Comparison

Leafolio vs Plant Journal

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Leafolio

This app is a premium plant collection journal for serious growers and collectors. It helps you organize plant details, photos, sources, and care notes. An optional premium subscription adds advanced breeding records for documenting crosses and traits.

Highlights
  • Catalog plant collection with details and photos
  • Preserve photo history and milestones
  • Save favorite vendors and nurseries
  • Build a wishlist for future acquisitions
  • Track orders from purchase to arrival
  • Record care observations
  • Document breeding records and parentage
Features
Read full description

Leafolio is a premium plant collection journal built for serious growers, collectors, and plant lovers who want more than a simple watering reminder. Most of Leafolio is yours to use with the app, with optional Leafolio Premium adding advanced breeding records for growers who document crosses, parentage, traits, and harvest timing. Keep your plants, photos, sources, vendors, orders, wishlists, care notes, and records organized in one beautiful place. Whether you grow orchids, Japanese maples, roses, carnivorous plants, hoyas, aroids, rare houseplants, or anything in between, Leafolio helps you preserve the full story behind every plant in your collection. Track where each plant came from, when you acquired it, what it was purchased as, which vendor supplied it, how it has changed over time, and what details matter most to you. For growers who breed plants, Leafolio Premium adds a dedicated place to document crosses, parentage, observed traits, dates, and expected harvest timing — so breeding records stay connected to the plants they came from. With Leafolio, you can: • Catalog your plant collection with names, photos, categories, sources, and notes • Preserve photo history and milestones over time • Save favorite vendors, growers, nurseries, and sellers • Build a wishlist for future plant acquisitions • Track orders from purchase to arrival • Record care observations and plants that need attention • Document breeding records, parentage, crosses, traits, and harvest timing with Leafolio Premium • Keep important plant history together instead of scattered across notes, photos, messages, and spreadsheets Leafolio is designed for collectors who care about where their plants came from, how they grow, what they become, and the details that make each one worth remembering. Your plant collection is a masterpiece. It deserves more than a list. Your breeding work deserves more than scattered notes. Leafolio keeps the full story together. Subscription Terms: Leafolio Premium is an optional auto-renewing subscription. Payment will be charged to your Apple ID at confirmation of purchase. Subscriptions automatically renew at the same price unless canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. You can manage or cancel your subscription anytime in your App Store account settings. Privacy Policy: https://leafolio.app/privacy Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

About

Plant Journal

Features
Read full description

A plant is a slow thing. It doesn't change today, or tomorrow — but leave it a season and it's a different plant entirely. Plant Journal is a plant care journal and photo diary — a private notebook for the houseplants you grow at home. Give each pot its own page: what it is, where you found it, who gave it to you, which windowsill it lives on, how much light it likes, what it's potted in, whether it's toxic to pets. A cutting from a friend, a rescue from the clearance shelf — each one a keepsake, not a row in a database. A cutting remembers the pot it came from, and that pot keeps the names of everything taken from it. Water on the plant's own rhythm, not a rigid calendar. This one every three days, that one once a week. Name the jobs yourself: water, feed, mist, or whatever yours happens to need. Through the dormant months the intervals stretch out — it's asleep, not thirsty. One gentle watering reminder each morning gathers the day's work into a single line — "today: water the Monstera, mist the fern" — and the next date counts from the day you actually did it, so a late watering never piles up as debt. Or leave the app closed and keep the widget on your home screen, telling you which pot needs what. But the heart of it is the growing. Every photo you take becomes a pressed page — dated, labeled, laid out like a herbarium — a photo timeline of the plant growing up. Watch a seedling become a canopy. Set the first day beside today, drag the slider between any two photos to see before and after, or flip the whole album fast and watch the plant grow in seconds. Plants have bad weeks too. The pest log keeps a photo of the damaged leaf and what you did about it, and the plant wears a tag — healthy, watching, treating — until it's itself again. Then the garden tells you what happened: a year of care at a glance, height and leaf count charting the climb, this day a year ago bringing back the same pot when it was smaller. At the end of the year, a tally of every watering and every new arrival. And the herbarium prints — export it as a PDF, bind it, give it to whoever handed you that first cutting. No accounts. No plant-ID sending your garden to a server. Everything lives on your phone — exportable whenever you want it, and backed up to your own iCloud if you choose. Just you and the things you've grown. Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Leafolio4 screens
Plant Journal4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is ads: Leafolio at none against Plant Journal's shown. Leafolio also leads on iOS requirement (15.1 vs 17.0). Plant Journal's advantage is update cadence (every 4 days vs every 3 weeks). On price, in-app purchases 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Leafolio sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month and Plant Journal sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $0.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Leafolio ships an update every 3 weeks, Plant Journal every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on October 31, 2026 and November 7, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Leafolio versus Plant Journal: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterLeafolioPlant Journal
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (14 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings14 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 3 weeksEvery 4 days — better
AdsNo — betterYes
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFreemium—
DevicesiPhone, iPod — betteriPhone
Requires iOS15.1 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size79 MB21 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperThe Two Trees LLCHo Van Dai

In-app purchases

2 purchases

Leafolio

Subscriptions2
  • Leafolio Premium Monthly$4.991 Month
  • Leafolio Premium Yearly$39.991 Year
2 purchases

Plant Journal

Subscriptions2
  • Plant Journal Premium Monthly$0.991 Month
  • Plant Journal Premium Yearly$9.991 Year

Questions

Is Leafolio free?
Leafolio is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Plant Journal free?
Plant Journal is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Leafolio or Plant Journal have ads?
Plant Journal shows ads; Leafolio does not.
Which is updated more often, Leafolio or Plant Journal?
Leafolio ships an update every 3 weeks, and Plant Journal every 4 days. Most recently, Leafolio was updated on October 31, 2026 and Plant Journal on November 7, 2026.

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