The short version
Use PlanningLens if you want the data itself, free — the actual approval rates, decision times and refusal patterns for your council and ward, every number checkable against the council’s own record, with nothing to pay and no email required.
Use Planda if you want a packaged report and a guided submission — a paid, AI-written summary with a single approval-likelihood estimate, plus an optional portal that validates and submits your application to the council for you.
They’re not mutually exclusive. But they take genuinely different positions on price and on how much to package versus show.
Side by side
| PlanningLens | Planda | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Free planning data platform — approval rates, decision times, rankings and a property report, all free | Paid AI planning suite — prediction reports, a submission portal (Planda Portal), and B2B tools for agents, architects and councils |
| Price | Free — no signup for the postcode check; full PDF report free by email | Consumer Property Report £12; professional and council products are quote-based (as of June 2026) |
| Core output | The underlying figures — approval rate for applications like yours, decision times, ward and project-type breakdowns — that you interpret yourself | An AI-generated report with an approval-likelihood estimate and tailored recommendations |
| Data scale | 3,800,000+ decided applications from 312+ council portals, records back to 2020 | States it has analysed 10M+ planning applications across 350+ council datasets |
| Traceability | Every figure links to the original council record so you can verify it yourself | States reports draw on millions of verified planning records; the report is the product rather than the raw records |
| Accuracy check | Aggregate figures validated against the government’s official MHCLG statistics — our Canterbury householder numbers came within two points of the official figure (42% vs 44%). Methodology → | Markets an AI prediction; its architects page describes predicting application outcomes with up to 99% accuracy |
| Predicts an outcome? | No — deliberately. Shows historical patterns, not a single score, because every application is decided on its own merits | Yes — an approval-likelihood estimate is central to the report |
| Submission | No — PlanningLens is research only | Yes — Planda Portal validates and submits applications to the council |
| Who it’s built for | Homeowners, architects, journalists and researchers who want open, verifiable data | Homeowners, estate agents, architects, developers and councils who want a packaged product and workflow |
On “predicting” planning outcomes
This is the real philosophical difference, and it’s worth being clear about. Planda markets an AI prediction report and, on its architects page, describes predicting outcomes with up to 99% accuracy. That’s an appealing promise, and for some users a single confident number is exactly what they want.
PlanningLens takes the opposite view on purpose. No tool can guarantee a planning outcome, because every application is judged on its own merits against local policy — the same proposal can succeed on one street and fail on the next. So rather than issue a predictive score, we show you the evidence: how your council and ward have actually decided applications like yours, with every figure linked to the council record so you can check it. We’d rather you trust the data than trust our model. That’s also why our aggregate figures are validated against the government’s own statistics, and why we say plainly that we show patterns to help you plan, not predict.
Which approach is right depends on what you want: a confident packaged answer, or the underlying evidence to judge for yourself.
When Planda is the better choice
Honestly, Planda does things PlanningLens doesn’t. If you want someone to actually submit your application with pre-validation to reduce rejections, that’s Planda Portal, and PlanningLens has no equivalent — we’re research, not submission. If you’re an estate agent or architect who wants a branded, client-ready report bundled into a CRM workflow, or a council after officer-facing analytics, Planda is built for those jobs and sells directly into them. And if you simply prefer a single packaged report over reading the data yourself, £12 may be worth it to you.
When PlanningLens is the better choice
If you want to see the actual numbers — and check them — before spending money, PlanningLens gives you that for free. The approval rate for your project type in your ward, real decision times against the 8-week target, refusal patterns nearby, and a link to every council record behind the figures. No payment, no email for the postcode check, and aggregate numbers you can sanity-check against the government’s own statistics. For homeowners weighing up whether to apply, journalists who need a citable source, and researchers who want verifiable data rather than a packaged score, that openness is the point.
The honest verdict
Different models for different needs. Want a packaged AI report, or someone to validate and submit your application? Planda is built for that, for a fee. Want the underlying approval data — free, traceable, and checkable against the government’s own figures? That’s PlanningLens. Run a free postcode check, browse the national rankings, or see the full landscape of UK planning tools.
Frequently asked questions
Is PlanningLens really free?
Yes — the postcode check, approval rates, rankings and the full property-specific PDF report, with no signup for the check. Planda’s consumer Property Report is £12 as of June 2026.
Can Planda or PlanningLens guarantee my application will be approved?
No tool can. Every application is decided on its own merits against local policy. Planda offers a predictive likelihood estimate; PlanningLens deliberately shows historical patterns instead, with every figure traceable to a council record, so you can judge the evidence yourself.
Which has more data?
Planda states it has analysed 10M+ applications across 350+ council datasets; PlanningLens analyses 3,800,000+ decided applications from 312+ councils. The more important difference is that PlanningLens links every figure back to the original council record and validates aggregates against official MHCLG statistics, so the numbers are checkable rather than packaged.
Last updated: June 2026. Statements about Planda are based on its publicly available pages as of June 2026 and may change; Planda is an independent service unaffiliated with PlanningLens. Prices and claims cited (including the £12 report price and the accuracy figure on Planda’s architects page) are Planda’s own published descriptions of its service.