What contractor software
costs
at your crew size.
Every vendor prices for one user. Add a second person and the cheapest option often changes. This runs the real monthly math on 23 tools at the headcount you actually have, including the per-seat traps that turn a $47 tool into a $705 one.
Every price was read off the vendor's own pricing page and re-checked on September 11, 2026. Each result names the tier it picked and why. Found something wrong? Tell us and we fix it.
How much does contractor software actually cost?
A one-man shop pays $25 to $208 a month for software that handles scheduling, estimates and invoicing. A fifteen-person company pays $79 to $824 for the same three jobs. Those are real numbers from the seventeen products on this page that publish a price, run at both crew sizes on September 11, 2026. The spread is not a quality gap. It is four different ways of charging, and which one is cheapest depends almost entirely on how many people need a login.
Here is the same three-job requirement priced at five common crew sizes, all at 60 jobs a month. Every figure is annual billing, the cheapest tier that actually fits, no add-ons.
| Crew size | Cheapest that covers all three | Cost | Most expensive |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 person | QuoteIQ Essentials | $25/mo | $208 (Service Fusion) |
| 3 people | ServiceM8 Growing | $79/mo | $208 (Service Fusion) |
| 5 people | ServiceM8 Growing | $79/mo | $249 (QuoteIQ Elite) |
| 10 people | ServiceM8 Growing | $79/mo | $470 (Tradify) |
| 15 people | ServiceM8 Growing | $79/mo | $824 (Housecall Pro MAX) |
Annual billing, cheapest qualifying tier, 60 jobs a month, verified September 11, 2026. ServiceM8 wins from three people up because it is the only one here that charges by job volume instead of by seat — but it caps Growing at 150 jobs a month, and it has no bookkeeping ledger. Change the job slider or tick bookkeeping and the answer changes. That is the point of the sliders.
A one-person shop doing 30 jobs a month or fewer pays nothing. ServiceM8's free plan covers one user and 30 jobs a month with scheduling, quotes, invoicing and card payments, and it is a real plan rather than a trial. Drop the job slider above to 30 and set the crew to one, and it comes out on top at $0. The catch is the job ceiling: at 31 jobs you are on Starter at $29, and at 51 you are on Growing at $79.
Why does the cheapest option change when you hire someone?
Because contractor software is sold four different ways, and only one of them is indifferent to headcount. Sticker prices are almost always quoted at one user, which is the crew size almost nobody has.
One price, unlimited or capped seats. ServiceM8 Growing is $79 whether you have three people or thirty. Xero is $25 to $90. This model gets cheaper per head every time you hire.
Multiply by headcount. Tradify Lite is $47 a user, so five people is $235 and fifteen is $705. Cheap on the sticker, the fastest-growing line in your budget.
A plan fee that includes some users, then a charge for each one after. Jobber, Housecall Pro, CompanyCam and FreshBooks all work this way. This is where the step changes hide.
You pay per report, per call or per job. Hover charges per roof report. Call answering bills per minute or per call over an allowance. Volume, not headcount, drives the bill.
What is the per-seat trap?
The per-seat trap is a plan that looks cheapest at the tier you are reading about and stops being cheapest one hire later. Two examples from the pricing above, both verified against the vendor's own page.
Housecall Pro Essentials includes five users at $149 a month. The sixth person costs $100. That is a 67% increase in the software bill for a 20% increase in crew. At seven people you are better off on MAX at $299, which includes eight — so hiring two people takes a $149 bill to $299 and hiring three changes nothing.
Jobber's cheapest plan is not its cheapest plan at five people. Core is $29 and includes one user, with extras at $29 each — five people is $145. Connect costs $99 on the sticker and includes five, so the plan that looks three times more expensive is the one that saves you $46 a month. Most shops find this out after they have already been paying Core for a year.
Neither vendor is hiding anything. Both publish these numbers plainly. The problem is that nobody computes them before signing up, because the comparison requires reading four pricing pages and doing arithmetic in a truck. That is the only thing this calculator does.
How does this calculator pick a number?
It applies five rules, in this order, and each result tells you which tier it landed on and why. The rules are published here so you can check the math instead of trusting it.
- 1A tool must do everything you ticked. Partial matches are separated into their own list below the results rather than ranked against full ones. A $25 invoicing app is not a cheaper answer to a scheduling question.
- 2Every tier is priced, and the cheapest qualifying one wins. A tier is disqualified if its user cap is below your crew, or if it cannot take extra seats at all. This is what surfaces the Jobber Core versus Connect result.
- 3Per-seat charges are added at the vendor's published rate. Jobber and CompanyCam are $29 per extra user, FreshBooks is $11, Housecall Pro is $100 on Essentials and $75 on MAX.
- 4Usage overages are computed from your volume. Calls above an allowance, reports above the included count and jobs above a plan's cap are all added rather than ignored.
- 5Anything without a published price is listed, never estimated. Five products require a sales call. They appear at the bottom with what is known and no invented figure.
What the output is not: a quote. Card processing runs roughly 2.6% to 3.5% per transaction depending on the platform, implementation fees on enterprise platforms start in the thousands, and most vendors sell add-ons that are not in any of these tiers. Treat the number as the subscription line, then go get a quote on the rest.
The wider picture — who publishes a price, who stopped this year, and what the whole market charges — is in the 2026 Contractor Software Pricing Report, built from the same verified dataset this calculator runs on.
If you want the reasoning behind the scores rather than the prices, that is on how we review. If you want to know who pays us and what that buys them, it is on our disclosure page. Not one dollar of it moves a number on this page.
Questions about the numbers
How is this different from the pricing on a vendor's website? +
A vendor shows you a sticker price. This shows what you actually pay at your crew size, which is a different number the moment you add a second person. Jobber's Core plan is $29 a month and includes one user; at five people you are on Connect at $99. Housecall Pro's Essentials includes five users, then charges $100 for the sixth. Tradify charges per seat, so five people is $235 on its cheapest plan. Same three products, and the ranking flips depending on headcount.
Where does the pricing come from and how current is it? +
Every figure was read off the vendor's own pricing page and re-checked on September 11, 2026. We do not copy numbers from our own older reviews, because they drift, and we check archived captures before claiming a vendor changed anything. Workiz removed its published rates during 2026, Housecall Pro moved part of its pricing behind a questionnaire, and QuickBooks Plus went up. Each result shows the date it was verified.
Why do some products show no price at all? +
Because the vendor does not publish one. ServiceTitan, Workiz, FieldPulse, JobNimbus and Buildertrend all require a sales conversation. We show them with what is known rather than inventing a number, because a made-up figure is worse than an honest blank.
Does the calculator favour products that pay you? +
No. Results are sorted by cost, and every product with published pricing is included whether or not it pays us anything. Several of the cheapest results earn us nothing. Some links are affiliate links, disclosed at the top of the page, and they never change an order or a number. How the site makes money is published in full.
What is not included in these numbers? +
Payment processing fees, implementation and onboarding charges, and most add-ons. Where a vendor charges a large one-time fee we say so in the notes — ServiceTitan's implementation runs $5,000 to $50,000 and is not in any monthly figure. Treat the output as the subscription line of your budget, not the whole bill.
