which we have not evaluated and do not score here.

On the app side, iScape's Pro tier at $29.99 a month includes a proposal tool, and Sow's Pro+ tier at $99.99 a year adds client boards, briefs, proposals with live nursery pricing, presentations and approvals. Neither produces CAD or construction documents.

Hadaa's per-render blueprint, with plant placement, path widths and material volumes, is the closest a photo tool gets to a contractor handoff. A professional who needs a stamped drawing needs a desktop suite; one who needs a client to approve a planting scheme with quantities and prices by Thursday does not.

This is the row that splits the field into two halves that barely overlap. The photo and plan tools built for gardeners carry species data; the modelling and CAD tools carry objects, and the deeper suites carry plant libraries whose zone and size data we could not confirm.

• SO

  Sow

  Every plant in a design is a catalog entry with zone, sun, mature size, bloom and care data, from a 12,000+ plant catalog, and each saved space carries its own sun and zone. Zone matching covers the US, Canada, the UK and Australia; weather-aware care after planting uses US forecasts only.

  On the web, Design Studio's Help Me Choose panel takes a style, a zip code, plant roles and a sunlight preference and recommends from those.

• KL

  Klora

  1,422 species with sun, deer and pollinator icons, zone and sun filters, and mature footprints on its concept shapes. Neighborbrite: it inferred zone 8a correctly and chose a palette that fit part shade once we corrected the light, with zone and sun shown on the plant list but no mature size or spacing, and we could not confirm the depth of data behind each plant. Hadaa: its site says every plant is verified against your USDA zone.

Realtime Landscaping and PRO Landscape both use real species, and both carry zone and mature-size data that their pages describe only in part, so the table marks those cells partly. Planner 5D and SketchUp have no species, zone or climate data; their plants are furniture. iScape has a named plant library but no zone or climate check.

In the drawing and modelling tools, always. You placed every object, so you can move every object. That covers Klora, Planner 5D, SketchUp, iScape, Realtime Landscaping and PRO Landscape, and Sow's Editor when you start from a plain photo. The interesting question is what happens in the photo tools, where the software drew the design for you.

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.

Tapping The Fairy Rose in our iPhone result showed Remove, Fewer, More and Swap with the count of eight in this design and the botanical name.

The Edit design sheet also offers a change-a-plant chip for each species, a text box for an instruction such as adding a stone path, restyles (Golden Hour, Volumetric, Winter, Nighttime, Future growth), and a Plant Designer that paints plants you choose into the scene.

On the web, Continue editing opened the design in Design Studio with a plant and object library and quick filters for native, sun, shade and deer resistance.

In Neighborbrite, the tools that change a design in place (Add elements, Magic edit, Erase elements, Make changes) carry a Pro badge, and they edit the image rather than a plant object; on the free tier you regenerate, or change the palette in text at the plan step before the image is drawn. Hadaa's renders are one-shot. If you expect to iterate, that difference costs more than any subscription.

A plant schedule is the list a nursery or a contractor actually works from: each species, how many, and ideally what they cost. Here is who produces one.

Sow's Planting Plans produce the most complete schedule we saw: for each bed, every species with its quantity, an editable unit price and an estimated cost, then bed subtotals and an estimated total. Our test plan ran to 602 plants and $8,919.70 across 17 beds before the PDF.

The iPhone photo-design result also lists quantities per species (The Fairy Rose x8, Foxglove Sugar Plum x28, Hawera Daffodil x66, Anemone x14).

The web design's Shopping List PDF is the simpler schedule: one row per species with its quantity, a unit price and a line total, plus an estimated total, the unit price being the lowest listed across the online nurseries Sow tracks (usually for the smallest pot) or a typical price for the plant type marked est. where nothing is listed; it does not show mature size or spacing, which are on each plant page.

Sow is also the only tool here that keeps pricing after the list: it checks 18 online nurseries every day for prices and deals, and links each plant straight to where you can buy it at the lowest price it found.

Neighborbrite's first free design opened a list of 5 varieties and 41 plants with botanical names, quantities and nursery prices, about $1,049 before shipping, with order, print and share buttons and no mature size or spacing. That button carried a Pro badge and we could not confirm whether later lists stay free.

Hadaa's site promises a plant list with quantities and a bill of quantities for materials. Realtime Landscaping and PRO Landscape produce plant lists as part of their plan output, and PRO Landscape's proposal tool is built to price them. Klora lists what you placed, with the PDF behind its paid tier. Planner 5D and SketchUp have no plant list because they have no plants.

From free to about $90 a month, with two very different shapes: the desktop suites sell a licence or a pro subscription, and the gardener tools sell a cheap annual plan or a per-render fee.

Prices checked October 2026; the table carries the date each one was verified and a link to the source page, and the two desktop prices that we could only find in search snippets are marked as not verified.

Yes, and the free options cover three of the four kinds. For a free photo redesign, Sow gives you 10 free designs to start and more for taking part, with named catalog plants, and Neighborbrite's limited free tier gives 4 watermarked designs a day. For a free 2D plan, Klora gives you one complete design with no account.

For free 3D, Planner 5D's free tier and SketchUp Free both work and neither knows what a plant is. There is no free CAD suite on this page; Realtime Landscaping and PRO Landscape are paid, and the one no-cost option with real modelling control is SketchUp's browser version.

For free use we rank Sow first. 10 designs to start and more for taking part, each made of named, zone-checked plants with a priced list, against Neighborbrite's 4 a day and Klora's one scaled plan. We keep a separate page on exactly where each free tier stops being free, including ours.

Platform rules out more software than price does. Realtime Landscaping is Windows only. PRO Landscape has a Windows desktop core with an iPad companion app and an Android app. SketchUp runs on web, Mac, Windows and iPad. Planner 5D runs on all of those plus iPhone and Android.

Sow runs on iPhone, Android and the web with the same project in all three, and its Planting Plans are on the phone. Klora, Hadaa and OutdoorBrite are browser tools. Neighborbrite is web plus both app stores. iScape is both app stores, with 2D, 3D and AR on iPhone only.

So on a Mac, your choices are SketchUp, Planner 5D, and the browser tools (Sow, Klora, Neighborbrite, Hadaa); the two desktop suites need Windows. On an iPad, SketchUp, Planner 5D and PRO Landscape's companion app are the native options, with the browser tools in Safari. On the web alone, Sow, Klora, Neighborbrite, Planner 5D, SketchUp Free and Hadaa all work without an install.

It depends on what you need back. Yardzen, the best-known design service, sells backyard packages at $995, $1,395 and $1,995, with front-yard, full-yard and small-space packages also sold; a real designer makes the decisions from your photos and a survey, the higher tiers include photorealistic renders and a cost advisor, and the output can be permit-ready with contractor matching.

The trade-offs are weeks of turnaround, revisions limited to the package allowance, nothing you can iterate yourself after delivery, and no care or price tracking after install.

Software wins when you want to iterate, when the project is planting rather than construction, or when $995 is the plant budget rather than the design budget. A designer wins when the project involves grading, drainage, walls or permits, or when you simply do not want to make the decisions.

A sensible middle path is to use a photo tool to settle what you like and a planting plan to price it, then hand a designer or contractor a brief that is already half done.

For the drawings, a desktop suite; for the planting, the client conversation and the schedule, a tool that knows plants. Sow's Pro+ tier is built for the second job, and its weaknesses for the first are real, so here they are side by side.