What both platforms actually do
ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro are field service management (FSM) platforms. They handle the operational core of a trade business: scheduling technicians, dispatching jobs, generating quotes, collecting payments, and keeping customer history in one place.
Both work for HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and most other trade businesses. Both integrate with QuickBooks. Both have mobile apps for techs. The differences are in pricing, depth of features, and who actually benefits from each platform at which stage of their business.
"Housecall Pro gets your operation off the ground fast. ServiceTitan is what you invest in when the business is already working and you need data to run it better."
Side-by-side comparison
| Feature | Housecall Pro | ServiceTitan |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $65–$250+/mo (published) | $400+/mo (not public, requires demo) |
| Setup time | 1–2 days | Weeks to months |
| Mobile app | Clean, tech-friendly UX | Feature-rich, steeper curve |
| Scheduling / dispatch | Yes — drag-and-drop calendar | Yes — advanced dispatch board |
| Invoicing | Yes — online payments included | Yes — with financing options |
| Flat-rate pricing | Basic price book | Full flat-rate price book |
| Marketing analytics | Basic | Full marketing ROI tracking |
| Call tracking | No | Call recording + booking rate analytics |
| Inventory management | Limited | Full inventory management |
| Customer notifications | Strong — automated texts, emails | Yes — configurable |
| QuickBooks integration | Yes | Yes |
| Best for | 1–10 techs, under $1M revenue | 10+ techs, scaling past $1M |
Housecall Pro — deep dive
Housecall Pro is designed for field service businesses that need to be operational fast. The platform covers scheduling, dispatching, invoicing, customer notifications, and basic CRM without requiring a lengthy setup process or a dedicated implementation team. Most businesses are running live jobs within a day or two of signing up.
The mobile app is one of the best in this category. It's genuinely easy for techs to use on the job — job details, customer notes, invoicing, and payments all work cleanly on a phone without a training session.
Pricing (approximate, monthly billing):
- Basic — starts around $65/month for a single user. Covers scheduling, invoicing, and customer management.
- Essentials — around $130/month. Adds recurring jobs, online booking, and automated customer follow-ups.
- MAX — $250+/month. Adds reporting, advanced dispatch, flat-rate pricing, and more user seats. Pricing scales with team size.
Annual billing reduces the effective monthly rate. Housecall Pro also offers a free trial.
Where Housecall Pro wins:
- Fastest path from signup to first live job — no sales process, no implementation team required.
- Mobile app that techs can learn in under an hour. Clean, practical UX.
- Automated customer notifications — job reminders, "on my way" texts, and follow-ups that fire without manual input.
- Online booking widget you can add to your website or Google Business Profile.
- Transparent pricing. You know your monthly cost before you sign up, and it scales predictably.
- Solid for recurring service agreements — schedule repeat visits and bill automatically.
- QuickBooks integration on most plans.
Where Housecall Pro has limits:
- Reporting is basic. You can see revenue and job counts, but you won't get marketing ROI attribution or technician-level performance analytics.
- No call recording or booking rate tracking — you cannot see how many inbound calls converted to booked jobs.
- Flat-rate price book is limited compared to ServiceTitan's full price book management.
- Not designed for businesses managing significant parts inventory across multiple trucks.
- As you approach 10+ technicians, the platform starts to feel constrained — dispatch complexity and reporting needs typically push businesses toward ServiceTitan.
Housecall Pro pricing reality: A 4-person HVAC company on the Essentials plan pays roughly $130/month, billed monthly. That's the full cost — no hidden implementation fee, no sales call required to get started.
ServiceTitan — deep dive
ServiceTitan is an enterprise-grade field service platform. It's not a scheduling tool that also does invoicing — it's a full business operating system for trade companies that want to run on data. That means marketing attribution, call analytics, a flat-rate price book enforced across every tech, inventory tracked across trucks and warehouses, and reporting granular enough to evaluate each technician's average ticket and close rate.
Pricing: ServiceTitan does not publish its pricing. Based on widely reported figures, plans typically start at $400+/month for small teams, with costs scaling significantly as you add users and feature modules. A demo and sales call are required before you can get a real quote.
Where ServiceTitan wins:
- Enterprise reporting — revenue by technician, job type, marketing source, and campaign. You can see which ad channel is actually generating booked revenue, not just clicks.
- Call recording and booking rate analytics. If your CSR answers 40 calls and books 28 jobs, ServiceTitan surfaces that. You can identify where calls are dropping off and fix it.
- Full flat-rate price book — build it once, enforce it across every tech, and stop worrying about underpriced jobs.
- Financing built into the invoicing flow. Customers can apply for financing at the point of sale without leaving the platform.
- Full inventory management for businesses tracking parts, equipment, and materials across multiple trucks.
- Designed to scale past 50 technicians without the platform becoming a bottleneck.
- Better fit for commercial accounts — job costing and contract management are more robust than what Housecall Pro provides.
Where ServiceTitan has limits:
- No published pricing. You cannot evaluate the cost without going through a sales process first.
- Implementation takes weeks to months. This is not a platform you sign up for on a Tuesday and use by Thursday.
- The depth of features creates real training overhead. Techs and office staff need time to get comfortable.
- A 3-person plumbing company will pay for capabilities they won't use for years. The ROI math doesn't work at that scale.
