Open almost any gardening app and you'll meet the same three roadblocks before you've planted a single seed: a signup wall, a location request, and an ad. We decided very early that Moon Phase Garden would do none of that. Here's the reasoning, because we think it matters.
Free, because the basics shouldn't cost money
Knowing when to plant, what grows in your zone, and how to keep a garden journal are not premium features — they're the whole point of a gardening app. Charging for them, or gating them behind a trial, felt wrong. The core app is free, and it stays free.
We do plan to offer a paid tier eventually — for genuine power features like a visual garden planner and multi-garden support — but never to unlock what should have been free in the first place. If you never pay us a cent, the app should still be genuinely useful for years.
Ad-free, because your attention isn't inventory
Ads change how software is built. Once an app makes money from your attention, every design decision quietly bends toward keeping you scrolling. We didn't want to build that, and we definitely didn't want a banner covering your seed-starting calendar. So there are no ads — not now, not later.
Private, because your garden is yours
This is the one we care about most. Moon Phase Garden collects the absolute minimum:
- No real names.
- No precise location — just the USDA zone you choose to share.
- No IP logging.
- No advertising or analytics SDKs.
- EXIF data stripped from every photo you upload, so your camera never leaks GPS coordinates.
And anything that syncs to the cloud is strictly opt-in. If you want to keep everything on your phone and never upload a thing, that's not a limitation — it's a fully supported way to use the app.
If that's the kind of tool you've been looking for, we'd love for you to try it. And if you have thoughts on how to make it better, we're a small shop and we actually read the email.