What Grass Is This? vs PictureThis: Which One Should Identify Your Lawn?
Updated August 18, 2026
Use a turf specialist for the lawn itself and a general plant identifier for anything in the yard that is not. What Grass Is This? identifies turfgrass only and hands back a grass type plus the care plan that follows from it. PictureThis identifies plants broadly and hands back a plant name.
These two apps get compared constantly, and most of the comparisons miss the point by arguing about which one is smarter. They are not really competing products. PictureThis is a broad plant identifier: point it at a houseplant, a shrub, a flower, or a weed and it tells you what it is. Its US App Store listing headlines plant identification across more than 400,000 species, disease diagnosis, care tips and reminders, toxic plant warnings, weed identification, and a water tracker. Turfgrass is not named anywhere in it.
That absence is the whole story. Lawn grasses are a genuinely nasty identification problem. A dozen of the species Americans actually grow are narrow green blades that look nearly identical in a photo, and the features that separate them are things like vernation, the shape of the ligule, and whether the plant spreads by stolons or rhizomes. A model trained to tell a monstera from a philodendron is not built around that problem. Ours is, because turf is the only thing it does.
The second difference matters more in practice: what you get back. A plant name is the end of the road with a general identifier. With a lawn, the name is the beginning. Knowing you have tall fescue only helps once it turns into a mowing height, a fertilizer rate, an overseeding window, and a pre-emergent date for your ZIP code. That is the part we built the rest of the site around.
Every claim on this page about PictureThis comes from its US App Store listing, read on 19 August 2026, so you can open it and check any of them yourself.
Quick verdict
Pick What Grass Is This? for the lawn itself, because you need a mowing height and a fertilizer schedule, not a species name. Pick PictureThis for everything in the yard that is not the lawn, because a turf specialist will be useless on your hydrangea.
What Grass Is This? vs PictureThis: at a glance
What it identifies
What the result gives you
What happens after the ID
Free tier
Price
Where it runs
Who it is built for
Verdict
APick What Grass Is This? if...
- The thing you are photographing is the lawn, and the species you are choosing between are narrow green blades that look the same to a general model.
- You want the answer to be actionable. A grass type on its own changes nothing. A mowing height, a fertilizer rate, and a pre-emergent window for your ZIP code do.
- You do not want to install anything or create an account to try it. The first identification costs nothing and asks for nothing.
- You want the calculators more than you want the identification. They are free, unlimited, and work whether or not you ever upload a photo.
- Your real question is a lawn question wearing an identification costume: why is this patch browning, when should I seed, how much fertilizer does this yard need.
BPick PictureThis if...
- The plant you are photographing is not grass. Its listing claims more than 400,000 species, so shrubs, perennials, houseplants, trees, and vegetables all sit inside that and completely outside ours.
- You want one app for the whole property rather than a specialist for one part of it.
- You want plant-level care features like a watering tracker and reminders across a collection of plants, which its App Store listing describes (August 2026).
- You are trying to identify something in the lawn that is clearly not turf, like a broadleaf weed or a volunteer seedling, and you want a general answer fast.
- You already pay for it and it is doing the job you bought it for. Nothing here is a reason to cancel a subscription that works.
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Frequently asked questions
Is PictureThis good for identifying grass?
PictureThis is built to identify plants broadly, and its US App Store listing headlines plant identification across more than 400,000 species, disease diagnosis, care reminders, toxic plant warnings, weed identification, and a water tracker (checked 19 August 2026). Turfgrass is not named anywhere in it. That is not a knock on the app, it is a statement about what it was designed to do. Lawn grasses are a narrow, unusually difficult identification problem because a dozen commonly grown species look alike in a photo and separate on features like vernation and how the plant spreads. If the plant in your frame is not the lawn, a general identifier is the better tool. If it is the lawn, use something that only does turf.
Does PictureThis identify lawn weeds?
Weed identification is one of the features its App Store listing headlines, so pointing it at a dandelion, a clover patch, or a broadleaf you cannot name is well inside what it advertises (checked 19 August 2026). The awkward case is a grassy weed. Crabgrass, dallisgrass, nutsedge, and poa annua all read as narrow green blades in a photo, which is the same problem that makes turfgrass hard, and the listing does not claim turf coverage either way. If the weed has a broad leaf or a flower, a general identifier is a reasonable place to ask. If it is grass-shaped and growing in your lawn, that is the case we built for.
Do I need to download an app to identify my grass?
Only if you want the other things an app gives you. These two products answer that differently on purpose. PictureThis ships as a phone app because it expects to live on your home screen across a whole collection of plants, with reminders and a saved library. What Grass Is This? runs on the web because a grass question is usually asked once, in the yard, with a phone already in hand, and an install plus an account is a lot of ceremony for one answer. Neither shape is better in the abstract. They match different frequencies of use.
How much does PictureThis cost?
As of August 2026, the US App Store listing for PictureThis shows the app as free to download with in-app purchases, and lists PictureThis Pro at $3.99, $7.99, and $39.99, plus a Family Plan at $49.99. The listing does not say which billing period each of those tiers covers, so confirm the term inside the app before you subscribe. Prices and tiers change, so treat that as a snapshot rather than a standing fact and check the current listing.
What do you get after the grass is identified?
With What Grass Is This?, the grass type becomes the input to everything else. You get a confidence score and the runner-up species so you can sanity check the answer, a region match from your ZIP code, and a starter care plan. From there the free calculators take over: mowing height for your species, fertilizer rate for your square footage, a watering schedule, aeration and overseeding timing, sod quantities, and a total cost estimate. That handoff is the actual product. The identification is just how it starts.
Can one app identify both my lawn and my houseplants?
A general plant identifier is the only one of the two that can, because it covers the broad plant world by design. What Grass Is This? deliberately does not: it only covers turfgrass, lawn weeds, and lawn diseases, and it will not help you with a fiddle leaf fig. If you want one app for the entire property, a general identifier is the honest recommendation. If you have a lawn problem specifically, a specialist gets you further, and there is nothing stopping you from keeping both.