What the app actually does

Identification is three engines, tried on-device first and escalated only when your phone is not sure. They do not run at once. The photo starts on the device, and only moves outward if the step before it declines to commit.

1. 1
   On your phone On-device model

   A TensorFlow Lite model (Google AIY Plants V1, 2,102 classes) runs fully offline. Nothing leaves the device. It only commits when its confidence rule holds, and declines otherwise.

2. 2
   Pl@ntNet my-api.plantnet.org

   If the phone is not sure, the photo or photos and an API key are sent to Pl@ntNet. This step runs only when the on-device model declines.

3. 3
   Plant.id plant.id

   If neither of the first two settles it, the photo and an approximate location, when available, go to Plant.id. This is the last step, reached only when the earlier ones are not confident.

We publish the on-device model’s real error rate, including the species it confuses, on the accuracy benchmark.

Describe what is wrong and the Plant Doctor answers in a text chat powered by Groq (model openai/gpt-oss-120b). What goes to Groq is text only: your message, the selected plant’s name, and a short summary of the identification. No photo, no location, and no identifier is sent to Groq.

If you attach a photo in the Doctor, that photo is analysed by Plant.id, and only a text summary of what it found is passed into the chat. The image itself never goes to Groq.

Add a plant and it joins your garden, stored on your phone in a local database with its photos. The free tier holds up to 20 plants. Pro removes that cap for an unlimited garden. Indicative pricing is about 2.99 USD a month or about 19.99 USD a year, set in Google Play and shown at the real price inside the app.

Your garden, care logs, notes, wishlist and chat history live only on your device. There is no BotanAI server, and nothing syncs to one.

Photograph a plant as it grows and the app keeps a dated timeline, so you can see how a single plant changed across weeks and seasons. The photos are stored on your device.

The light meter reads the light level where you are standing, so you can compare a sunny windowsill against a shaded corner and place a plant where it will actually do well. It measures the spot in front of you; it does not send anything anywhere.

Watering reminders adjust to the weather where you are. The app sends your approximate latitude and longitude to Open-Meteo to read local conditions, so a reminder can hold off when rain is coming and nudge you during a heat wave. Location is coarse only, never fine and never in the background.

BotanAI is local-first with no accounts and no sign-in. Everything you create stays on the device. Data leaves your phone only as the transient, per-feature calls listed in the rail: an identification photo to Pl@ntNet or Plant.id, chat text to Groq, an approximate location to Open-Meteo. There are no ads, and no advertising identifier is collected.

To delete your data, uninstall the app or clear its storage. There is no account to close, because there was never one to open. Full detail is on the privacy policy.

Analytics and crash reporting collect anonymous, non-identifying events only: no user id, no user properties, no advertising id. The full list of what each service receives is on the privacy policy.