iScape review: is it free, what Pro costs, and what it can't do

iScape is the long-running mobile landscape app. It was released in 2011, older than almost everything else in this category, and it is on both app stores. The idea is simple: take a photo of your yard, then drag plants, hardscape, furniture and products from a library onto the photo until it looks the way you want.

On iPhone there is also an AR mode that lets you see objects placed in the camera view, and a 2D and 3D design mode that iScape's pricing page marks as iOS only.

That makes iScape a different animal from the photo-redesign tools that have appeared in the last few years. Neighborbrite, DreamzAR and Sow all take your photo and draw a planted version of it for you. iScape does not. Every plant and every paver is something you chose and placed.

For some people that is the whole point: you keep control and the result is exactly what you put there. For others it is the reason they give up after twenty minutes.

Two groups, in our reading of its materials. Homeowners who already know roughly what they want and would rather compose a mockup than be handed one. And landscape professionals who need a quick visual for a client and a proposal to go with it; iScape Pro includes a proposal tool, and the pricing page has an Enterprise tier that asks you to contact sales.

What it is not for is anyone who wants help deciding what to plant. iScape's plant library has named plants, but it does not check a plant against your zone or climate for you, and we could not confirm how much sun or mature-size data sits behind each one. Hold that thought; it comes back in the comparison.

Yes, there is a Free tier, and no, it is not the full app. iScape's pricing page describes Free as a limited database with reduced access to plants, hardscapes and products. Pro removes those limits and adds the proposal tool.

That is the whole of what the page tells you, and it is why "Is iScape really free?" shows up in Google's People Also Ask box on 12 of the 41 landscape-app searches we pulled in October 2026. People install it expecting a free design tool and hit the paywall somewhere in the middle.

The pricing page does not say exactly where that paywall sits, or whether free exports carry a watermark. "Limited database" and "reduced access" are the vendor's own words, and vendors do not usually understate their free tiers.

If "free" is the thing you care about, two tools we did test are worth knowing about. Neighborbrite let us make four designs a day for nothing, with a watermark, and the first design came with a priced plant list. Sow gives 10 free designs to start and more for taking part. Neighborbrite draws the yard for you.

Sow can draw it for you, or open its Editor so you place everything yourself, as you would in iScape.

iScape Pro is $29.99 a month or $299.99 a year, from the official pricing page we captured on October 13, 2026. There is also an Enterprise tier with no published price. The screenshot at the top of this page is that page.

The number to notice is the gap between the two Pro prices. Paying month to month for a year costs $359.88. The annual plan is $299.99. If you only need iScape for one project in spring, the monthly plan makes sense.

If you expect to use it through a whole season, the annual plan is the cheaper way in, and it is still, by some distance, the most expensive subscription among the mainstream landscape apps we cover; the pricing table further down has the others.

What Pro buys you, per the pricing page: the full plant, hardscape and product database, the proposal tool, and the 2D and 3D design mode, which is marked iOS only on every tier. The page does not list a plant count or say what "full" means in numbers, so we have not put one here.

No, but the best parts are. iScape is on both the App Store and Google Play, and its site describes itself as a landscape design app for iOS and Android. The pricing page, though, puts "2D & 3D design (iOS only)" against every tier, Free included, and the AR mode is an iOS feature.

So an Android user gets the photo-based placement tool and the library, and not the 2D and 3D design mode or the AR view.

The pricing page does not spell out what Android includes beyond that iOS-only note. If you are on Android and the AR or 3D view is what drew you to iScape, read the Play listing carefully before you pay. DreamzAR describes its AR walkthrough on iOS, Android and the web. Sow has no AR at all, on any platform.

There is no browser version of iScape. If you want to work on a bigger screen, that rules it out; Neighborbrite, DreamzAR, Planner 5D, Klora and Sow all run in a browser.

Credit where it is due, from iScape's own materials and its long run in the category.

This is the part the pricing page and the store screenshots do not tell you, and the part that decides whether iScape is the right tool for you.

None of these are hidden flaws. They are the natural shape of a placement tool. But they are the reason a lot of homeowners download iScape, spend an evening dragging shrubs around, and end up no closer to knowing what to plant.

Both start from a photo of your yard, and both let you compose it by hand: iScape from its library, Sow in its Editor, dragging in plants, furniture, lighting and paving. The difference is what sits around that editor.

Sow can also read the photo and draw a planted version for you first, using real species from a catalog of 12,000+ plants, each with zone, sun, mature size, bloom and care data, and then keep that design editable.

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.

Here is what that looked like on our test yard. We gave the iPhone app the front-walkway photo with Cottage style and part sun (pre-filled from the saved space).

It came back with both borders planted and a plant list of five species with botanical names and quantities: The Fairy Rose x8, Foxglove Sugar Plum x28, Hawera Daffodil x66, Anemone x14 and one more. Tapping any species offers Remove, Fewer, More or Swap.

Planting Plans, on the Pro tier, found beds on the satellite view of a saved address and produced a priced schedule: in the plan we captured, 602 plants at an estimated $8,919.70, with an editable unit price per species.

That is the thing iScape has no equivalent of: a plant schedule with quantities and prices generated from the design, not typed in.

And here is what Sow does not have that iScape does. No AR. No 3D. No hardscape CAD or construction documents. Weather-aware care is US-only. Outdoor plants only.

On the web, the design "Shopping List" PDF prices each species at the lowest listed nursery price (often the smallest pot) and does not show mature size or spacing; the per-bed schedule with an editable unit price lives in Planting Plans on mobile.

Neighborbrite is in the table as the reference point we tested; its full review is linked below. Every iScape cell marked Unverified is something its public pages do not state.

A year of iScape Pro is $299.99 paid annually or $359.88 paid monthly. Sow is free to start; Pro from $39.99 a year on the web ($59.99 a year through the App Store); Pro+ $99.99 a year.

Neighborbrite is $24.99 a month for Pro, with a limited free tier of 4 watermarked designs a day, and only removes the watermark on Business at $49.99 a month. The Sow prices shown are web prices.

One caveat on the Sow side so the table is not read as a clean win: Planting Plans, the priced schedule, is a Pro feature, not a free one.

If what you actually need is both, there is no shame in it. Use Sow to decide what to plant and where, then use iScape to mock up the patio.

We have not read every review of iScape, and we will not quote any we have not read, so this section is narrower than you might expect.

Search for "iscape review" and the first page is mostly iScape's own site, its App Store listing, Reddit threads and a roundup or two. Two themes line up with what iScape's own pricing page shows, and they are the ones to weigh.

We did not find any independent test of iScape on a real yard against other tools, and we are not going to claim one.