Pl@ntNet vs iNaturalist (and Seek)

Side by side

From each app's US App Store listing, documentation and help pages, checked 2026-10-21. "Not documented" means the pages we read say nothing, not that the feature is missing.

Rating counts measure how many people rated an app, not how well it names plants. iNaturalist's count is for the redesigned app released in 2025; its older "Classic" listing has its own.

How we compared

We make Plant Identifier, a commercial plant app, so read this as a comparison by an interested party even though our app is not one of the three. For Pl@ntNet we read its US App Store listing, its home page (plantnet.org) and its documentation (governance, identification, offline mode, validation, licensing, strengths and weaknesses). For iNaturalist and Seek we read their US listings and iNaturalist's help center; www.inaturalist.org itself refused our checker, so we cite help pages instead. All on 2026-10-21. Ratings come from Apple's public storefront data the same day. We did not use the apps for this page. For accuracy we cite a peer-reviewed study and point to our accuracy guide rather than repeating it.

Who runs each

Pl@ntNet is led by French public research. Its governance page says it is governed by "a consortium made up of five research organizations" (CIRAD, Inria, INRAE, CNRS and IRD), together with the Université de Montréal and the Inria Foundation, and the trademark is "owned by CIRAD, INRAE, INRIA and IRD" (plantnet.org footer). The App Store seller is CIRAD. Its home page asks for donations "for keeping Pl@ntNet open and free to everyone".

iNaturalist is "an independent 501(c)3 nonprofit based in the United States", per its help center, and began as a master's project at UC Berkeley's School of Information. Its listing says it is "freely available thanks to the generous support of our community".

Seek is part of iNaturalist. Its listing says it "was made by the iNaturalist team with support from the California Academy of Sciences, the National Geographic Society, Our Planet on Netflix, WWF, HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, and Visipedia."

How identification works: algorithm or community

Pl@ntNet puts the algorithm first. Your photos, tagged by organ, return a ranked list; you choose a name and can share the observation. Shared observations are then checked by people: per its validation page, each vote is weighted by the voter's "experience and reliability", and an observation is validated only when the leading species has a weighted score of at least 2, holds at least 70% of the weighted votes, and the image scores at least 2 for quality. Its listing is frank about what helps: flowers, fruits and leaves "should be photographed first", and a photo of the whole plant "is often not sufficient".

iNaturalist puts the community first. The model offers suggestions; then other members add identifications. An observation becomes Research Grade when it has an accurate date, coordinates and photos or sounds, and "the community agrees on species-level ID or lower", for example when "more than 2/3 of identifiers agree". Its model only knows species with enough data: the help center gives "at least 100 photos of the species and 60 observations", and the team aims to release a new model "once a month".

Seek uses the same kind of model without the community step. Its identification "provides an identification in real-time on screen", working down the tree of life, and iNaturalist notes that "Seek's Computer Vision model is generally going to be older than the current online model."

What a published test found. In Campbell, Peacock and Bacon's 2023 PLOS ONE study of 38 Irish herbaceous species, PlantNet named 88.21% of flower photos and 80.36% of leaf photos to species on the first suggestion, Seek 52.14% and 22.86%, and iNaturalist 3.57% and 6.79%. The authors put iNaturalist's score down to it "often preferentially providing a genus identification rather than a species identification", which that scoring did not reward, and the test did not include the community step that is iNaturalist's point. Their conclusion applies to all three: apps "should be considered an aid to plant identification and not assumed to be correct."

Data sharing, licensing and accounts

Pl@ntNet. You need an account "to contribute and access all features", including the offline model, which its docs say requires "a user account" and runs on the mobile app only. Per its licensing page, most shared images are under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA), observation data (species, location, date) under CC BY, and "a large part of our data is available through GBIF".

iNaturalist. Making an account requires being at least 13. Content defaults to the "Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) license", which you can change. Its GBIF page says Research Grade observations licensed CC0, CC BY or CC BY-NC are exported, and "iNaturalist generates data for GBIF once a week".

Seek. No account is needed, and iNaturalist's help center says "the data you record does not leave your device" and that no personally identifiable information is collected from users who do not log in. On iNaturalist itself, "photo, location, and time are recorded with each of your observations".

Pl@ntNet, beyond licences. Its data page says Pl@ntNet "does not share its users' personal data with third parties", and that for rare or endangered species you can keep the location confidential (read 2026-10-21).

Regions and coverage

Pl@ntNet organises species into floras by region or theme, with contributors "in over 200 countries" (its strengths-and-weaknesses page). Its species figures disagree: "about 20,000 species" on the listing, "approximately 70,000" in the docs, 84,710 on the home counter. The listing also says cultivated plants in parks and gardens are "not its primary purpose", so houseplants are a weaker fit.

iNaturalist works "from anywhere in the world" (listing), but its model covers only species that pass the photo and observation thresholds above, so rarer plants and places with fewer observers are thinner; that is where human identifiers matter most.

Seek draws on iNaturalist's observations to show "lists of commonly recorded insects, birds, plants, amphibians, and more in your area", which makes it a good field companion for what is common near you.

For finding a wild flower's name by its features first, our guide to identifying wildflowers works with any of the three, and Flora Incognita vs Pl@ntNet covers the other free research app, strongest in Central Europe.

A fourth option: Plant Identifier (ours)

This section is about our own app, so weigh it accordingly. Plant Identifier, listed on the US App Store as AI Plant Identifier Flower App, is an iPhone app aimed at houseplants, garden plants and flowers rather than field recording. One photo gives a name, then the Diagnose, Care Guide, Light, Water Calculator and Toxicology tools (the last writes AI notes that need a professional's check), with follow-up questions in a chat. It needs no account and is free to download; the current version shows no paywall. What leaves your phone, per our privacy policy: the photo, your approximate location (only if you allow it, or if the library photo you choose carries one), the text of your chat messages and a random install and device identifier go to our server, which passes requests to Google (Gemini) and, when Google's service fails, to OpenAI. Our server does not store your photos or messages.

Where we're not the pick

• Wild plants, field records and science: all three apps above. Plant Identifier shares nothing with GBIF and has no community review.
• No signal: Seek, or Pl@ntNet after its download. Plant Identifier needs a connection for every identification.
• Similar species: Pl@ntNet's ranked list and several tagged photos. Plant Identifier takes one photo and shows one name, with no alternatives.
• Android, Mac or the web: Pl@ntNet covers all three. Plant Identifier is iPhone-only and runs on iPad in iPhone layout.
• Animals and fungi: iNaturalist and Seek.
• Independent evidence: Pl@ntNet, iNaturalist and Seek appear in published tests; Plant Identifier does not. If you only want a quick name without installing anything, see Google Lens vs plant identification apps.