Snake Plant vs Spider Plant

Why this is not the usual tie

Comparisons of two easy plants usually end in a shrug. This one does not, because the two plants are easy for different reasons. Virginia Cooperative Extension puts the snake plant in the succulent band, once or twice a month, and the spider plant in the tropical band, once or twice a week. That is a factor of four in how often each needs attention, and it flips which owner each one suits.

The snake plant is forgiving of neglect: a fortnight without water is inside its normal interval. The spider plant is forgiving of mistakes: it wants water more often, but it tells you when it is short and it recovers when you fix it. Those are not the same virtue, and most people have one failure mode, not both.

The head-to-head

The cadence band decides who should buy which

If you are the owner who forgets, the snake plant’s wide band is the whole argument. A missed week is nothing; a missed month is survivable. The spider plant in the same month will have browned at the tips and drooped, and while it recovers from that, it does not enjoy it.

If you are the owner who fusses - waters when the plant looks a bit sad, tops up on a schedule, keeps the saucer full - the snake plant is the wrong choice, and it is wrong in a way you will not see coming. NC State Extension names the trap: wilting or yellowing read as thirst when they are the first sign of too much water. The snake plant gives you no earlier warning than that. The spider plant objects sooner, more visibly, and recovers if you stop. Work out which owner you are first; it matters more than the plant.

Pets settle it for a lot of households

The ASPCA lists the snake plant as toxic to dogs and cats, naming saponins as the toxic principle. It lists the spider plant as non-toxic to both. If anything in the house chews leaves, that is the comparison, and the spider plant wins it outright. It is also, not coincidentally, the plant cats are most drawn to - the arching leaves and dangling plantlets are a toy - so it ends up hung or shelved, which suits it fine.

For a pet household that wants the snake plant’s neglect tolerance, the alternatives are on our pet-safe roundup: a haworthia gives you the succulent band without the toxicity, and a parlor palm gives you the dim-room tolerance.

How each one dies

The snake plant rots. Its succulent leaves store water, its published cadence assumes a dry period, and a pot kept wet removes that period. The base goes soft, the leaves fold, and by then the roots are gone. It almost never dies of drought.

The spider plant does one of two things. Kept too dry for too long it browns from the tips inward, which looks alarming and mostly is not. Kept wet, the tubers that buffer drought rot instead - and the one published first-hand failure account we found in the whole watering-device category was a spider plant left with a small watering globe, which ended up waterlogged. Read that as a warning about globes rather than about the plant, and the globe page explains why it happened.

In a self-watering pot

The spider plant is a reasonable candidate: tropical band, evenly moist root zone, exactly what a reservoir provides, with the caution that the tubers rot if the mix never dries at all - let the reservoir run down between fills. The snake plant is not a candidate. A permanently charged reservoir under a once-or-twice-a-month plant is the rot condition by design, and it is on the wrong side of our compatibility list for that reason.

Pot, growth and what each looks like in a year

The snake plant wants a heavy pot with a drainage hole, terracotta for choice, because it is top-heavy and because unglazed clay helps the mix dry between the long gaps its band calls for. It is happy root-bound and can go years without repotting. In a year it will look almost exactly as it does today, which is either the point or the problem.

The spider plant is the opposite. Its tuberous roots fill a pot fast enough to push the plant upward and crack a thin plastic one, so expect to repot every year or two, and expect plantlets on runners by the second summer. A hanging pot with a drainage hole suits it, both for the trailing runners and for keeping it above a cat. In a year it is twice the size and has produced the next generation, which is more than the snake plant will do in five.

Neither needs anything special in the pot. Both are among the cheapest and most available houseplants sold, and both are the plants people give away, which is the honest measure of how easy they are to keep alive.

The third option most people should consider

A pothos. It shares the spider plant’s honesty - a dramatic, reversible wilt - and adds the snake plant’s tolerance of a dim room. It is toxic to cats and dogs per the ASPCA, so it does not solve the pet problem, but for a beginner without pets it is the plant that teaches fastest, and our beginner roundup ranks it first on exactly that ground.

The verdict

Pets, overwatering, or a plant that responds: spider plant. Forgetting, a dark room, or a plant that never changes: snake plant. If you cannot tell which owner you are, buy the spider plant - its mistakes are visible and recoverable, and it will tell you within a month which kind of plant killer you were going to be.