LeafSnap alternatives
LeafSnap alternatives — and why it is not the app you remember
This page exists because of a name. Leafsnap was one of the first computer-vision field guides anyone had used — a free tree-leaf identifier built by university researchers and released in 2011, back when the idea that a phone could name a leaf was startling. It is not what you download now. The current App Store listing is a commercial product from a different publisher, and knowing that changes which alternative you want.
The Leafsnap most people are looking for was a free university research project from Columbia, the University of Maryland and the Smithsonian, and it is no longer maintained. The listing in the App Store today is published by APPIXI COMPANY LIMITED and carries 6 in-app purchase tiers. If what you wanted was the free research tool, the closest thing alive today is PlantNet.
What LeafSnap charges
| In-app purchase | Price |
|---|---|
| LeafSnap Premium | $29.99 |
| LeafSnap Premium 1 month | $4.99 |
| LeafSnap Pro Weekly | $5.99 |
| LeafSnap Pro Annually | $39.99 |
| LeafSnap Premium 6 months | $24.99 |
| LeafSnap Premium 3 months | $14.99 |
The 5 alternatives, ranked
- PlantNet The closest thing to the original Free — no in-app purchases · 4.6★ from 7,040
If what you liked about Leafsnap was that a research institution built it and gave it away, PlantNet is the direct successor in spirit. It is published by CTRE COOP INTERNAT RECHERCHE AGRO DEV, lists no in-app purchases at all, asks which organ you photographed the way a botanical key does, and returns ranked candidates with similarity scores rather than one confident name.
Against it: Wild flora rather than cultivated varieties, no care guidance, and an interface that assumes some botanical vocabulary.
- Seek The free one that covers more than leaves Free — no in-app purchases · 4.8★ from 30,894
Seek is free with no in-app purchases and identifies anything alive — trees, wildflowers, insects, birds, fungi. It runs entirely on the device, needs no account and no signal, and it was designed for families and schools, which is much the audience the original Leafsnap had.
Against it: It declines to answer when unsure rather than guessing, and it is shallower on individual tree species than a dedicated plant identifier.
- iNaturalist For a leaf somebody actually checks Free — no in-app purchases · 4.1★ from 658
The original Leafsnap fed a research dataset, and iNaturalist is the modern version of that idea at a far larger scale. Its model proposes and then other naturalists confirm, and a confirmed observation becomes biodiversity data used in published science.
Against it: Confirmation takes hours to days, it needs an account, and observations are public by default.
- PictureThis The commercial heavyweight In-app purchases $3.99–$49.99 · 4.8★ from 1,111,545
If you have stopped caring about provenance and just want the strongest plant identifier available, PictureThis has 1.1 million ratings at 4.8 stars and the deepest coverage of cultivated and ornamental plants of anything here, plus care and disease guidance.
Against it: A subscription product with 4 tiers between $3.99 and $49.99 on 2026-09-03 — the opposite of what the original Leafsnap was.
- Orvik For the rest of the walk In-app purchases $4.99–$29.99
Ours. The reason it is here is scope: Leafsnap was a leaf identifier, and most people who wanted one also wanted to know about the beetle on the leaf, the bird overhead and the stone on the path. Orvik covers plants, insects, animals, birds, rocks, collectibles, food and natural phenomena from one camera, showing ranked near-misses rather than one answer.
Against it: New, few ratings, no community verification, and on trees specifically PlantNet has a scientific reference set we do not.
All of them, priced
| App | Download | In-app purchases | Cheapest | Dearest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LeafSnap | Free | 6 tiers | $4.99 | $39.99 |
| PlantNet | Free | None | — | — |
| Seek | Free | None | — | — |
| iNaturalist | Free | None | — | — |
| PictureThis | Free | 4 tiers | $3.99 | $49.99 |
| Orvik | Free | 2 tiers | $4.99 | $29.99 |
What happened to the original Leafsnap
Leafsnap launched in 2011 as a collaboration between researchers at Columbia University, the University of Maryland and the Smithsonian Institution. It identified trees from a photograph of a single leaf against a white background, it was free, it carried no advertising, and its species pages used images from the Smithsonian collection. For a lot of people it was the first time a phone had identified anything.
Research software has a characteristic lifecycle: it is funded as a project, it ships, the grant ends, and maintenance stops. Leafsnap followed it. The original app was not updated for years and is no longer the product people find when they search the name.
What they find instead is a listing published by APPIXI COMPANY LIMITED — a fact from the App Store page itself, not an inference — carrying 6 in-app purchase tiers between $4.99 and $39.99 as of 2026-09-03. It is a perfectly ordinary commercial plant identifier. It is simply not the thing the name refers to in most people's memory, and if you downloaded it expecting a free Smithsonian research tool, that gap is the reason you ended up on this page.
The white-background trick still works
One genuinely useful thing the original Leafsnap taught a generation of users: photograph a single leaf, flat, against a plain white background. It required this, and the requirement was not arbitrary — segmenting a leaf outline from a cluttered background is the hard part of the computer-vision problem, and removing the clutter removes the failure mode.
Modern identifiers no longer demand it, and they are much better at busy scenes than 2011 software was. But the trick still improves results measurably in every app on this page, and it costs nothing: pick the leaf, lay it on a sheet of paper or the back of a receipt, flatten it, shoot straight down in even light.