ServiceTitan pricing reality: Expect to pay significantly more than Housecall Pro, plus potential implementation costs. The platform makes financial sense when the analytics, pricing control, and productivity gains justify the investment — typically for businesses at $1M+ in annual revenue with 10 or more technicians.
Ease of use: a real difference, not a marketing line
The UX gap between these two platforms is not subtle. Housecall Pro was built mobile-first, and it shows. Techs can check their job details, record notes, take photos, and collect payment from their phone in under a minute. The learning curve is flat.
ServiceTitan is more powerful, and more complex. The desktop dispatch board has a lot going on. The mobile app is capable but denser. Techs who come from simpler platforms routinely need a few weeks before they're fully comfortable. That's not a flaw — it's the tradeoff you make for the additional capability. But it's a real tradeoff that affects your rollout timeline and your team's adoption rate.
If your techs are not particularly tech-savvy, or if you're bringing on newer employees frequently, Housecall Pro's simpler UX is worth something concrete — fewer support calls, faster onboarding per new hire, and less friction on the job.
Who each platform is actually for
Housecall Pro fits when: You have 1–10 technicians, want to be operational within a day or two, and your primary need is solid scheduling, dispatch, invoicing, and customer communication. It handles the fundamentals well, the mobile app won't frustrate your techs, and you'll know your monthly cost upfront. For most small HVAC and plumbing companies, this is the right starting point.
ServiceTitan fits when: You have 10 or more technicians and you're at or approaching $1M in annual revenue. You want to know which marketing campaigns are generating booked jobs. You want to see each tech's average ticket, close rate, and callback frequency. You need a flat-rate price book that every tech uses consistently. At that scale, the reporting alone starts to justify the cost — and the operational tools become genuinely necessary, not optional.
The migration path: Many businesses start on Housecall Pro and switch to ServiceTitan as they grow. That's a reasonable path. Plan the migration proactively when you're approaching 10 technicians rather than waiting until the platform is clearly limiting you. Mid-season migrations are painful.
Pricing: the honest version
Housecall Pro's pricing is straightforward. You can go to their website, see the plans, and know what you'd pay before picking up the phone. That matters. It lets you do the math on ROI without a sales conversation.
ServiceTitan's pricing opacity is a deliberate choice. They want a sales conversation before you see numbers. That's fine if you're already serious about the platform, but it makes early-stage evaluation harder. Based on what's publicly discussed, expect to pay at least $400/month, and likely more once you factor in the user count and feature modules you actually need.
The cost difference between the two platforms is real. A 6-person HVAC company on Housecall Pro's MAX plan might pay $250–$300/month. The same company on ServiceTitan's entry tier would pay considerably more. That gap is only worth it if you're using — and benefiting from — ServiceTitan's deeper capabilities.
"The question isn't which platform costs more. It's whether the additional capability generates more revenue than the additional cost. For most sub-$1M field service businesses, the answer is no."
The gap both platforms leave open
Here's something I see consistently when working with HVAC and trade businesses: both platforms handle the job itself well. Scheduling, dispatching, invoicing — those are solved. The work that happens after the job is where things fall apart, on both platforms.
The post-job gaps we see on every engagement:
- Review requests. Job closes, payment collected, customer walks away. No review request fires. Google review count stays flat. Housecall Pro has a basic review feature; ServiceTitan can trigger notifications. But reliable, timed, multi-touch review sequences — text first, then email if no response — typically don't happen without external automation layered on top.
- Re-engagement campaigns. A customer got their AC serviced in June. Neither platform is going to send them a maintenance reminder in October, or a "time for your annual tune-up" message next spring, without someone manually setting that up. That's recurring revenue sitting unclaimed.
- Upsell sequences. A tech notes during a job that the water heater is aging. That note goes into the customer record and stays there. It doesn't trigger a follow-up offer for a water heater replacement estimate two weeks later. That's a missed upsell opportunity on every job where the tech writes a note.
- Loyalty triggers. A customer has used you four times in three years. Neither platform is going to recognize that pattern and send them a loyalty discount or a referral ask. The data exists; the automated action doesn't.
This is what we build at Aplos AI — the automation layer that runs after the job closes. Review requests that fire every time on a schedule. Re-engagement sequences that bring past customers back. Upsell triggers based on tech notes. Loyalty flows for your best customers. None of it requires manual intervention once it's set up.
Running Housecall Pro or ServiceTitan and leaving post-job follow-up to chance? We'll map every gap in your current workflow and show you exactly what can be automated. Free, no obligation.
Get a Free Automation Audit →The verdict
If you run a field service business with fewer than 10 technicians and you're under $1M in annual revenue, Housecall Pro is the better starting point. It's faster to implement, cheaper per month, and the mobile UX is genuinely good. You won't hit its limits for a while, and when you do, you'll have the revenue to justify the move.
If you're at 10+ technicians, approaching or past $1M, and you're making real decisions about marketing spend — ServiceTitan is worth the investment. The reporting, call analytics, and pricing controls are not features you can replicate cheaply elsewhere. At that scale, they pay for themselves.
What neither platform does well is what happens after the job ends. That's where Aplos AI comes in.
Jobber vs ServiceTitan — if you're weighing Jobber against ServiceTitan for your growing trade business.
Housecall Pro vs Jobber — if you're choosing between the two most popular small-team field service platforms.
Find out what's slipping through the cracks
Whether you're on Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan, or still deciding — we'll audit your current workflow and show you exactly where automation can recover lost revenue and cut manual work.
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