Planner 5D vs iScape in 2026

Most comparisons put these two in separate categories — Planner 5D as design software, iScape as an AR app — and that framing hides the only distinction that matters when you sit down to use them.

Both are manual. Planner 5D gives you a catalogue and a blank plan and asks you to rebuild your property inside it. iScape gives you a photograph and asks you to drop objects onto it one at a time. In both cases the quality of the result is a function of your patience and your eye.

That is fine if you enjoy the arranging. It is a genuine cost if what you actually wanted was to see four directions and pick one. I would decide that about yourself before comparing prices, because it settles more than the prices do.

Four tiers, read from Planner 5D's pricing page on August 3, 2026. Free is $0 with a stated unlimited number of projects and roughly half the object catalogue. Premium is $59.99 a year or $19.99 a month. Professional is $399.99 a year or $49.99 a month. Enterprise is by quote.

The free tier here is unusually usable. Unlimited projects at $0 with no card is enough to model a whole yard and decide whether the approach suits you, which is more than most free tiers in this category allow.

One coincidence is worth flagging because it is genuinely useful: Planner 5D Premium and AI Landscape Design both cost $59.99 a year, and they buy completely different things. One builds a model. One restyles a photograph.

Four prices, read from iScape's pricing page on August 3, 2026: $7.99 a week, $14.99 a month for Plus, $29.99 a month for Pro, and $299.99 a year.

The weekly plan annualises to roughly $415, which is more than the annual plan costs. That is a normal way to price optionality and it is still worth seeing written down before you tap.

The free tier saves 2 designs — enough to test the tool, not enough to work through a yard.

Compared with Planner 5D, iScape is both cheaper at the top and considerably meaner at the bottom: $299.99 against $399.99 for the highest consumer tier, but 2 saved designs against unlimited free projects.

This is where the two genuinely diverge, and it decides which output you can use.

Planner 5D builds geometry. Because a model exists underneath, you can move the camera, look from above, and get something with consistent proportions across views. What you cannot get is your actual yard — you get a reconstruction of it, accurate to how carefully you rebuilt it.

iScape works on the photograph itself, so the house, fence and driveway in the result are genuinely yours. What you cannot do is walk around it, because there is no geometry underneath.

If you need to show somebody your property, the photo route is more convincing. If you need to study a layout from several angles, the model route is the only one of the two that can.

Planner 5D runs broadly — browser, desktop and mobile — which is part of why its free tier is worth testing before anything else on this page.

iScape marks its 2D and 3D tools as iOS only. If the person you are designing with carries an Android phone, that limit is worth checking before an annual subscription, not after.

We land differently again: AI Landscape Design is a phone app on iPhone and Android, built for the moment you are standing outside looking at the problem rather than sitting at a desk reconstructing it.

Platform sounds like a footnote until it turns out to be the reason a paid tool sits unopened.

Nobody publishes this and it is the number I would most want before paying.

Modelling a yard in Planner 5D is an evening's work at minimum — you are placing structures, surfaces and planting from a catalogue, then adjusting until the proportions read correctly. The payoff is that once the model exists, new views are nearly free.

Placing objects in iScape is faster because the photograph does the heavy lifting, but it is still object-by-object, and every element you want is an element you have to find and position.

Generation collapses this to about 10 seconds a pass, which is why it suits the deciding stage. The trade is control: you accept or discard the whole direction rather than adjusting one shrub.

Use Planner 5D if you are planning a whole property, care about dimensions and want to look at it from more than one angle. Start on the free tier — unlimited projects at $0 is enough to know within an evening whether modelling suits you.

Use iScape if you want deliberate control placed onto your real photograph, you are on iOS, and you do this often enough that a subscription amortises across jobs rather than one yard.

Use ours if you are outdoors on a phone and want to compare considered directions rather than assemble one. That is a narrower job than our marketing would like to claim, and it is the one it does well.

Plenty of people should start free on two of the three.

Neither produces a document anybody can build from. No dimensions a contractor can price, no levels, no drainage, no specification.

Neither handles grading, setbacks, easements or permits. Those need a person in your yard who knows the local rules, and no subscription substitutes for that.

Both draw planting at mature size, so a border that reads as full is three to five seasons away. This causes more disappointment than any pricing decision on this page.

And a modelled yard is only as accurate as your measuring. Planner 5D will happily render a proportion you entered wrongly, in 4K, and it will look convincing.

Use either to decide what you want. Pay somebody else to make it buildable — a render and a plan are different artefacts.