Not all pets in Grow a Garden are worth your food and some are absolute powerhouses. Here’s which ones actually help you make more coins, hatch faster, or stack mutations like crazy.
Grow a Garden Update Pets Tier List
🟥 Tier S – Pets That Can Straight-Up Break the Game
These are the pets that genuinely change how you play Grow a Garden. Whether it’s passive income, seed duplication, or mutation stacking, S-tier pets deliver consistent, high-impact results with minimal babysitting. If you only have room for a few, start here.
🐉 Dragonfly – The Passive Profit King
Every 5 minutes, the Dragonfly turns a random fruit golden—boosting its value by 50×. That’s not a typo. This passive stacks up hard over time, especially with big crops like Moon Melons or Dragon Peppers.
If you’re farming for coins and want zero micromanagement, nothing beats this pet.
💡 Real Use: With just one Dragonfly, I watched a $1M Dragon Pepper balloon to $50M without lifting a finger. It’s that good.
🦝 Raccoon – Top Tier Duplication Strategy
The Raccoon can duplicate high-value fruits like Mango, Moon Melon, or Grape. Combine this with sprinklers and mutation boosts, and you’ve got one of the only passive duplicators worth building around.
It’s not flashy, but over time, it adds up fast—and works beautifully in late-game farms.
🧁 Cooked Owl – Mutation and XP Hybrid
This owl rolls two perks into one:
- 15% chance to burn or cook a fruit (×4 or ×10 value),
- Small passive XP boost for all active pets.
That makes it ideal if you’re chasing mutated fruit and leveling slots. It’s also one of the few pets that feels useful from early to late game.
🐤 Chicken Jockey – Chaos, but Profitable
It’s silly-looking, but don’t underestimate it.
The Chicken Jockey gives a small XP boost, speeds up egg hatching, and has a rare chance to apply a 25× mutation.
If you’re grinding eggs while managing multiple crops, this one earns its spot with sheer value bursts.
🦉 Blood Owl – The XP Grinder’s Dream
Want more pet slots fast? The Blood Owl is the best way to get there. It grants 0.59 XP/sec to all active pets—by far the highest passive leveling boost in the game.
It’s especially powerful when paired with mice or pets you’re prepping to trade in.
🦋 Butterfly – Exclusive Mutation Master
Only one pet can apply the Rainbow Mutation, and it’s this one.
That makes the Butterfly a must-have for anyone chasing high-tier crafting fruits, visual flex, or just stacking rare combos.
Bonus: Rainbow variants often get bonus sell value in events.
🐱 Moon Cat – Moon Melon Meta
The Moon Cat has a passive chance to duplicate moon-type fruits.
That’s not vague lore—it means actual crop duplication, especially valuable with the Moon Melon + mutation sprinkler method.
It’s situational but brutally effective with the right layout.
🥈 Tier A – High-Impact Pets Worth Using (Situationally Excellent)
These pets might not break the economy like S-Tier companions, but they deliver serious value—especially when used smartly. If you’re optimizing for speed, egg slots, or utility, many of these are essentials in mid-to-late game setups.
Let’s break down why each of these deserves a spot in your garden.
🧪 Bear Bee — Reliable 5× Mutations Every 25 Min
The Bear Bee guarantees a Honey Glazed mutation every 25 minutes, multiplying the fruit’s value by ×5. This is especially good when paired with high-yield crops like Dragon Pepper or any Golden/Disco setup.
- Why it’s A-Tier: It’s predictable, consistent, and stacks well with other mutation-based strategies.
- What holds it back: Cooldown is long compared to other mutation pets, and it can’t choose the crop.
Use Case: I’ve paired Bear Bee with a Moon Cat–Golden–Disco combo to stack triple-value fruits. Not always efficient—but satisfying.
🦉 Night Owl — XP Booster with Clean Utility
The Night Owl increases the XP gain of all active pets by +0.23/sec, helping them age faster. That’s especially useful if you’re trying to unlock new pet or egg slots (which require aged pets).
- Why it’s A-Tier: Pairs perfectly with low-maintenance XP pets like Brown Mice or Bunnies.
