Start with how the tool counts you. Per-seat pricing (Jobber, Housecall Pro) looks cheapest at one user, then adds a fixed amount for every tech: Jobber Core is $29 a month for one, plus $29 for each extra seat, so a three-person shop is near $87 before a single add-on, and Housecall Pro adds $35 per extra user on top of a $59 Basic plan. Per-job or flat pricing (ServiceM8, Service Fusion) ignores headcount: ServiceM8 meters monthly job count with unlimited users, and Service Fusion is one flat number no matter how many people log in. The crossover is real. Below three or four people, per-seat usually wins on price; above it, flat and per-job pull ahead, and they keep pulling ahead every time you hire.
Then add what the sticker leaves off. Card processing fees land in a similar band across these tools, ServiceM8 Pay near 3.05% plus 30 cents, Jobber and Service Fusion near 2.9% plus 30 cents, Housecall Pro from 2.59%, so they rarely decide it. What decides it is the paid add-on column: call tracking, review requests, and marketing are frequently sold separately rather than included. Jobber puts automated review requests and email campaigns inside a Marketing Suite that runs $79 a month, and holds GPS, QuickBooks sync, and appointment reminders back until the $99 Connect tier. Housecall Pro bills its own extras (Voice, sales proposals, marketing) on top of the plan. Read the add-on column before you read the plan column.
Last, price the first year, not the first month. Annual billing is where most of these publish their cheap number, so month-to-month costs more (Service Fusion is $208 a month annually but $245 paid monthly). Watch the way out, too. One electrician who left Workiz described being pushed to sign a fresh 12-month contract to keep access to his own account. A tool you can cancel in a click is cheaper than a slightly lower sticker you are locked into.
Free is rarely the cheapest
A free plan is a demo with a job counter. ServiceM8's free tier stops at 30 jobs a month and one user, and Workiz no longer offers a free plan at all, only a 7-day trial (checked August 2026). Both are worth a trial, and both fall over in the first busy month, since a working shop clears 20 to 30 jobs inside a week or two. If you are doing more than a job a day, you belong on a paid plan, so compare paid floors, not free ones.
On paid floors for a small general-trade shop, the order holds fairly steady. ServiceM8 is the value floor at $29 a month for 50 jobs with unlimited users, or $79 for 150. Kickserv's Start plan is $60 a month but includes five users, so a three-to-five person shop pays less per head than it would stacking Jobber seats. Jobber Core and Housecall Pro Basic start at $29 and $59 for one user and are the most polished single-operator options, with the caveat that each new tech adds $29 to $35. GorillaDesk sits at $49 for a single route with unlimited admin users, though it is built for recurring-route trades, so it is a cheap pick for pest, lawn, and pool and an awkward one for break-fix plumbing or HVAC. Service Fusion's $208 flat is the most expensive place to start and, once you are past five or six seats, the cheapest place to end up. For a fuller look at what runs for nothing, see our guide to free field service software, where the counters and catches are laid out.
The cheapest pick, by crew size
Crew size decides this more than any feature list, so price it at the sizes you will run.
At one user, ServiceM8 Starter and Jobber Core both sit at $29 a month, and that is the floor. Pick ServiceM8 if your volume stays under 50 jobs and you live on Apple devices, since its full app is iPhone and iPad only. Pick Jobber if you want the friendliest interface and no job ceiling. Housecall Pro's $59 Basic costs more, but buys online booking and recurring plans a solo shop can grow into.
At three, the per-seat math turns. Three Jobber seats run near $87 a month, while Kickserv Start covers five users for a flat $60, so a three-person crew already pays less on Kickserv and has room to add two more at no extra cost. ServiceM8 can undercut both if your job count is modest, since three techs on the $29 or $79 tier pay the same as one.
At five and up, flat and per-job pricing win clearly. Five Jobber seats reach $145 a month and Housecall Essentials is $149 for five, but Kickserv Start still holds at $60 for the same headcount, and ServiceM8 rides its job tier rather than your roster. Cross into six, eight, ten people and Service Fusion's flat $208 stops looking expensive, because it never moves again no matter how many you hire. The cheapest tool at one user is rarely the cheapest at five, which is why we would buy for the size you will be in a year, not the size you are today.
