From the person who built this — and what you should know
Because "is this plant safe for my cat?" shouldn't require a $40/year subscription. Pet owners panic when their cat chews on a leaf. Hikers wonder if they just brushed against poison ivy. New plant parents have no idea how much to water their fiddle leaf fig. These are everyday questions that deserve a free, instant answer.
AI plant identification is genuinely good for common species. It struggles with rare regional varieties and very young seedlings that haven't developed their distinctive features yet. For the top few thousand houseplants, garden plants, and common wild species, it's surprisingly accurate. But "surprisingly accurate" is not the same as "always right" — and when it comes to toxicity, being wrong matters.
We added a giant warning for mushrooms because getting it wrong can be fatal. Destroying angel mushrooms look similar to common edible varieties. Death cap mushrooms are responsible for most fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide. AI cannot reliably distinguish between them from photos alone. If you're foraging, bring a field guide and an expert — not just an app.
The ASPCA toxic plant database is comprehensive. If PlantOrNOT says a plant is toxic to your cat, believe it. If it says it's safe, double-check anyway. The Deep ID feature searches the ASPCA database directly, but AI can misidentify the plant in the first place, which means the toxicity information would be for the wrong species.
Your plant photos go directly from your phone to Groq's AI and back. We literally cannot see what plants you're identifying. No logs, no database, no user accounts. Just static code on Cloudflare's CDN. We built it this way on purpose because what's in your garden is your business.
— The Creator of PlantOrNOT