- What holds it back: Outclassed by the Blood Owl and even Cooked Owl for pure XP.
🦉 Owl — Standard XP Support, Still Useful
The base Owl has the same +0.23 XP boost as the Night Owl, but no cosmetic or bonus effects. It’s slightly more common and often cheaper to get through trading.
- Why it’s A-Tier: Still a great aging support pet if you can’t get your hands on a Blood Owl.
- What holds it back: You’ll probably replace it later.
🦉 Cooked Owl — XP + Free Feeding = Hybrid Utility
This newer event reward gives +0.2 XP to all pets, but it also randomly applies Cooked or Burnt mutations every 15 minutes—each one worth ×4 to ×10 value.
- Why it’s A-Tier: A flexible hybrid that boosts XP and increases profits passively.
- What holds it back: Burnt/Cooked mutations are random and can sometimes land on low-value crops.
🐸 Frog & Echo Frog — Instant Growth, No Waiting
Both of these advance a nearby plant’s growth by 24 hours when they croak. This means you can skip long timers for big crops, like Dragon Pepper or Sugar Apple trees.
- Why it’s A-Tier: Time-saving. These frogs are particularly powerful when stacking with mutation sprays.
- What holds it back: Random targeting. You’ll need to babysit placement.
🐛 Mole — Random Gear Finder (Yes, Even Master Sprinklers)
The Mole is an underdog pet that shines in crafting-heavy phases. It randomly digs up gears, including high-value items like Master Sprinklers or mutation tools.
- Why it’s A-Tier: Amazing support pet if you don’t want to grind Sam’s shop.
- What holds it back: RNG-heavy. Not guaranteed to get what you need.
🐝 Queen Bee — Cooldown Reset Every 25 Min
The Queen Bee is a dual-purpose support pet that:
- Creates a pollinated fruit every 25 minutes (×2 value).
- Resets the cooldown of your highest-CD pet.
- Why it’s A-Tier: It turns long cooldown pets (like Dragonfly or Disco Bee) into more frequent earners.
- What holds it back: Pollinated mutation is less impactful than Honey/Golden.
🐛 Moth — Forgetting to Feed Pets? This Fixes It
Every 15 minutes, the Moth restores the hunger of a random pet to 100%, making it the perfect passive support if you’re the forgetful type (or mobile user).
- Why it’s A-Tier: Solves one of the most common issues in Grow a Garden—pets not aging because they starved.
- What holds it back: No XP or profit gain directly.
🟨 Tier B – Decent Utility, but Situational or Outclassed
These pets aren’t bad by any means—but they tend to shine only in specific setups or get outperformed by stronger alternatives. If your inventory’s limited, consider these “supporting cast” rather than core team picks.
🦝 Red Fox – Seed Thief with a Niche
- Ability: Occasionally steals a nearby seed.
- Verdict: Fun mechanic, but not always impactful. If you’re manually planting rare seeds, a Fox might save one here and there—but it’s no substitute for true value boosters like Dragonfly or Raccoon.
🦗 Praying Mantis – Growth Tweaker for Plants with Leaves
- Ability: Boosts growth speed of leafy plants by 1.65×.
- Verdict: If you’re farming leafy crops like Lettuce, Bok Choy, or similar, this can speed up cycles. The problem? It’s very narrow-use. Outside those crops, it does nothing.
🐱 Purple Cat & 🐱 Ice-Eyed Cat – Just Visual Variants?
- Ability: Slight variations on the basic “napping aura” size boost.
- Verdict: These are clones of the Orange Tabby and standard Cat, but with no unique edge. Aesthetically cool—but don’t expect tier-breaking power.
🐜 Red Ant & 🐜 Black Ant – Minor Duplication Help
- Ability: 5–10% chance for harvests to duplicate.
- Verdict: These are “budget Raccoons.” They work, but the effect is subtle and doesn’t scale fast. If you’re duplicating a crop worth $30K, it’s fine. If you’re targeting multi-million plants, you’ll want better tools.
🦘 Brown Kangaroo – Mobility Booster (Sort of)
- Ability: Boosts your own jump or movement slightly.
