Comparison
YardLedger vs Scotts
The biggest name in consumer lawn care: a product line stocked in nearly every hardware store, a free My Lawn app that builds a four-season feeding plan around those products, and an optional Scotts Lawn Care Plan that delivers the bags to your door timed to when they should go down. YardLedger is a lawn care record that turns your own history, your grass type, and NOAA, Open-Meteo, and USDA data into a schedule — and asks you to approve every task the AI proposes before it lands on it.
What using YardLedger actually looks like
YardLedger’s workflows do not change with who we are being compared against. Each one says the plan it runs on, and what a paid plan adds to it. For what each plan costs, see the pricing page.
Write down what you put on the lawn, while you are still standing in it
FreeMows, waterings, aerations, soil tests, notes and problem spots all go in against the yard they happened to, with the date and photos — and an application carries what it actually was: the product out of your Garage and the rate you put down. 16 record types, unlimited entries, on the free tier too. This is the part everything else reads from — there is no separate "data entry" step, because the log IS the product.
- Plus adds Multiple Properties: a second yard on Plus and up to 10 on Pro, each with its own history, zones and schedule.
- Plus adds photo storage: room for 100 photos on Plus and 500 on Pro, against 30 on the free tier.
Start with a plan on day one, before you have any history at all
FreeName a grass the engine models and setting the yard up puts a starter schedule on the calendar straight away — built by the same rules-based engine behind the free public schedule generator, from that grass, your USDA hardiness zone, the date you start and how hands-on you want to be. No AI wrote it, every item is visible, and you can move or delete any of them. A mixed or unidentified lawn skips the starter plan and starts from the assistant instead. Your soil and your weather come in after that, through the watering balance and anything you ask.
- Plus adds Calendar Sync: an iCal subscription, so the schedule shows up in Google Calendar, Outlook or whatever you already keep.
Ask about your own yard, then decide what lands on the calendar
FreeAsk the assistant a question or hand it a photo of a bad patch, and it answers against that yard's own history, weather and products — proposing tasks with the reasoning attached and safety notes on any plan it builds. It proposes; you add the tasks you want, one at a time or all at once, and anything you leave alone never reaches your calendar. The monthly credit allowance is what scales with the plan: 5 a month on the free tier (15 in your first), 150 on Plus, 600 on Pro.
Draw the yard into zones, and water off a running balance rather than a weekly habit
FreeTrace the lawn on an overhead view and each zone carries its own area, grass and exposure into one running balance for the yard: Open-Meteo evapotranspiration draws it down, rainfall credits it back — the modeled figure, raised to a NOAA gauge reading where one covers you — and the soil sets how deep and how often to refill — the USDA SSURGO estimate for your coordinates where the survey covers you, a loam default where it does not. What comes back out is per zone: how long to run each one. Free accounts get the whole engine, the automatic soil resolution and a property-level override of it.
- Plus adds Sprinkler Calibration: per-zone head type, a precipitation rate measured from your own catch-cup run, root depth and slope, so a run time is your system's rather than an assumed one.
- Plus adds Weather Stations: a personal weather station (Ambient Weather, Ecowitt, Tempest, WeatherLink or Netatmo) driving your yard's conditions from readings taken at the property, and its ET too on the days the station reports enough sun, wind and humidity to compute one.
- Plus adds Sprinkler & Utility Map: pinning the sprinkler heads, valves, supply lines, drains and the main shut-off on the same overhead view, with photos and notes.
Be told about the weather that is going to cost you something
FreeFree accounts get the seasonal safety alerts — frost, winterize-now, spring irrigation startup, and the spring and fall pre-emergent windows — alongside the ordinary care reminders, on push or email.
- Plus adds Proactive Care Alerts: day-to-day weather-aware alerts that ride along with your daily reminder: when to water, when to skip for rain, spray-weather checks, and a weekly summary..
