Honest comparison
Kounts Care vs Planta
Planta is the benchmark for plant care apps, and it is also the most expensive way to be reminded to water something. Here is the honest version.
In review with Apple · iPhone, iOS 26 · Five profiles free when it lands
Planta has earned its position. It is beautiful, the plant database is enormous, the light meter is genuinely clever, and the care guidance goes deeper than anything else on the App Store. If plants are your actual hobby and you want a tool that treats them that way, this page is not going to pretend otherwise. What it costs is a subscription, reported at around $35.99 a year at the time of writing, with the features most people came for, identification, the light meter and custom schedules, sitting behind it. Kounts Care answers a different question: what does everything alive in this house need today, including the cat, and is anything on my shelf going to hurt her.
The short answer
Choose Planta if houseplants are the hobby and you want the deepest plant-specific tooling available, especially the light meter and the diagnosis features. Choose Kounts Care if your home has animals in it as well as plants, if you want the household to share one list, or if you would rather pay once than subscribe forever.
Side by side
Competitor details checked August 2026. Pricing and features move constantly, so please confirm on the App Store before deciding.
| Feature | Kounts Care | Planta |
|---|---|---|
| Tracks pets as well as plants | Yes, same profiles, same counters✓ | Plants only |
| Toxicity warnings for your own pets | Cross-references every plant against your cats and dogs, free at every tier✓ | Shows pet toxicity on a plant, with no knowledge of your animals |
| Price for the full app | $19.99 a year, or $34.99 once for lifetime✓ | Reported around $35.99 a year, no lifetime option |
| Free tier | Five profiles, shared across the household, with reminders and identification✓ | Limited, with identification, light meter and custom schedules in Premium |
| Household sharing | Share the household over iCloud, everyone sees and ticks the same tasks✓ | Built around a single user's collection |
| Sitter access without an app | A private web link a sitter opens in a browser✓ | Not offered |
| Plant identification | On device, then an online database for an exact match. Three online free, then Premium | Extensive, and a core part of the paid product |
| Light meter | No | Yes, and it is the best implementation of it anywhere |
| Plant problem diagnosis | No | Yes, symptom-based guidance |
| Size of the plant database | 148 hand-authored houseplants, with AI-generated plans for anything outside it | Many thousands of species |
| Seasonal watering | Adjusts from the real daylight where you live, plus weather nudges | Adjusts by season and reported conditions |
| Where your data lives | On your iPhone and in your own private iCloud, no account✓ | Account-based, on the vendor's service |
| Platforms | iPhone, iOS 26 or later | iPhone, iPad and Android |
Where each option is stronger
Where Kounts Care is stronger
It knows about the cat
This is the whole reason the app exists. Planta can tell you a monstera is toxic to cats, in the same way a reference book can. Kounts Care knows you have a cat called Nala, so adding a monstera raises a warning with her name on it, and adopting a second cat re-checks every plant you already own. A plant-only app structurally cannot do that, however good its database is.
One list for the whole household
Plant care in a shared flat fails in a specific way: two people water the same fern and nobody waters the other one. Kounts Care shares the household over iCloud so everyone sees the same tasks and the same history of who did what. Planta is built around one person's collection, which is the right design for a hobbyist and the wrong one for a family.
You can stop paying
Premium is $19.99 a year if you want a subscription, or $34.99 once if you would rather never think about it again, and it is shared with your Family. At Planta's reported $35.99 a year, one year costs more than owning Kounts Care outright. The five free profiles are also genuinely usable rather than a trial: reminders, on-device identification and every toxicity warning are included.
Where Planta is the better choice
The light meter, and the depth behind it
Planta's light meter, which uses the camera to measure whether a spot actually suits a plant, is the single best feature in this category and Kounts Care has no equivalent. If you are trying to work out why something is failing in a north-facing room, that tool answers the question directly.
A far bigger plant database
Planta covers many thousands of species with detailed guidance for each. Kounts Care hand-authors 148 houseplants and generates a sensible starter plan for anything else. For common houseplants that gap does not matter much. For an unusual collection it matters a lot.
Diagnosing a sick plant
Planta will walk you through symptoms and suggest what is wrong. Kounts Care tells you what care is due and when, and does not attempt diagnosis. If your plants keep dying and you want to know why, that is Planta's territory.
Android and iPad
Planta runs on Android and iPad. Kounts Care is iPhone only and requires iOS 26. If your household is not entirely on recent iPhones, that decides it.
What Kounts Care looks like
Questions people actually ask
Is Planta free?
There is a free tier, but the features most people install it for, including plant identification, the light meter and custom care schedules, are part of Planta Premium. Its annual plan is widely reported at around $35.99, with shorter monthly and quarterly options. Prices move, so check the current App Store listing before deciding. This was checked in August 2026.
Is there a plant care app without a subscription?
Kounts Care offers a one-time $34.99 lifetime unlock alongside its monthly and yearly plans, and five profiles are free permanently rather than for a trial period. If you only have a few plants, the free tier includes reminders, on-device identification and all toxicity warnings.
Can I use both?
Plenty of people would be well served by that, and it is a reasonable answer rather than a dodge. Planta is a better reference and diagnostic tool. Kounts Care is the daily list for a household with animals in it. They do not conflict, though paying for two subscriptions is worth thinking about.
Does Kounts Care identify plants as well as Planta?
For common houseplants it is competitive, because it runs Apple's on-device vision models first and then checks an online plant database for an exact species match. For rare or unusual species Planta's database is deeper. Kounts Care gives you three online identifications free per install and unlimited with Premium, with on-device identification always free.
Try the calm one.
Five profiles free, no account, and the one warning no plant-only app can give you.
See also: Planta alternatives · Kounts Care vs PictureThis · How the toxicity warnings work