- Verdict: Neat in theory, especially early on. But the impact fades fast once you unlock faster movement through gears or mounts. Doesn’t help your crops or profit.
🐒 Monkey – Refund Rollback
- Ability: 2–2.5% chance to return a fruit to inventory when sold.
- Verdict: Technically, this can duplicate sales. But the odds are low, and inventory space becomes an issue. Better than nothing, but you’ll likely replace it fast.
🐱 Orange Tabby – Another Napping Cat
- Ability: Affects fruit size around its nap spot.
- Verdict: Exactly like the Cat and Purple variant. Not bad, just not necessary unless you love stacking nap auras for size farms.
🐸 Frog (Standard & Echo) – Growth by Croak
- Ability: Random plant gets 24h growth boost on croak.
- Verdict: This can speed up long-grow plants like Cactus or Dragonfruit. But it’s RNG-heavy, and cooldowns are long. Works well when stacked, but not reliable alone.
🟧 Tier C – Limited Value and Easily Replaced
These pets technically do something… but their effects are weak, outdated, or simply outclassed. Most players will drop these as soon as they unlock stronger companions.
🐄 Cow – Minor Local Growth Boost
- Ability: Boosts growth speed of nearby crops by 1.12×.
- Verdict: It works, but the radius is small and the bonus is barely noticeable. Compared to global or gear-based speed boosts, this cow struggles to justify a slot.
🐖 Pig – Variant Chance Booster (But at a Cost)
- Ability: Doubles chance of variant growth within range.
- Verdict: Sounds useful until you realize it consumes the plant. Risking a rare crop for a tiny chance of a mutation isn’t a great trade. Use with caution.
🐝 Honey Bee – Fast Pollinator, Low Impact
- Ability: Like the standard Bee but slightly quicker.
- Verdict: Pollinates a random fruit for double sell value. Good in theory—but randomness + low cooldown value means it’s rarely decisive.
🐿️ Squirrel – Keeps Seeds on Planting (Sometimes)
- Ability: 2.5% chance to keep a seed when placing it.
- Verdict: If you’re mass-placing common seeds, this adds up slowly. But it won’t help with rare or event seeds, where losses matter more. A backup at best.
🐌 Snail – Drops Bonus Seeds on Harvest
- Ability: 5% chance to drop a seed when harvesting.
- Verdict: Can help you snowball a low-cost garden early on. But it becomes useless with high-tier plants or late-game crafting.
🐓 Rooster – Better Chick, Still Not Great
- Ability: Speeds up hatching and mutation chance slightly.
- Verdict: Strictly better than the Chick, but that’s a low bar. In real gameplay, you’re better off with Blood Kiwi or Chicken Jockey.
🦝 Raccoon (Basic) – Budget Clone
- Ability: Minor duplication chance on fruit harvest.
- Verdict: The advanced versions (like Red Giant Ant or true Raccoon method) outperform it easily. Only keep it early on or as filler.
🦉 Normal Owl – XP Feeder Lite
- Ability: Helps pets level up slowly over time.
- Verdict: A shadow of the Blood Owl, which is far more effective. This one’s better left in storage.
🟥 Tier D – Weak, Situational, or Just Not Worth It
These pets technically function, but let’s be honest—almost anything else would help you more. Unless you’re testing edge cases or short on options, you’ll want to replace these fast.
🐰 Black Bunny – Carrot Booster Nobody Asked For
- Ability: Slightly increases the sell value of carrots.
- Verdict: Carrots lose relevance early in the game. Investing a slot in boosting them is a waste. You’ll outgrow this pet before you even figure out how to use it.
🐭 Brown Mouse – XP Buff with No Punch
- Ability: Grants 750 XP every 8 minutes and +10% jump height.
- Verdict: The XP gain is barely noticeable and doesn’t scale. Jump height feels like a throwaway stat. There are better pets for leveling—this one’s just outdated.
🐜 Golden Lab – Upgrade from Dog, Still Trash
- Ability: Digs up random seeds, slightly better ones than Dog.
- Verdict: You might get something decent like a Sugar Apple… or just trash. Randomness makes it unreliable and far too slow to matter once you’ve unlocked serious gears.
