Seven UK plant shops, one table.

Why plants vary most. A canister filter is a manufactured product with a recommended retail price, so shops cluster within a few pounds of each other. A plant is living stock — grown, potted and shipped differently by every supplier — with no list price to anchor to. It is the category where checking actually pays.

Today by catalogue — Plants £80.76 back · Hardscape £8.00 back · Filtration £439.62 back.

This is not a sales figure. We can see that a listing stopped being buyable, not why — it may have sold, been delisted, or run short at the supplier. Nothing here knows how many of anything a shop held, so a £7.99 plant counts once whether they had one left or fifty. Read it as how much of the market moved, not as money anyone took.

Net, not the last change. A shop that cut a price to clear stock and put it back a fortnight later has not changed its price, so it does not appear here. Each line compares one number with one number — what the listing cost 30 days ago against what it costs now — whatever happened in between. Moves under 1% are left out as rounding, and a listing that gained or lost a price rather than changing one counts as a stock event, not a price move.

Tissue culture does not cost more. Potted and in-vitro land on the same median — £5.99 — across 529 plants. The premium the hobby assumes is not in the prices; you are choosing between sterile snail-free stock and a plant already grown on. What each one is actually like.

Why there is no “cheapest shop” table. Price comparison belongs on the product row, where you can see which item, which form and which shops were in stock. Rolled into a league table it loses all of that: a shop that mostly sells things nobody else stocks has almost nothing to be compared on, and would look expensive purely for carrying a distinctive range. That would mislead, and this tool is not here to rank shops.

Aquascaping Express and Pro Shrimp are owned by the same company. Stock percentages are a snapshot from the last refresh and move daily. “Sole stockist” counts products no other shop we track lists at all.

The basket already does this maths. Build a planting list and the order planner works out the cheapest way to actually buy it, postage included — which regularly means one slightly dearer shop rather than splitting an order four ways and paying delivery four times.

Delivery terms are checked by hand. Confirm on the shop’s own site before ordering. An em dash means we have not recorded that shop’s terms yet — not that delivery is free.