Where the bill quietly grows
The plan price is the start of the bill, not the whole of it. Three lines tend to swell it.
Add-ons are the biggest. The feature that sent you shopping is often the one held back. Workiz is the sharpest example: its phone system, call recording, and AI answering are sold on top of a plan whose price already hides behind a sales call, so a call-heavy shop's real cost runs well past the number aggregators list, somewhere near $200 to $230 a month for Standard before the phone tools. Jobber keeps automated review requests and marketing in a $79 a month Marketing Suite. GorillaDesk charges for SMS and holds QuickBooks sync, online booking, and review requests for its $99 Pro tier. If a feature is core to how you sell or get paid, price the tier or add-on that includes it, not the entry plan.
Card processing is the steady one. Every tool here takes a cut of each payment, roughly 2.6 to 3.1 percent plus a flat fee, and on real revenue that dwarfs the subscription. A shop running $30,000 a month through the app pays close to $900 in processing, which makes a $20 gap in plan price a rounding error. Weigh the fee, not just the monthly.
Billing cadence is the quiet one. The cheap numbers are annual, so paying monthly adds roughly 15 to 20 percent, and a few tools (Service Fusion) sell by demo only with no free trial, so you commit before you have felt it. Read whether you can leave, and how, before you read the price.
When to spend a little more
Cheapest is the wrong target for some shops, and it is worth naming who.
Recurring-route trades should look at GorillaDesk before our top pick. If your week is pest, lawn, or pool stops on a schedule, its route-based dispatch, recurring billing, and compliance logging fit the day in a way a general app does not, and $49 a month for one route with unlimited admin users is a fair floor. Owners are candid that it can be glitchy, but the shape of the tool matches the work.
Call-driven shops that live on the phone (locksmith, garage door, appliance) may find Workiz earns its higher, add-on-heavy bill, because tracking which ad made the phone ring is the difference between spend that pays and spend that vanishes. ServiceM8 and Jobber leave that to a separate phone line.
Residential shops that sell at the door often do better a tier up. Housecall Pro's good-better-best estimates and automated review requests help win bigger jobs and repeat work, and for many that pays for the step from a $29 tool to a $149 one. And any shop past five or six people should stop comparing entry prices entirely and price flat, unlimited-user plans, where Service Fusion charges a ten-person crew the same as a three-person one. Housecall Pro and Jobber are not our overall cheapest pick, and we would not pretend otherwise; on raw cost for a small shop, ServiceM8 wins.
Free (30 jobs/mo, 1 user), Starter $29/mo (50 jobs), Growing $79/mo (150 jobs), Premium $149/mo (500 jobs), Premium Plus $349/mo (1,500+ jobs); unlimited users on every paid plan. As of August 2026.
Best for: Solo operators and small crews that want the lowest real cost and refuse to pay per seat.
The genuine value floor: it meters monthly job count and never charges per seat, so a growing crew never raises the bill on its own. Two catches. The full app is iPhone and Mac only, and Android techs get a stripped ServiceM8 Lite. And because pricing steps up by job volume, a busy shop can climb from $29 to $79 to $149 faster than a per-seat tool would, and it is lighter on back-office depth than the pricier options.
“We're on ServiceM8 + Xero as well. Once jobs, photos and invoicing lived in one system, the admin is pretty easy. I also think servicem8 automation is underrated, we see good success from the auto quote + invoice follow-ups and we set-up some automatic customer review / referral requests.”
Core $29/mo (1 user), Connect $99/mo, Grow $149/mo, Plus $399/mo on annual billing; extra users $29/mo each. As of August 2026.
Best for: A one or two person shop that wants the friendliest, most polished cheap start.
The most polished cheap entry point for a solo operator, and the interface most trades find friendliest. The catch is the per-seat model: Core covers one user, and every tech after that adds $29 a month, so a three-person crew lands near $87 and keeps climbing. No bundled phone, so budget a separate line if call tracking is why you were shopping.
“The issue is these aren't employees. They're 1099 gig workers and may only pick up a shift once or twice a month so I may bill the client $130, pay the concierge $50, and then had to pay Jobber $35 for their slot in the software. It just doesn't make a lot of sense for my business model.”
