Most comparison articles treat Click & Grow and AeroGarden like two flavors of the same thing. They’re not. One is a hydroponic system. The other is a soil planter with a grow light on top. That difference changes everything about which one you should buy, and I’m kind of annoyed that nobody spells it out clearly, including CNET, which just named the Click & Grow Smart Garden 3 their top indoor garden pick for 2026.
I like Click & Grow for what it is. But calling it the best indoor garden without mentioning that it doesn’t do hydroponics at all is like reviewing cars and trucks in the same category because they both have wheels.
Quick Answer: Click & Grow uses soil-based pods with slow-release nutrients, it’s not hydroponic. AeroGarden is true deep water culture with liquid nutrients and faster growth. For someone who wants fresh basil with zero effort and doesn’t care about cost per pod, get the Click & Grow. For anyone who wants to actually experiment, grow tomatoes or lettuce, or keep costs down long-term, the AeroGarden Bounty Basic is the better system by a wide margin.
| Product | Price | Rating | Key Feature | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Click and Grow Smart Garden 9 PRO | ~$299.9 | 3.7★ (30) | innovative patented technology allows to effectively grow plants all year around | Check Price |
 Click & Grow Indoor Herb Garden Kit | ~$112.7 | 4.6★ (2,354) | energy-efficient LED grow lights ensure your plants thrive no matter the weather | Check Price |
 AeroGarden Bounty Basic - Indoor Garden | ~$179.95 | 4.5★ (4,902) | Automatic timer makes sure the lights go on and off at exactly the right time, a | Check Price |
 AeroGarden Harvest Elite Indoor Garden | ~$179.95 | 4.2★ (7,117) | Enjoy abundant harvests year round with the AeroGarden Harvest Elite, an indoor | Check Price |
The Thing Nobody Explains: Soil vs. Water
Click & Grow pods contain what the company calls “Smart Soil,” which is a peat-based growing medium with nutrients baked in. You drop the pod in, add water to the reservoir, and the plant grows in that soil medium the way any potted herb would, just with a nice LED light overhead and a self-watering mechanism.
AeroGarden is deep water culture. Roots sit directly in water. You add liquid nutrients every two weeks. The roots are exposed, the growth is faster, and you’re dealing with an actual hydroponic setup with all the monitoring that implies.
This isn’t a subtle distinction. It affects growth speed, what you can grow, how much ongoing maintenance costs, and whether you can use your own seeds without fighting the system. I did an 8-week comparison of AeroGarden, iDOO, and Click & Grow and the growth rate difference between the hydro systems and the Click & Grow was obvious by week three.
So when someone asks “Click & Grow vs AeroGarden,” the real question is: do you want a fancy self-watering planter or a hydroponic garden? Different tools. Different people.
Who Click & Grow Is Actually For
I’ll give Click & Grow this: the setup experience is the easiest of any system I’ve used. You unwrap the pod, push it into the slot, fill the tank. Done. The water reservoir on the Smart Garden 3 lasts maybe two to three weeks before you need to top it off, which is longer than any AeroGarden I’ve run. There’s no nutrient mixing, no checking water levels every few days, no brown-root panic.
The Click & Grow Indoor Herb Garden Kit buy on Amazon runs about $113 for the 3-pod version, and it’s a plug-and-forget situation. My partner, who has zero interest in this hobby, said it was “the only one that doesn’t look like a science project.” Fair enough.
The Smart Garden 9 PRO check current price bumps you up to 9 pods with Bluetooth app control and better grow lights, but at about $300 it’s hard for me to recommend. That’s more than double the price of an AeroGarden Bounty that grows plants faster, accepts any seeds, and gives you true hydroponics. The Bluetooth feature on the 9 PRO gets mixed reviews too, with some users reporting connectivity issues after about a year of use.
But here’s the thing about Click & Grow that actually matters: the pods cost roughly $3 each. And you pretty much have to buy their pods. Yes, they sell a “grow anything” blank pod, but multiple growers on Reddit describe it as finicky compared to AeroGarden’s blank pods, which are dead simple sponge-and-basket deals that accept literally any seed you want.
Three bucks a pod doesn’t sound bad until you’re replacing 9 pods every couple months. That’s $27 per cycle just for the pods, and if something doesn’t germinate, which happens, you’re out $3 with no recourse except buying another one.
