Yard Planner vs Backyard Dreambook
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Yard Planner
Design your dream outdoor space with a drag-and-drop interface. Choose from over 800 hand-drawn elements like trees, pools, and structures to create detailed landscape layouts. Share your creations with friends or clients.
- Drag-and-drop functionality
- 800+ hand-drawn landscape elements
- Sketch Tool for free-form shapes
- Google Maps integration for property mapping
- Layer management for complex designs
- Shareable editable designs
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YARD PLANNER is a simple drag-and-drop 2D landscape design app with all the tools you need to mock up your property, create new designs, and share them with friends and family. YARD PLANNER is ideal for homeowners who want to try out fresh ideas for their yard. Useful for landscape professionals to share designs with clients and contractors. Also perfect for children and adults alike to exercise their imagination and creativity! Use YARD PLANNER to select and place over 800 beautiful hand-drawn elements including trees, gardens, pools, patios, hammocks, driveways, houses and sheds, solar panels, and just about anything you might want for your property–even parties and weddings! Features include: • Sample designs to inspire or get you started • Simple drag-and-drop functionality • 34 palettes (800+ hand-drawn elements) to create your landscape design layout • Resize, Rotate, Undo/Redo, Duplicate, Flip, Group • Rotate elements with “Snap to 90” or turn off to rotate more precisely • Snap to grid (elements stick to a re-sizeable grid of guidelines, turn on/off in Settings) • Rulers (visible at edges of design; zoom in to the single unit; user selects feet/meters; can be turned on/off) • Choose from 15 different background colors • Sketch Tool (allows users to draw garden beds and other free-form shapes with an eraser and brushes of different colors, widths and opacity) • Map Tool (This highly accurate mapping tool based on Google Maps allows you to drop pins at the corners of your property and import the map image with measurements into the app as a background.) • North arrow (appears with Map Tool) • Site Analysis palettes to mark the locations of your site’s utilities and light and moisture conditions • Notes (allows users to tag elements in their designs with typed comments or descriptions) • Light/Dark mode (changes Note tags and North arrow from white to black for visibility against light backgrounds.) • Animated Figures (a palette of animated elements—a person, dog, cat, bird, and car—that move through your design on a looped or repeating path, adjustable speed, play and stop animation) • Import a Photo as a background (useful for importing a digital image of your property plan) • Create different Layers of elements in your design. Add, delete, rename layers, make each layer visible/invisible, lock/unlock for editing, and reorder layer position. • In-app step-by-step guide to creating your Property Plan. • Designs automatically save to the app’s Saved Designs gallery • Share designs on social media • Email an editable design so friends can edit one another’s designs and email them back and forth ***As featured in The New York Times, Fox News, USA Today, Gardenista, and more. “Home Outside allows you to create intricate and varied landscapes…And when you’re finished designing your yard or indulging in a little dreamscaping, you can email results to friend.” –Kate Murphy, The New York Times “The app gives you drag and drop tools to create a garden design idiosyncratic to your garden [and] allows you to choose hardscape materials, design paths and patios, and arrange furniture in your outdoor space.” –Dalilah Arja, Gardenista “I can’t imagine a designer who wouldn’t want to have this on their phone or tablet. I’ve tried this app … it’s a great tool for a ‘quickie’ design that you can show clients … and then refine as you like.” –Jane Berger, Garden Design Online
Backyard Dreambook
Explore inspiring ideas and content for your ultimate backyard. Save favorite images to personal collections and share them. Request project estimates, start financing, or schedule meetings with designers directly from the app.
- Inspirational backyard images
- Feature stories and articles
- Save and share favorite photos
- Request project estimates
- Finance process initiation
- Schedule designer meetings
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Discover all the inspiration and content you need to bring your Ultimate Backyard to life! Download the app, then swipe, click, and scroll through a wealth of Feature Stories, What’s Hot articles and tons of high-res pool, spa, landscape and backyard feature images to ignite the imagination. Save your most-loved photos into Dreambooks to share with friends and family. When it’s go time, request a project estimate, begin the finance process, or set up a meeting with one of our world-class designers. Do it all from the palm of your hand and with a simple click.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Backyard Dreambook at Free against Yard Planner's $3.99. Backyard Dreambook also leads on rating (4.8 vs 3.4) and review sentiment (67% vs 40%). Yard Planner's advantage is ratings volume (381 vs 10) and update cadence (every 2 months vs every 7 months). On ads, in-app purchases, monetization model and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Backyard Dreambook is free to download; Yard Planner costs $3.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Backyard Dreambook holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 3.4. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Yard Planner has 381 ratings behind it against 10, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 40% of Yard Planner's written reviews are positive against 67% of Backyard Dreambook's.
Yard Planner ships an update every 2 months, Backyard Dreambook every 7 months. The most recent releases landed on October 20, 2026 and October 12, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Yard Planner | Backyard Dreambook |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $3.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 3.4 (381 ratings) | 4.8 (10 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 39.9% of reviews | 66.7% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 381 — better | 10 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months — better | Every 7 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Best chart rank | #193 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 14.0 — better | 15.1 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 762 MB | 35 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Home Outside, Inc. | Joan Smith Enterprises Inc |
Customer experience
Yard Planner
Backyard Dreambook
Bugs and requests
Yard Planner
Reported bugs
5 issues- Layers and objects disappearing
- Inability to undo actions
- Inaccurate grid and scale
- Mapping and photo import issues
- Unexpected crashes and freezes
Requested features
5 requests- Ability to change object dimensions independently
- More plant, structure, and hardscape options
- Metric measurement support
- Landscape mode support for iPad
- Export options for high-quality images
Backyard Dreambook
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Yard Planner
No in-app purchases
Backyard Dreambook
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Yard Planner free?
Is Backyard Dreambook free?
Which has better reviews, Yard Planner or Backyard Dreambook?
Do Yard Planner or Backyard Dreambook have ads?
Which is updated more often, Yard Planner or Backyard Dreambook?
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