Turn on a guided program and let it bring its own steps
FreeWinterization, spring irrigation startup and yard leveling are free programs on every plan. Enable one and its steps join this yard's plan, for you to review and complete like anything else on it.
- Plus adds Premium Care Programs: crabgrass pre-emergent on soil-temperature timing and PGR on accumulated growing degree days, plus fall pre-emergent for winter weeds and grub prevention.
Time a reapplication by the weather instead of by the calendar
PlusPer-yard accrual from your local weather, so the timing moves with the season rather than the calendar: PGR sums growing degree days and reminds you when the reapplication interval comes due, and crabgrass pre-emergent watches a rolling soil temperature climbing toward the germination threshold and opens its window as it approaches.
- Pro adds Custom PGR Target: tuning that interval to this lawn — an exact GDD target, or one dialled in from your height of cut — instead of the standard fixed cadence.
Cost
Which one is cheaper?
Scotts' My Lawn app and YardLedger both have a genuinely free option, so price is not what separates them — what the free is paying for is. My Lawn is free because it is a storefront for Scotts bags; YardLedger's free tier is free because the paid tiers are software. Either way the money you actually spend on your lawn is the product bill.
- What the money buys
- YardLedgerSoftware, and only software. YardLedger sells no fertilizer, seed or chemicals and earns nothing on what you apply, so the subscription is the whole of what it bills you — product you buy wherever it is cheapest.
- ScottsLawn food. The My Lawn app is free and plans around the Scotts catalog; the Lawn Care Plan delivers those bags to your door, timed to when they should be applied.
- What it costs
- YardLedgerNothing at all on Keep Track: no card, no trial clock, 1 yard, and unlimited care logging. Stay Ahead and Every Yard are ordinary monthly-or-annual software subscriptions; the current figures are on the pricing page rather than frozen into this table.
- ScottsThe My Lawn app is free, and so is the plan it builds you. What costs money is the lawn food: Scotts delivers the plan's products to your door timed to when they should be applied, and publishes no price for the plan on the pages that describe it — so price it from the bags it names, wherever you buy them. Products carrying the No-Quibble Money Back Guarantee on the packaging are refundable on its own terms, which need proof of purchase and a claim within a year of buying — a product guarantee, not an unconditional refund of a plan.
- Free path
- YardLedgerFive tools with no signup and no card, including a schedule generator that renders a real month-by-month plan from your grass type and ZIP.
- ScottsThe My Lawn app is free to download and will build you a four-season feeding plan — against the Scotts catalog, which is the point of it.
To weigh Scotts against YardLedger, compare the product bill, not the app. A Scotts plan is Scotts bags on a four-season calendar. A YardLedger task carries a rate — pounds of nitrogen per thousand square feet — so a store-brand equivalent at half the price satisfies it, and "your lawn does not need feeding this month" is an answer it has no reason not to give.
Where these figures come from
- The My Lawn app is free and builds a four-season plan around Scotts products, with product recommendations, application timing and weather-based notifications.their own page, read 2026-09-11
- Scotts delivers the plan's products to your door, timed to when they should be applied, and states no price for the plan on the pages that describe it.their own page, read 2026-09-25
- The No-Quibble Money Back Guarantee covers any product bearing it on the packaging, needs proof of purchase, and must be claimed within one year of the purchase date.their own page, read 2026-09-25
When Scotts is the better choice
If you want the simplest possible answer — four bags, four times a year, in stock at a big-box store a few minutes away — Scotts is very hard to beat, and the My Lawn app is free. Scotts products that carry the No-Quibble Money Back Guarantee on the packaging are refundable subject to proof of purchase and a one-year claim window, and there are 150+ years of product history behind the recommendations. YardLedger is early, sells nothing, and cannot put a bag in your hands this afternoon.