Who AeroGarden Is For (Almost Everyone Else)
The AeroGarden Bounty Basic see on Amazon is the unit I recommend most on this site, and that hasn’t changed. Nine pods, 24 inches of grow height, 30W full-spectrum LED, and an automatic timer that handles the light schedule. It runs about $180 at full price but I’ve seen it closer to $90-$140 on sale, which happens pretty regularly.
The reason I keep pointing people toward the Bounty is the ceiling, both literally and in terms of what you can grow. That 24-inch height clearance means you can do cherry tomatoes, peppers, even small flowers alongside your herbs. I wrote about growing cherry tomatoes indoors hydroponics and the Bounty is the system that actually handles them without the plants immediately outgrowing the light.
The blank “Grow Anything” pods work great. I buy sponges in bulk off Amazon, drop in whatever seeds I have lying around, and the cost per pod drops to basically nothing. A packet of basil seeds is $3 and gives you dozens of grows. Compare that to Click & Grow’s $3 per single pod.
You do need to add liquid nutrients every two weeks. And yes, you have to actually check the water level, because roots in water drink faster than roots in soil. If you forget for a week, you’ll probably be fine; forget for two and things get sad. I covered the maintenance side and common mistakes in my post on AeroGarden plants dying troubleshooting .
The AeroGarden Harvest Elite check price on Amazon is the smaller option at 6 pods and 12 inches of grow height, with a stainless steel finish that looks nicer on the counter. Same price as the Bounty, though, which makes it a weird value proposition. If you want the full comparison between sizes, I covered AeroGarden Bounty vs Harvest in detail.
The Pod Cost Math, Because It Actually Matters
I think this is where Click & Grow loses most people who do even basic math, and it’s worth laying out:
Click & Grow 3-pod system: ~$113 upfront. Pods at ~$3 each. If you run 4 cycles a year (roughly every 3 months), that’s $36/year in pods. Not devastating but not cheap for three tiny herb plants.
Click & Grow 9 PRO: ~$300 upfront. Nine pods at $3 each, 4 cycles a year, you’re at $108/year in pods alone. Oof.
AeroGarden Bounty Basic: ~$140-180 upfront. Comes with a starter seed pod kit. After that, blank pods plus bulk seeds run maybe $15-20 per year if you’re growing a lot. You do need nutrients, which is another $10-15 every few months, but there are cheaper AeroGarden nutrient alternatives that bring that cost way down.
By year two, the AeroGarden is dramatically cheaper to operate. The Click & Grow 9 PRO in particular is a tough sell at $300 plus recurring pod costs when the Bounty exists at half the price with lower ongoing expenses and faster growth.
A Brief Tangent About Why I Don’t Trust “Best Indoor Garden” Lists
CNET picked the Click & Grow Smart Garden 3 as their number one indoor garden for 2026. I think this is because their testing criteria weight “ease of setup” and “how little you have to think about it” really heavily, and by those standards, sure, Click & Grow wins. You plug it in and forget it. That’s a real feature.
But it bugs me that these roundups don’t distinguish between soil and hydroponic systems in any meaningful way. It’s like a review site comparing an espresso machine and a Keurig and saying “well, the Keurig is easier, so it’s number one for coffee.” I mean, technically. But you’re measuring the wrong thing for most of the people reading the comparison.
I think the bigger issue is that a lot of tech review sites test indoor gardens for maybe two or three weeks, see sprouts, declare victory. The real differences show up at week six, week eight, when the AeroGarden herbs are bushy and the Click & Grow herbs are doing fine but noticeably smaller and growing slower because soil just doesn’t deliver nutrients as efficiently as water-based hydroponics. I don’t have anything against CNET specifically. I just wish they’d be clearer about what they’re actually ranking.
Also, and this is a pet peeve, I keep seeing reviews call Click & Grow “hydroponic” when it isn’t. Smart Soil is soil. It’s in the name. I should probably write a whole post about what counts as hydroponics and what doesn’t, because the marketing language around these products is getting more confusing, not less.
Light and Noise
Both systems are pretty quiet. Click & Grow has no pump at all since there’s no water circulation needed when you’re growing in soil, and the company makes a point of advertising this, and it’s true and kind of nice. AeroGarden doesn’t have a loud pump either, but the Bounty does make a faint hum that you can hear if your kitchen is dead silent at night.
