What field service software actually costs you
7 vendors. 5 publish their plan prices. 2 publish enough about card fees to tell you what they will actually cost. Here is the arithmetic for those, and a plain statement of what the rest are hiding.
The fee nobody puts in the comparison
Every “best field service software” article ranks these products on their monthly subscription. But if you take card payments through the software, that subscription is rarely the biggest line item. A crew running $40,000 a month through cards pays somewhere around $14,000 a year in processing — against a subscription of $948 to $5,388.
| Vendor | Card rate | Per transaction | Bank / ACH | Published? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jobber | 2.9% | $0.30 | 1% | Exact rate |
| Housecall Pro | from 2.59% | not published | 1% | Floor only |
| ServiceM8 | 3.05% | $0.30 | — | Exact rate |
| Service Fusion | No rate published | |||
| Kickserv | No rate published | |||
“As low as 2.59%” is not a price. It is a floor, and Housecall Pro publishes no per-transaction fee to go with it, so the lowest possible figure we could calculate for them would still be a best case. Ranking that against Jobber’s and ServiceM8’s exact published rates would put Housecall Pro top of every table on this site — not because they are cheaper, but because they told us less. So we leave them out of the ranking and say why.
Same for Service Fusion and Kickserv, which publish plan prices but no card rate at all. Their subscription costs are on their own pages.
Where the ranking flips
ServiceM8 has the cheaper subscription and the more expensive card rate. Jobber is the reverse. So the winner is not a property of the software, it is a property of how much money you run through it. Same crew of 10, same 150 jobs a month, only the card volume changes:
| Card volume | Jobber | ServiceM8 |
|---|---|---|
| $10,000/mo $120,000/yr | $7,040 | $4,688 |
| $40,000/mo $480,000/yr | $17,720 | $15,908 |
| $70,000/mo $840,000/yr | $28,400 | $27,128 |
| $100,000/mo $1,200,000/yr | $39,080 | $38,348 |
Total annual cost, subscription plus card processing, at a $450 average invoice. Only the 2 vendors publishing both a percentage and a per-transaction fee appear here; the rest cannot be costed.
Jobber overtakes ServiceM8 above $1,688,000 a year in card volume — even though its subscription costs several times more. Below that, ServiceM8 wins.
Why there is no single “best” answer
Jobber charges per user ($29/mo each). Housecall Pro bundles users into plans and then charges $100/mo for each extra one on Essentials. ServiceM8 ignores users entirely and charges by job volume, with unlimited logins.
So the answer moves with your shape. A large crew running modest job volume pays a fraction on ServiceM8. A small crew running heavy volume is better off on Jobber. A business pushing serious money through cards can be better off on the most expensive subscription of the three.
| Scenario | Cheapest overall | Subscription | Card fees | Total / yr | Fees as % of total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solo operator 1 tech, 40 jobs/mo, $8,000/mo on cards |
Jobber Core |
$348 | $2,848 | $3,196 | 89% |
| 5-tech crew 5 techs, 120 jobs/mo, $25,000/mo on cards |
ServiceM8 Growing |
$948 | $9,350 | $10,298 | 91% |
| 10-tech crew 10 techs, 150 jobs/mo, $40,000/mo on cards |
ServiceM8 Growing |
$948 | $14,960 | $15,908 | 94% |
| 3 techs, high volume 3 techs, 400 jobs/mo, $60,000/mo on cards |
Jobber Core |
$1,044 | $21,360 | $22,404 | 95% |
Vendors that do not publish pricing
Workiz Pricing not public
The official pricing page returns a 404. Public sources contradict each other: the per-user surcharge is reported both as $30 and as $46-54, and plans appear as $187/$229/$270 and also as 'from $225'. We publish none of these as fact.
ServiceTitan Pricing not public
Does not publish pricing. Quotes are given only after a sales demo. Aimed at larger contractors.