Two extensions worth knowing. Photograph the underside as well — colour, hairs and vein pattern separate several tree pairs that look identical from above. And include the twig with two nodes, because whether the leaves are opposite or alternate is the first question in every real botanical key and no app asks you for it.
Trees are the hardest thing to identify from one photograph
It is worth being blunt about why leaf identifiers disappoint people. A leaf carries less information than you would think, and the information it does carry varies enormously within one tree.
- Sun and shade leaves differ. A leaf from the shaded interior of an oak is larger, thinner and less deeply lobed than one from the sunlit crown of the same tree.
- Compound leaves get miscounted. A leaflet photographed alone is not a leaf, and an ash or a walnut identified from one leaflet is being identified from the wrong thing entirely.
- Whole genera overlap. Willows, hawthorns and several oaks hybridise freely, and a professional botanist will not separate them from a leaf either.
- Juvenile growth lies. Stump sprouts and water shoots produce leaves that are atypical for the species.
None of this is a failing of a particular app. It is why our own free leaf identification key asks for arrangement and whether the leaf is compound before it asks about shape — those two questions do more work than the outline does, and no photograph answers them on its own.
Checking who publishes an app before you subscribe
The Leafsnap situation is not unique, and the general lesson is cheap to apply. Famous names in this category get reused, and the App Store makes the publisher visible if you look.
- Read the developer line on the App Store listing, under the app name. It is the most informative field on the page and almost nobody reads it.
- Tap the developer name to see what else they publish. A studio with a dozen near-identical identifiers across unrelated subjects is running a template; a university or a non-profit is not.
- Check the in-app purchase list before installing. It is on the product page, it is Apple's own data, and it tells you the pricing shape before you are three taps into an onboarding flow.
- Look at the review count against the age. A very high review count on a young app, or a rating that does not match the written reviews, is worth a second look.
Applied to this page: PlantNet, Seek and iNaturalist are published by research institutes and a non-profit and list no in-app purchases at all. That is visible on the store page in about ten seconds.
Where these figures come from
Every price, tier, rating, version and update date on this page is read from the app's US App Store listing on 2026-09-03 through Apple's Lookup API and product pages, including the developer names used above. Nothing is typed from memory and the build fails if a price appears in the prose.
The account of the original Leafsnap project is historical rather than from the store: it was a Columbia, University of Maryland and Smithsonian collaboration released in 2011, and it is no longer maintained. The only claim made about the current listing is the one the store itself makes — who publishes it, and what it charges.
Questions people ask
Is LeafSnap still free?
The current App Store listing is a free download with 6 in-app purchase tiers between $4.99 and $39.99 as of 2026-09-03. The original Leafsnap — the Columbia, Maryland and Smithsonian research project from 2011 — was free with nothing to buy, and it is no longer maintained. They are different products sharing a name.
What happened to the original Leafsnap app?
It was research software, and research software ends when the grant does. Released in 2011 by researchers at Columbia University, the University of Maryland and the Smithsonian Institution, it identified trees from a leaf photographed against a white background and used Smithsonian imagery for its species pages. It stopped being updated, and the name is now carried by an unrelated commercial listing from APPIXI COMPANY LIMITED.
What is the closest free replacement?
PlantNet. It is published by CTRE COOP INTERNAT RECHERCHE AGRO DEV, lists no in-app purchases at all, and shares the original's instincts — it asks which part of the plant you photographed and returns ranked candidates with similarity scores rather than one confident name. For everything alive rather than just plants, Seek is the other free option with nothing to buy.
Why do leaf identifier apps get trees wrong so often?
Because a leaf carries less information than it appears to. Sun and shade leaves from the same tree differ in size and lobing, a leaflet photographed alone is not a leaf, juvenile shoots are atypical, and whole genera — willows, hawthorns, several oaks — hybridise so freely that a professional will not separate them from a leaf either. Arrangement on the twig and whether the leaf is compound do more work than the outline, and no photograph shows them.
Does photographing a leaf on white paper still help?
Yes, measurably, in every app. Segmenting a leaf outline from a cluttered background is the hard part of the problem, and a plain background removes it. The original Leafsnap required it; modern apps do not, but they still do better with it. Add two shots: the underside, where colour and hairs separate several tree pairs, and the twig with two nodes, which shows whether the leaves are opposite or alternate.
How can I tell whether an app is the one I remember?
Read the developer line on the App Store listing, then tap it to see what else that publisher makes. A university, a museum or a non-profit is a different proposition from a studio with a dozen near-identical identifiers across unrelated subjects. Then check the in-app purchase list on the product page, which is Apple's own data and shows you the pricing shape before you install anything.
One app instead of 5
Orvik identifies plants, insects, animals, birds, rocks, collectibles, food and natural phenomena from one camera, and shows the near-misses so you can check the answer rather than take it on faith.
Keep reading on Orvik
Other comparisons
Where these figures come from
- Prices, in-app purchase tiers, ratings, versions, download sizes and update dates are read from each app’s US App Store listing on 2026-09-03 using Apple’s own Lookup API and product pages. Nothing on this page is a figure somebody typed from memory, and the build fails if one appears.
- Apple does not publish billing periods next to in-app purchase names, so where two tiers share a name they are usually the same subscription billed over different terms. Check the current price in the App Store before you buy anything.
- Scope and behaviour — what each app identifies, whether it works offline, whether a human confirms the result — come from the apps’ own listings and from using them.
- Orvik is our app. We have tried to be specific about where these competitors are better, because a comparison that never concedes anything is not worth reading.