🦔 Normal Hedgehog – Spiky and Useless
- Ability: No strong synergy with current fruit types or meta.
- Verdict: Exists, technically. But unless you’re roleplaying as a prickly fruit farmer from 2023, skip it.
🐸 Frog (Normal + Varients) – Mid Boosts, Big Cooldowns
- Ability: Advances crop growth by 24 hours every time they croak.
- Verdict: Useful only if you time it with perfect plant rotations—which most players won’t. Great on paper, slow in practice.
🐢 Turtle – Former Glitch Star, Now Just Slow
- Ability: Used to synergize with the infinite sprinkler glitch.
- Verdict: Post-patch, it’s a shell of its former self. No strong utility left unless you’re nostalgically trying to break the game.
🐍 Mantis – It Does… Something?
- Ability: Generic buff that doesn’t impact core gameplay.
- Verdict: Forgettable. Doesn’t mutate, duplicate, feed, or boost in any impactful way. A tier list filler, nothing more.
🐗 Otter – Weak Growth Acceleration, No Mutations
- Ability: Slightly speeds up crop growth in range.
- Verdict: When there are pets that double fruit value, trigger mutations, or duplicate harvests… why settle for “slightly faster”?
💀 Tier F – Broken, Outdated, or Actively Harmful
Some pets aren’t just “bad”—they lower your efficiency. Whether due to outdated mechanics, useless abilities, or bugs, these are the ones you should avoid equipping at all costs.
🐶 Dog – Starter Trash, Nothing More
- Ability: Digs up random basic seeds.
- Why it’s here: The lowest-tier pet with the lowest-tier loot table. You’ll get cabbage and carrots—and not in useful amounts. The dig rate is slow, and it doesn’t scale at all. Honestly, this pet feels like a placeholder from before gears and mutations existed.
Real talk: If you’re still using the Dog past the first 10 minutes of gameplay, you’re only hurting yourself. It’s not “simple”—it’s just obsolete.
🐢 Turtle (Patch-Abandoned)
- Ability: Used to synergize with old watering system and bugs.
- Why it’s here: After recent patches fixed the infinite sprinkler exploit, the Turtle lost its only niche. Its bonuses don’t affect crops meaningfully anymore. The game has moved on—this pet hasn’t.
🐞 Ladybug – The Illusion of Helpfulness
- Ability: Slightly boosts flower yield under specific conditions.
- Why it’s here: Sounds cute, does nothing. The boost is so small it gets drowned out by even the worst B-tier pets. There’s no strategic reason to use it now that flowers are affected by weather and advanced gears.
🐝 Worker Bee (Old Version) – Officially Deprecated
- Ability: Basic XP generation.
- Why it’s here: This version was quietly replaced in the Working Bee update. If you still have it equipped, it’s not doing anything. Swap it out or it may even bug your loadout.
✅ Final Thoughts & What to Do Next
Choosing the right pet in Grow a Garden isn’t just about stats—it’s about strategy. Whether you’re grinding XP, optimizing crafts, or setting up for an event, your pet choice can make or break your progression.
Here’s what we recommend:
- 🎯 Stick to Tier S and A pets if you’re aiming for fast growth or event efficiency.
- ⚠️ Avoid Tier F entirely—they’ll hold you back more than they’ll help.
- 🔁 Rotate pets based on your current goals (feeding, crafting, trading).
- 🧠 Keep an eye on updates. One patch can turn a B-tier pet into a monster… or the reverse.
If you’re not sure where to start, scroll back up and check the Utility Tier section—those pets often outperform everything when used right.
👉 Want More Pet Insights?
We’re tracking every future update and balance change over on our full Pets Guide. There, you’ll find:
- How to unlock extra slots
- Best pets for each playstyle
- Advanced feeding techniques
- Event-specific builds that actually work
It’s updated regularly and covers much more than just tier rankings.
👇 Got Questions or Tier Disagreements?
Let us know in the comments—we test everything ourselves and adjust this list based on what actually works in-game, not just stats on paper.
And if you haven’t seen it yet, check out the full Summer Update Leaks for what’s coming next 👀