Side by side
| YardLedger | Scotts | |
|---|---|---|
| What you're actually buying | Software, on a freemium plan. YardLedger sells no fertilizer, seed or chemicals and earns nothing on what you apply. Plans are built against the products already in your Garage, so a recommendation can name a store brand, a generic equivalent of a premium bag, or nothing at all when the lawn does not need feeding. | Product sales, with two front doors: the free My Lawn app that plans around Scotts products, and the Scotts Lawn Care Plan, which delivers them to your door timed to when they should be applied. Both exist to sell lawn food. |
| How a task gets scheduled | Every task arrives with the reason it is there, and nothing the assistant proposes is scheduled until you approve it. Follow the plan as it comes, or change it. | A quiz and a lawn measurement produce a four-season feeding calendar, then timing reminders fire against it. It is a schedule to follow rather than a proposal to accept, decline, or edit. |
| Where the data comes from | Named and linkable: NOAA National Weather Service, Open-Meteo, phzmapi.org for the USDA hardiness zone, and USDA SSURGO for soil. | Weather-based notifications and a plan drawn from Scotts' own agronomic expertise; the upstream weather and soil services behind the timing are not named. |
| Platforms | iOS, Android, and the web app — the same account on all three. | My Lawn on iOS and Android, with the subscription managed on the web. |
| Care logging | Unlimited care events on every tier, including the free one, across 16 record types, with photos. | My Lawn's published features center on the plan, application timing, and product lookups rather than a durable history of everything done to the yard. |
| Pricing | A free tier that does not expire and needs no card: 1 yard, unlimited care logging, the personalized seasonal schedule, three guided care programs, and frost and winterize alerts. Stay Ahead adds the premium care programs, day-to-day weather alerts, calendar sync, GDD, and a second yard. Current prices are on the pricing page. | The My Lawn app is free, and so is the plan it builds you. What costs money is the lawn food: Scotts delivers the plan's products to your door timed to when they should be applied, and publishes no price for the plan on the pages that describe it — so price it from the bags it names, wherever you buy them. Products carrying the No-Quibble Money Back Guarantee on the packaging are refundable on its own terms, which need proof of purchase and a claim within a year of buying — a product guarantee, not an unconditional refund of a plan. |
| Try it before an account | Five free tools with no signup, including a schedule generator that renders a real month-by-month plan from your grass type and ZIP. | The My Lawn app is free to download and will build you a plan — against the Scotts catalog, which is the point of it. |
Scotts details last checked 2026-09-11. Products change — if something here is out of date, tell us and we'll correct it.
Common questions
The My Lawn app is free. Why would I pay for YardLedger?
My Lawn is free because it is a storefront: it is very good at telling you which Scotts bag to buy and when. YardLedger has a free tier too, and it sells nothing — so it can name a product from any brand, or tell you that your lawn does not need feeding this month. You are choosing between free-because-it-sells-you-product and free-because-the-paid-tier-is-software.
Does YardLedger recommend Scotts products?
YardLedger recommends Scotts products where they fit. Scotts makes good product and it is on every shelf in the country. Because YardLedger earns nothing on what you apply, the recommendation is whatever suits the job and your soil — sometimes Scotts, sometimes not, sometimes nothing at all.
Can I use YardLedger with a Scotts subscription?
YardLedger works with a Scotts subscription, and the two make a good pairing. Keep the bags arriving from Scotts, log each application with its product, rate and date, and the history is yours to keep. It feeds what the assistant recommends next, and when the assistant proposes a plan it flags a feeding that is heavy for that product's release type, or one landing inside an earlier application's release window.
What does YardLedger do that the My Lawn app does not?
YardLedger differs from the My Lawn app in three things. Nothing the assistant proposes is scheduled until you approve it, and every task shows the reason it is there. The data sources are named and checkable — NOAA National Weather Service, Open-Meteo, phzmapi.org, USDA SSURGO. And care logging is unlimited on every tier, including the free one, so the record of your yard is yours and keeps getting more useful as it grows.
Decide on your own lawn, not ours.
Generate a real month-by-month schedule for your grass type — free, no account, no card — and see whether the output is the kind you want.
