Save money. Eliminate waste. Build community.
A lot of backyard fruit falls and rots. Fruitonomy connects people with orange trees, avocado trees, gardens and chickens so they can trade with each other, and it shows what a fair swap looks like at your local prices.
How will you use Fruitonomy?
Trade your overabundance for your underabundance.
Lemons, figs, zucchini, a dozen eggs from your hens. Enter your ZIP, and your post appears as an approximate pin on the neighborhood map. Your address stays private.
Every item gets a local value based on grocery prices in your region, the season, how common it is in local backyards, and recent swaps near you.
Propose a trade, such as 30 lemons for 8 avocados. Fruitonomy shows whether it’s fair, and logged swaps make the local prices more accurate.
No trees? No garden? No problem.
Neighborhood-grown food, left at your door. Sometimes free
Your neighbors have more oranges, avocados, tomatoes and eggs than they can use. Instead of paying more at the store and driving there to get it, buy it for about half the store price, picked hours or days ago and dropped off at your door by the person who grew it.
No trees? You can still earn. Runners pick up from growers and drop off at buyers’ doors. Each delivery pays $1.50 and up, and the pay rises the longer a job waits. Claim jobs near you when it suits you.
Your orders
Accept or decline orders for your food, and track what you’ve ordered. Addresses are shared only inside an accepted order, and only with the people who need them.
The backyard exchange rate
Enter what you have and your ZIP code. Values are based on local retail prices and adjusted by what neighbors actually trade.
Homegrown near you
Each pin is a neighbor with extra food. Pins are shifted about a quarter mile from the real address, and addresses are shared only after both people agree to a swap.
Shop with your harvest
Choose something you have. Every nearby offering is priced in your food, and neighbors who asked for what you have are listed first. Anything you post shows up right away for other members to shop.
Sample exchange
Enter both sides of a trade. The meter shows whether it’s fair at local values, and every logged swap updates the prices for that region.
The trade rates below are what these swaps imply.
Invite
The more neighbors join, the more there is to trade. Email a friend, or print a friendly note for a neighbor whose trees or garden you’ve noticed.
On the live site, Fruitonomy will send this for you with your personal sign-up link.
Give your street name only, no house number. Your neighbor finds you on Fruitonomy by first name and ZIP.
Leave it on the door, gate or porch, not in the mailbox. Federal law allows only stamped mail inside mailboxes.
Swap circles
Rosa has lemons and wants avocados. Dev has avocados but wants eggs. Priya has eggs and wants lemons. None of them can swap one-to-one, but the three together close a loop. Fruitonomy finds these loops among nearby posts and balances the amounts so everyone gives and receives the same value. The trade goes ahead only if every member approves.
Service exchange. The same circle matcher will work for services. A mechanic, a plumber and a tutor who each need what another offers could form a circle, with hours valued at local rates beside the food. It stays off until the food side is running well.
Local price sheet
Values are what the same food would cost at a grocery store near you, adjusted for season, how common it is in local backyards, and local swaps. The arrows show how much neighbors’ trades have moved each price.
| Produce | Unit | Local value | Season | Local supply | Swap signal |
|---|
Taxes
Occasional small swaps between neighbors usually have little or no tax impact. If you trade thousands of dollars’ worth of fruit a year, the guide below will help you take reasonable, fair deductions for an ongoing food-trading business. Pick the one that sounds like you.
You’ve received of food through Fruitonomy in the last 12 months, so the “thousands of dollars” guide applies to you.
Trading a few bags of lemons for a neighbor’s tomatoes is the kind of casual swapping people have always done. At this size there’s usually little or no tax impact, and you don’t need to do anything special.
Fruitonomy keeps a log of your swaps anyway. If your trading grows into the thousands, your records are already started.
Video coming soon
A two-minute explainer on swapping and taxes.
Technically, yes. The IRS treats barter as income: the fair market value of what you receive counts, even when no money changes hands. For a few bags of fruit this rarely matters in practice. Once you’re trading in the thousands, it does.
Your swap log records the local value of everything you received, so your records are already started.
Hobby: the value you receive is reported as other income, and under current law hobby expenses can’t be deducted.
Farm business: income and expenses go on Schedule F. Real costs are deductible, and a loss can offset other income. Net profit of $400 or more also owes self-employment tax, about 15.3%.
The IRS decides which one you are by how you run it, not by what you call it.
A profit in 3 of the last 5 years generally means the IRS presumes it’s a business.
A backyard operation that qualifies as a farm business reports its costs on Schedule F. These are the Schedule F expense categories that fit a Fruitonomy grower:
Keep it reasonable: deduct only the farm’s share of anything used partly for personal purposes, and keep receipts with a simple log.
Not deductible: the value of your own labor, ordinary home landscaping, or the share of the harvest you and your family eat.
At this level, go over your swapping with your own tax professional. Bring your Fruitonomy swap log and this guide.
Don’t have a tax professional? Book a session with one of our Farm Tax Experts.
Book a Farm Tax ExpertGeneral information only. It isn’t tax, legal or accounting advice, and your situation may differ. Rules as of 2026.
Pricing
You keep a small prepaid swap credit in your account. When both of you confirm a swap, 25¢ comes off your credit and your pickup addresses are shared. Your first swap each calendar year also includes the $1 annual membership. Posting, browsing, shopping and checking values never cost anything.
Then you pay nothing. The $1 membership is charged only in years you trade, and your credit never expires.
It’s optional, and it’s off unless you turn it on. When your credit drops below $2, which is 8 swaps, we add $10 to your saved card and email you a receipt. You can turn it off anytime in your account.
The fees pay for the map and the local price data. It also keeps out spam and resellers, because every swap is made by a real neighbor with credit on file.
Growers who swap trade food for food, and the dollar values are only a yardstick so both sides know it’s fair. Neighbors without trees can buy from growers who choose to sell, and sometimes get extra fruit free. They pay by card when the grower accepts, plus a small service fee and a delivery fee they cap themselves, or they pick it up for free. Your swap credit pays Fruitonomy’s fees and nothing else.
Fresh produce, eggs and honey can be listed. Canned or baked goods follow your state’s cottage-food rules, and we show a reminder when you list one.
Pay only when you swap
+ $1 a year, only in years you trade
Adding credit isn’t connected in this preview.
Member sign-up
Joining is free and comes with $2 of swap credit, which covers your first year’s membership and 4 swaps. Your full address stays private. Neighbors see only your first name, your ZIP code and a map pin placed about a quarter mile away. Your address is shared with the other person only after a swap is verified by both sides.