Start $60/mo (5 users), Run $119/mo (10 users), Scale $199/mo (20 users); 30-day free trial, 20% off annual. As of August 2026.
Best for: A three-to-five person shop that wants flat pricing for the whole team instead of a per-seat climb.
The quiet value pick for a 3-to-5 person shop: Start is a flat $60 a month for five users, which undercuts stacking five Jobber seats. Catch: the current pricing page no longer lists the free plan Kickserv was once known for, so treat $60 as the real floor. QuickBooks Desktop sync and some depth sit on the higher tiers.
“Don't sell yourself short though, don't forget to future-proof your company. You may need tomorrow what you don't want today. I've had great success with KickServ”
Basic $49/mo per route (unlimited admin users and mobile devices), Pro $99/mo, Growth $149/mo; 14-day free trial; SMS is a paid add-on. As of August 2026.
Best for: Recurring-route trades (pest control, lawn care, pool) that want route tools cheap.
The cheap pick if you run recurring routes: $49 a month covers one route with unlimited admin users and mobile devices, and its compliance logging is built for pest, lawn, and pool. Two catches. Pricing is per route, so a multi-crew operation multiplies that $49, and owners are candid that the app can be glitchy. An awkward fit for break-fix plumbing or HVAC.
“You're gonna like GorillaDesk. I've been using it for 5 years and it's great for an owner/operator. You can have it take care of everything on your list, some of them can be fully or partially automated. They keep adding great features and the customer support is great.”
Basic $59/mo (1 user), Essentials $149/mo (5 users), Max $299/mo (8 users); extra users $35/mo each, on annual billing. As of August 2026.
Best for: Residential shops that want the broadest all-in-one and will pay a little more for polish.
The broadest, most polished residential toolkit at a low single-user entry, with online booking and recurring plans built in. The catch is that a real crew needs Essentials at $149 for five users, and Housecall Pro bills its own extras (Voice, sales proposals, marketing) on top of the tier, so a loaded setup stops being cheap fast.
Free Lite plan (2 users, capped at 20 jobs, invoices and estimates a month). Paid Standard, Pro and Ultimate prices are gated behind a sales call; extra users run $55 to $65/mo and aggregators report Standard near $200 to $230/mo. As of August 2026.
Best for: Call-heavy dispatch shops that depend on bundled phone, recording, and AI answering.
Cheap on paper, rarely cheap in practice. The free Lite plan caps you at 20 jobs a month, and the paid plans hide their prices behind a sales call while selling the phone system, call recording, and AI answering as separate add-ons, so a call-heavy shop's real bill runs well past the sticker. Owners also report hard exit terms when they try to leave.
“I just dropped Workiz after a year. I had frequent connectivity issues and their extra paid feature "genius" transcription software would often just not work, to the point they credited me for a month of service and it still wasn't sufficient. When I tried to downgrade or transfer out, the process was predatory and they tried to force me to sign a new 12-month contract to avoid losing access to my business.”
Starter $208/mo, Plus $325/mo, Pro $533/mo on annual billing ($245 / $382 / $627 month-to-month); unlimited users on every plan. As of August 2026.
Best for: Shops past five or six people that want flat, unlimited-user pricing that stops scaling with headcount.
The one to buy when you have stopped being small. A flat $208 a month with unlimited users costs a ten-person shop the same as a three-person one, so it is the most expensive entry here and the cheapest destination once you are past five or six seats. The cost shows up as setup time, not invoice line items; the backend takes real configuration before it hums.
What owners actually say
“How much was Service Titan going to charge? Any site that doesn't list their pricing is usually because it's ridiculously expensive. And if they have to do a demo with you before you can find out, the price will be off the charts high.”
“The problem is that these software companies can end up owning you. offering products that never quite work unless you pay them more and more money. they become so complex that it takes years and a whole dedicated team just to use them. This can add substantially to a business overhead burden.”
“It's rough and after 5 years.....it stays rough. But my son can work with it despite the many glitches. It's now his biz. I wanted to dump that turd about a month in.”
Pricing comes from each vendor's pricing page, or for quote-only tools from dated user-reported figures, current as of the review date. Owner quotes are verbatim, from real practitioner discussions, with the source linked. We don't take payment for placement or ranking.
