Three plans. Free, Starter ($3.99 a month or $29 a year), and Pro ($7.99 a month or $59 a year). Free already gets you the live prices, the 3-month trend chart, both weekly emails and a small journal. I reckon the question really is just two things, do you want the full 12-month price history and an unlimited journal (Starter), and do you want Buddy Check photo pest ID and live pest pressure for your postcode (Pro).
Side by side
| What you get | Free $0no card needed | Starter $3.99/moor $29/yr | Pro $7.99/moor $59/yr |
|---|---|---|---|
| Live prices today, 76 vegetables, 4 supermarkets | ✓no account needed | ✓ | ✓ |
| Plant Now planting windows for your climate zone | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| 700+ growing guides and 34-pest library | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| 3-month price trend per veggie | ✓free account | ✓ | ✓ |
| Gardener Weekly Digest email | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Weekly Price Alert email (biggest movers) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Garden journal | 1 bed, 3 plants | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Buddy Advisor note, written for your garden | ✗ | Weekly | Every morning |
| Full 12-month price history per veggie | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Price-drop alerts for crops you grow | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Pick-your-crops watchlist | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Care log and harvest log with CSV export | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Buddy Check photo pest ID (20 a month, private, on our Australian server) | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Live pest pressure for your postcode, including QLD fruit fly | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Weather-triggered pest alerts for your crops | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Succession planting planner | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Monthly Vegetable Price Report email | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
Annual saves about 40% on Starter and about 38% on Pro versus paying monthly.
Free, when it’s enough
Free is the right plan if you treat Garden Buddy AU mostly as a reference site. You’ll check what’s cheap or expensive at the shops this week, look up planting times for your zone, and have a look at the demo garden every now and then to see what I’m doing.
A free account gets you more than the anonymous site does. You get the 3-month price trend chart on every veggie, the Gardener Weekly Digest every Sunday, the Weekly Price Alert every Monday with the biggest movers, and a taste of the garden journal, 1 bed and 3 plants. What you won’t get is the full 12-month price history, an unlimited journal, or ROI numbers on a real garden’s worth of crops. That’s fine if all you wanted is decision support for shopping and planting. Free stays free, there’s no timed trial running out on you.
Starter, the actual product
Starter is where the My Garden side of the site unlocks properly, and where the price data starts working for you. For $3.99 a month or $29 a year you get:
- Full 12-month price history on every veggie, not just the 3-month trend.
- Price-drop alerts for the crops you grow. Your Weekly Price Alert gains a “Your crops this week” section.
- Pick-your-crops watchlist. You choose which veggies to watch.
- Unlimited beds, plants and harvests. Log as much as you want to log.
- Full care log. Every watering, fertiliser, mulch and pest treatment. Each entry captures the product used, quantity, weather at the time, and soil temperature.
- ROI report. Real grow vs buy savings, calculated against today’s shop prices and updated the moment you log a harvest.
- Pest observation tracking with treatment product and effectiveness review.
- Harvest history with CSV export for your own record.
If you’re going to keep a vegetable journal at all, this is the tier I’d pick. The annual plan at $29 breaks down to $2.42 a month, which is less than a cup of coffee and somewhat less than most seed packets I buy anyway.
Pro, the pest detective tier
Pro is built around pests. It adds Buddy Check photo pest ID (20 checks a month, photos processed privately on our own Australian server), live pest pressure for your postcode including QLD fruit fly, weather-triggered pest alerts for your crops, the succession planting planner, and the Monthly Vegetable Price Report email.
Worth the extra $30 a year if any of these is true for you:
- You’d rather photograph a chewed leaf and get an answer than scroll a pest library guessing.
- You grow stone fruit or fruiting veg anywhere QLD fruit fly is active, and you want the pressure for your postcode, not a state-wide generality.
- You want to be told “cabbage white butterflies are emerging this week, net your brassicas now” a day or two before you see the damage.
- You succession-plant and want the planner to space your sowings instead of doing it on paper.
Not worth it if pests rarely bother your patch and you’re happy with the Starter price tools. The journal is exactly the same on both paid tiers, unlimited either way. Starter covers you.
Annual or monthly
Annual saves you about two months’ worth every year. Same product either way, so in my view the choice comes down to whether you’d rather pay once a year and forget about it, or keep the option of walking away after any month. Two practical differences:
Choose monthly if
- You want to test the product for a few months before you commit.
- You only garden in one season and pause the rest of the year.
- You’d rather just cancel, no questions, no refund conversation.
Choose annual if
- You’re confident the product fits your garden.
- You want the ~40% saving.
- You don’t want to think about renewal every month.
- You want one annual receipt for tax or expense tracking.
One click from your account page. Annual cancellations get a prorated refund on the unused months. Cancel after 4 months of a 12 month plan, you get refunded for the 8 unused months. Monthly cancellations stop at the end of the current paid month. No retention loops, no phone calls, nothing like that.
Switching tiers
Upgrade, downgrade, switch from monthly to annual, all one click from your account page at any time.
- Upgrade (Starter to Pro). Stripe charges the prorated difference straight away. New tier is active in seconds.
- Downgrade (Pro to Starter). Takes effect on your next renewal date. No refund on the current period.
- Switch monthly and annual. Same as upgrade or downgrade. Prorated either way.
How to try it without committing
The annual plans come with a 7-day free trial. You sign up, get full access for a week, and if you cancel before the trial ends you pay nothing. If you stay, the annual fee is charged when the trial finishes. Monthly plans bill straight away, no trial. Either way you can cancel any time from your account.
If you just want to see the product first without paying anything at all, my demo garden shows you exactly what you get on the inside. Same UI, same features, real plants, real numbers.