Orvik vs PictureThis
Orvik or PictureThis: breadth against depth in plants
Orvik is our app, so this page is written to be checkable rather than persuasive: every figure comes from the App Store and the section about where PictureThis wins is longer than the one about where we do. On plants specifically it is the stronger product and pretending otherwise would make the rest of the site less useful.
PictureThis if plants are your subject: 1.1 million ratings, a far deeper cultivar reference set than ours, and care guidance we do not offer. Orvik if the plant is one of several things you photograph on the same walk — insects, birds, rocks, coins — and you would rather carry one app than five.
Which should you pick?
- PictureThis Plants are the point. You keep houseplants, you want named cultivars, or you want watering, light and disease guidance after the name.
- Orvik The plant is one thing among many. You also point a camera at insects, birds, rocks, fossils, coins and food, and you want ranked near-misses rather than one confident answer.
Side by side
| Orvik | PictureThis | |
|---|---|---|
| Published by | Vast Flow, an independent studio | Glority Global Group, a commercial publisher |
| Cost | Free tier plus subscription | Free tier plus subscription |
| Rating | Not yet rated | 4.8 (1,111,545) |
| Works offline | No | No |
| Human verification | No | No |
| Download size | 160 MB | 226 MB |
| Languages | 14 | 28 |
| Last updated | 2026-06-25 | 2026-08-27 |
| Plants | Yes | Yes |
| Insects | Yes | — |
| Animals | Yes | — |
| Birds | Yes | — |
| Rocks | Yes | — |
| Collectibles | Yes | — |
| Food | Yes | — |
| Nature | Yes | — |
What each one costs
| App | Download | In-app purchases | Cheapest | Dearest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orvik | Free | 2 tiers | $4.99 | $29.99 |
| PictureThis | Free | 4 tiers | $3.99 | $49.99 |
Where PictureThis is better, specifically
Three things, and they are not small.
Cultivars and houseplants. Named horticultural varieties are a large commercial dataset built from a large user base — 1.1 million ratings against our 0. If the plant came from a garden centre and you need the variety, PictureThis has the reference images and we do not.
Care. Watering intervals, light requirements, repotting, and a diagnosis path when the leaves yellow. We identify; we do not maintain a care relationship with a plant on your windowsill, and that is a real gap for anyone who keeps plants.
Track record. 4.8 stars from over a million reviews is evidence of a kind we simply do not have yet, and a new app asking for trust should say so rather than talk around it.
Where breadth is the actual argument
A walk does not produce only plants. It produces a plant, then a beetle on the plant, then a bird overhead, then a stone on the path, and later a coin in a drawer at home. The single-subject apps solve one of those each.
Orvik covers plants, insects, animals, birds, rocks, collectibles, food and natural phenomena from the same camera. The comparison table below shows that difference concretely rather than rhetorically — eight rows against one.
Whether that matters depends entirely on you. Somebody who photographs nothing but houseplants gets nothing from seven unused domains, and should install PictureThis. Somebody who walks with children answering "what is that" about whatever is nearest is doing the thing breadth is for.
One confident answer, or a ranked shortlist
A design difference worth naming, because it changes what you can do with the result.
PictureThis returns one species, presented confidently. It is a better product experience and most of the time it is right.
Orvik returns a ranked shortlist with the near-misses left visible. That is the same instinct PlantNet has, and the reason is that identification errors are not random: they cluster on look-alike pairs, and seeing the second candidate is what tells you to check a diagnostic character rather than accept the first.
For a houseplant that is unnecessary friction. For a berry, a mushroom or a plant near livestock it is the difference between a tool and a guess. Neither behaviour is right in general — it depends on whether being wrong costs anything.
What both of us charge
Neither app is free in the sense people mean. On 2026-09-03, Orvik listed 2 in-app purchase tiers between $4.99 and $29.99; PictureThis listed 4 between $3.99 and $49.99.
Since this is our own page, the honest addition is that the genuinely free options are real and we are not going to hide them. PlantNet and Seek both listed no in-app purchases at all on the same date, published by public research institutes and a non-profit. On wild plants PlantNet is excellent; for everything alive, free and on-device, Seek is excellent.
What none of them covers is the non-living half — rocks, fossils, coins, made objects — because they are built on taxonomies of life. That is the gap a general identifier fills, and it is the strongest honest argument for one.
The free tools here that need no app at all
Everything in the tools section of this site is free, runs in a browser, and asks for no account. There are 28 of them: a plant toxicity checker for dogs and cats, a leaf key, a wildflower key, keys for tracks, minerals, fungi and shells, and a handful of field calculators.
They exist because a camera is not always the right instrument. A mineral is identified by streak and hardness, a track by counting toes, a mushroom by a spore print — properties you test rather than photograph. Publishing those free is a better argument for taking us seriously than a comparison table is.
Where these figures come from
Every price, tier, rating, version, size and update date is read from each app's US App Store listing on 2026-09-03 through Apple's Lookup API and product pages — ours included, which is why our review count appears as it does. Nothing is typed from memory and the build fails if a price appears in the prose.
What a new app has to prove
PictureThis has 1.1 million ratings and we have 0. A comparison from the new side has to say what it thinks that gap does and does not mean.
What it means: a very large user base compounds into a very large reference set, particularly across the long tail of named cultivars where more data is the only thing that helps. That advantage is real and we do not have it.
What it does not mean: a rating measures satisfaction among people who kept using an app, which is a different question from whether it is right. It also says nothing about the seven subject domains PictureThis does not attempt.
The way we would rather be judged is the free tools on this site — 28 determination keys and calculators, no account, nothing to buy, every source listed and every count derived from the data rather than typed. That is a slower argument than a review count and a more checkable one.
Questions people ask
Is Orvik better than PictureThis?
At plants, no. PictureThis has 1.1 million ratings, a much deeper cultivar reference set and care guidance we do not offer. Orvik is broader — plants, insects, animals, birds, rocks, collectibles, food and natural phenomena from one camera — and it shows ranked near-misses rather than one confident name. Different products, and on plants alone the honest answer favours theirs.
What does Orvik cost?
It is a free download, and its App Store listing carried 2 in-app purchase tiers between $4.99 and $29.99 on 2026-09-03. If you want an identifier with genuinely nothing to buy, PlantNet and Seek both listed no in-app purchases at all on the same date, and both are excellent.
Why does Orvik show several possible answers?
Because identification errors cluster on look-alike pairs rather than scattering randomly, and seeing the second candidate is what prompts you to check a diagnostic character. For a houseplant that is unnecessary; for a berry, a mushroom or a plant near livestock it is the difference between a tool and a guess.
Can PictureThis identify insects or rocks?
No — it is a plant identifier and that is its stated scope. Nor can PlantNet, Seek or iNaturalist handle rocks, because all of them are built on taxonomies of living things and stone was never alive. Covering both halves is what a general identifier is for.
Should I use both?
That is a reasonable setup and we would not argue with it. PictureThis for the pots on the windowsill, where the cultivar name and the watering schedule are the real question; a general identifier for everything else on the walk. Adding PlantNet costs nothing and beats both of us on wild flora.
Does Orvik work offline?
No. Identification runs on our servers, so it needs a connection. If offline matters, Seek is the free app to carry — it identifies entirely on the device with nothing uploaded, and Merlin does the same for birds once you have downloaded a regional pack.
Or skip the choice and carry one app
Orvik covers plants, insects, animals, birds, rocks, collectibles, food and natural phenomena in a single camera. Free to download, and the near-misses stay visible so you can check the call.
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.