Homeschool Planet earned its reputation. Its daily planner — the scheduling, the automatic rescheduling when life happens, the calendar sync, the 3,100-plus ready-made publisher lesson plans — is the best in homeschooling, and if that's the job you're hiring software for, you can stop reading and go try it.
But planning the day and proving the yearare different jobs. As a registrar I lived on the proving side: the transcript a college calls about, the attendance ledger your state asks for, the receipts an ESA audit wants. That's the side ArborSlate is built for — and it's the side where Planet is thinnest.
Feature by feature
| Feature | ArborSlate | Homeschool Planet |
|---|---|---|
| High-school transcripts | ✓ | ✓ |
| Gradebook & grades | ✓ | ✓ |
| Attendance tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Report cards | ✓ | Partial1 |
| Lesson planning / scheduling | ✓ | ✓ |
| ESA expense tracking | ✓ | ✗2 |
| State-compliance records | ✓ | ✗ |
| AI course descriptions & tutor | ✓ | ✗ |
| Co-op management | ✓ | ✗ |
| Free tools (no account needed) | ✓ | ✗3 |
✗ means not offered — or not advertised on the product's public site as of July 2026. 1 Homeschool Planet — Grade reporting exists; K-8 report cards are not the flagship it makes of planning. 2 Homeschool Planet — A help-center topic acknowledges families "using state funds," but there is no expense-tracking feature. 3 Homeschool Planet — 30-day free trial rather than a free no-account tool.
Pricing
Homeschool Planet: $9.95/month or $84.95/year with a 30-day free trial (no card). Publisher lesson plans in their Marketplace are purchased separately, on top of the subscription.
ArborSlate: Family plan $29/month or $249/year; Transcript Pro $60/year; one-time clean transcript or diploma PDF $19 each. 14-day free trial (card at signup). Free anonymous tools — transcript builder, diploma maker, Arizona ESA tracker, GPA calculator — need no account. For Arizona ESA families, the subscription is ESA-eligible — most families reimburse it through ClassWallet as a non-public online learning program expense.
Where Homeschool Planet shines
A comparison you can trust has to give the other side its due, so here it is honestly:
- The strongest daily planner in the category — scheduling, rescheduling, and calendar sync are excellent.
- A marketplace of 3,100+ ready-made publisher lesson plans that drop straight into your schedule.
- A real mobile app, and years of steady development behind the product.
Pick Homeschool Planet if: Families whose biggest pain is daily lesson scheduling — especially those using major published curricula with ready-made Planet lesson plans.
Where ArborSlate is different
Everything in ArborSlate flows toward documents that carry weight: grades roll up into Registrar and Common App transcripts, K-8 marks become report cards, attendance and subjects feed your state's compliance log, and ESA purchases are checked against your state's actual category list with an audit-ready paper trail. Add AI course descriptions, a grounded per-student AI tutor, co-op management with shared billing, and credentials down to student IDs with a public verification page — the records office, not just the lesson planner.
We include a planner too, and it covers most families' scheduling. What we don't have is Planet's publisher lesson-plan marketplace — if that's your anchor, it's a real reason to pick them.
Common questions
What’s the core difference between ArborSlate and Homeschool Planet?
Homeschool Planet is planner-first: daily scheduling, rescheduling, and a marketplace of 3,100+ publisher lesson plans, with records features layered on. ArborSlate is records-first: gradebook, attendance, transcripts, report cards, state compliance, and ESA expense tracking, with a planner included. Choose by which job is your bigger pain.
Does Homeschool Planet track ESA expenses?
No. Their help center acknowledges families using state funds, but there is no expense-tracking feature. ArborSlate tracks purchases against your state’s ESA category list (including the exact Arizona ClassWallet categories), generates itemized receipts, and assembles a submission packet.
Is Homeschool Planet cheaper than ArborSlate?
Homeschool Planet is $9.95/month or $84.95/year, though publisher lesson plans in its Marketplace cost extra. ArborSlate is $29/month or $249/year with everything included — and for Arizona ESA families the subscription is ESA-eligible, so most families reimburse it through ClassWallet.
Can ArborSlate replace Homeschool Planet’s lesson plans?
Not the publisher lesson-plan marketplace — that is genuinely theirs. ArborSlate has a planner for scheduling your days plus a marketplace of gamified unit studies I write myself, but if ready-made daily plans for major published curricula are what you want, Planet does that best.