The grow lights, though, are where my partner has opinions. The AeroGarden Bounty’s 30W LED is bright. Like, lights-up-the-whole-kitchen-at-3am bright. I wrote about grow lights for countertop herb gardens and the Bounty’s built-in panel is honestly better than most standalone lights I’ve tried, but that brightness comes at a cost if your garden is in a living space. The automatic timer helps since you can’t manually adjust the schedule on the Bounty Basic, but it defaults to 15 hours on, which means it’s blasting light well into the evening.
Click & Grow’s lights are dimmer. The 9 PRO with the app lets you adjust the schedule, which is actually great if your setup is in a bedroom or studio apartment. The regular 3-pod model has a fixed schedule but the light is gentle enough that it’s never bothered anyone in my apartment.
What About Growing Bigger Stuff?
This is where it stops being close. Nope.
Click & Grow at the 3-pod size is herbs and small greens. That’s it. The 9 PRO technically supports mini tomatoes (the starter kit even comes with tomato pods), but the limited grow height and soil-based system mean you’re getting a novelty tomato plant, not a real harvest. I think I got maybe four tiny tomatoes off a Click & Grow cycle once, sometime last fall, and they were fine but nothing I’d brag about.
The AeroGarden Bounty with its 24-inch clearance and hydroponic growth speed is capable of producing cherry tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, and larger herbs that actually fill out. Lettuce in particular does really well in the Bounty, though you have to watch for tip burn if you’re not managing the nutrients right, I covered that in my how to grow lettuce in AeroGarden post.
If all you want is basil and maybe some thyme, the Click & Grow 3-pod handles that fine and you’ll never think about it. If you want to actually grow a variety of things and get real yields, the AeroGarden is the only option here that delivers.
My Actual Recommendation
Get the AeroGarden Bounty Basic. For most people reading a comparison like this one, you want the system that grows more, costs less over time, and lets you experiment with any seed you want. The two-week nutrient schedule and water checks are not hard. If you can remember to water a houseplant, you can handle an AeroGarden.
The exception is if you truly want the absolute minimum interaction with your indoor garden, you don’t care about pod costs, and you’re only growing small herbs. In that case, the Click & Grow 3-pod kit at $113 is a solid little self-watering planter with a nice light. I wouldn’t call it an indoor garden in the way I think of indoor gardens, but it does what it promises, and it does it quietly.
The Click & Grow 9 PRO at $300 I’d skip entirely. The math doesn’t work compared to the Bounty, and the Bluetooth issues some users report make the “PRO” label feel like a stretch.
This article is part of my Countertop Hydroponic Systems: Complete Comparison , a complete resource for countertop hydroponic growing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Click & Grow actually hydroponic?
No. This is the most common misconception in these comparisons. Click & Grow uses a peat-based growing medium they call “Smart Soil” with slow-release nutrients embedded in it. It’s a self-watering soil planter with a grow light, which is a fine product, but it’s not hydroponics. AeroGarden is true deep water culture where roots grow directly in nutrient-enriched water.
Can I use my own seeds in Click & Grow?
Technically yes, using their “Experimental” or “Grow Anything” blank pods. But the experience is clunkier than with AeroGarden’s blank pods, which are just a sponge in a plastic basket where you drop any seed in and it works. Multiple growers report better germination rates and easier setup with AeroGarden’s blank pods. Given that pod costs are Click & Grow’s biggest weakness, the difficulty of using your own seeds makes it worse.
Which one is better for a small apartment?
The Click & Grow Smart Garden 3 has the smallest footprint and the dimmest light, which makes it better for tight spaces where a bright LED at midnight would be annoying. The AeroGarden Bounty is larger and brighter but grows much more food. If you have even a single dedicated shelf, I’d go with the Bounty and deal with the light situation, a towel draped over it at bedtime works, honestly.
Is AeroGarden still in business?
AeroGarden went through some upheaval, and the pod supply situation has been uncertain. As of early 2026, you can still buy units and official pods, but I’d recommend learning to use blank pods with your own seeds anyway. It’s cheaper and you’re not dependent on any company’s supply chain continuing to function.
Do Click & Grow plants grow as fast as AeroGarden?
No. Hydroponic growth in the AeroGarden is noticeably faster because roots have direct access to dissolved nutrients and oxygen in the water, which soil-based systems can’t match. In my experience, AeroGarden basil was ready for first harvest about a week to ten days before Click & Grow basil planted on the same day. By week eight the size difference was pretty dramatic.
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