Popular DIY home and garden planner with 2D floor plans, 3D views, and a large object catalogue.
Real redesign: Japanese front yard. Drag to compare.
Price
$19
per month, 250 designs
Turnaround
Under 2 minutes
Unlimited re-rolls on every plan
Best at
Unlimited iterations on your own photo, before you spend a peso on plants
Planner 5D, as it looks today.
Price
Free–low tens
per month, or a one-off unlock
Turnaround
Hours per scene
Per design round
Best at
A measured plan you can lay out room by room, indoors and out
The short answer
Planner 5D wins if you need a to-scale layout and want control over where every object sits. AI Garden Design wins if you want a photoreal result from your existing photo without building a model first.
Planner 5D is a consumer design tool for laying out homes and outdoor spaces in 2D and viewing them in 3D. It is aimed at people who want to plan a layout themselves rather than commission a designer, and it covers gardens as part of a broader home design offering rather than as a specialism.
You draw the space to scale, drop in objects from a catalogue of furniture, plants, and structures, and switch to a 3D view to see the result. Higher tiers add a photorealistic render option and unlock the full catalogue.
Every row is a real difference, not a checkbox. Where Planner 5D is genuinely stronger, the table says so.
| Feature | AI Garden Design | Planner 5D |
|---|---|---|
| Format | Photorealistic AI redesign of your actual photo | 2D scale plan plus 3D scene you build from a catalogue |
| Starting point | A photo of your garden | A blank canvas you draw to scale |
| Pricing | $19/month yearly ($228/yr) for 250 designs on Personal, $69/month yearly ($828/yr) for 1,000 designs and commercial license on Pro | Free tier; paid plans in the low tens per month |
| Time to first result | Under two minutes | Typically an hour or more to build a usable scene |
| Dimensional accuracy | Not to scale, it is a visual | Yes, drawn to real measurements |
| Photorealism | High, reads as a photo of your space | Render quality is good but reads as CGI |
| Learning curve | Upload a photo, pick a style | Moderate, you learn the editor |
| Garden specialism | Gardens and outdoor spaces only | General home design, gardens are one part |
Before you get a picture
Planner 5D is built around drawing rooms. Walls, doors, furniture, a plan view you can walk into in 3D. The outdoor capability is real but it grew out of an indoor tool, and gardens do not behave like rooms.
Interiors are made of straight lines and catalogue objects, which is exactly what this kind of software is good at. You place a sofa from a library and it looks like that sofa, because a sofa is a rigid object with one correct shape.
A garden is not that. Plants have age, seasonality and irregular form, ground is rarely flat, and the difference between a convincing garden and a green carpet with objects on it is mostly in things a catalogue cannot store. Outdoor scenes built this way tend to read as diagrams: correct, useful, and not something that makes anyone excited about their yard.
Which is fine, because diagrams are worth having. If you need to know that the table fits with room to pull the chairs out, a measured layout answers that and no render does. Just do not expect the picture to sell the idea to anyone.
First 30 minutes
Draw the boundary and the house wall to scale. The tool is genuinely approachable here.
The next hour
Place hardscape and furniture from the catalogue. Measurements are the payoff, and they are accurate.
Where it stalls
Making planting look like planting. The library gives you objects, not a garden that reads as grown.
Every new direction
A second layout means rebuilding it, so most people make one and stop exploring.
Sensible split: use a photo redesign to decide what the space should feel like, then use a plan tool to confirm the furniture and the paths actually fit the dimensions you have.
Not renders of someone else's garden. Drag the handle to see the original photo turn into the redesign.
Upload a photo and get a photorealistic redesign in under two minutes. Try as many styles as you like before deciding whether Planner 5D is worth it.
Redesign my gardenIt works, though gardens are one part of a broader home design tool rather than its specialism. You get to-scale layout and a decent object catalogue, but planting detail and outdoor realism are weaker than in a dedicated garden tool.
AI Garden Design, by a wide margin, because you upload a photo and pick a style instead of drawing a space to scale and populating it. Planner 5D asks more of you and gives more control in return.
No. It builds a 3D scene from scratch based on measurements you enter. If you want your own photograph transformed, that is what an AI redesign tool does and a scale planner does not.
AI Garden Design vs Yardzen
Online landscape design service with human designers, full plans, plant lists, and contractor matchmaking.
AI Garden Design vs Tilly Design
The online landscape design service acquired by Bower & Branch in 2024, now sold as Design Studio with the plants for sale alongside the plan.
AI Garden Design vs iScape
Augmented reality landscape design app that lets you drag plants and elements onto a live camera view of your yard.
AI Garden Design vs a Local Landscape Designer
Hiring a local landscape designer for a site visit, custom plan, and ongoing project oversight.
AI Garden Design vs HomeDesignsAI
AI design tool covering both interior and exterior, with a broader product surface and similar AI redesign workflow.
If you want the full list of options rather than a head-to-head, the alternatives page covers every tool and service in this category.
All alternatives to Planner 5D →