· Independent
Housecall Pro publishes card processing "as low as 2.59%" and 1% on bank payments. Stripe publishes 2.9% + 30¢ online and 2.7% + 5¢ in person. Jobber's pricing page publishes no processing rate at all.
Loistrofi Editorial — Aug 23, 2026 — 9 min read
Housecall Pro publishes card processing "as low as 2.59%" and 1% on bank payments. Stripe publishes 2.9% + 30¢ per online card transaction and 2.7% + 5¢ in person. Jobber's pricing page publishes no processing rate at all. On $50,000 a month in cards, the Housecall Pro floor beats Stripe's online rate by roughly $185 a month — more than the software costs.
Subscription pricing is counted in seats. Processing is counted in dollars and transactions, and for most field service shops the second number is far larger. Before you compare anything, write down four figures for a normal month: total dollars you collect on cards, how many separate card transactions that is, total dollars you collect by bank transfer or ACH, and how many of those there are. Then split the card number into three buckets — tapped or dipped on site, entered by hand from a phone call, and paid online through an emailed invoice link. Those buckets are priced differently by every processor that publishes a rate card.
The reason to do this first: a 0.31 percentage point difference sounds like rounding. On $50,000 a month it is $155, before per-transaction fees. Over a year it buys you a mid-tier software plan outright.
Housecall Pro's pricing page states card processing rates "as low as 2.59%" and, in its FAQ, that "card processing fees start at 2.59%" with "a 1% fee applied to bank payments." It also says you can deposit checks for no fee through the mobile app. That is the extent of what is published — no per-transaction cent charge, no separate keyed-entry rate, no dispute fee.
Jobber's pricing page covers plans, seats and promotional terms in detail and says nothing about payment processing rates. Not a floor, not a range, not a footnote. If you are evaluating Jobber on total cost of ownership, the pricing page alone cannot get you there.
Stripe publishes the most complete card: 2.9% + 30¢ per successful domestic online card transaction, plus 0.5% for manually entered cards, plus 1.5% for international cards, plus 1% if currency conversion is needed. In person it is 2.7% + 5¢ for domestic cards, plus $0.10 per authorization for Tap to Pay on a phone, plus an optional $0.05 for point-to-point encryption. ACH Direct Debit is 0.8% with a $5.00 cap. Disputes cost $15.00 to receive and $15.00 to counter, refunded if you win. There are no setup or monthly fees.
| On $50,000/mo across 100 transactions | Housecall Pro | Stripe (online invoice) | Stripe (in person) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Published card rate | "as low as" 2.59% | 2.9% + 30¢ | 2.7% + 5¢ |
| Percentage portion | $1,295.00 | $1,450.00 | $1,350.00 |
| Per-transaction portion | none published | $30.00 | $5.00 |
| Monthly processing | $1,295.00 | $1,480.00 | $1,355.00 |
| Annual processing | $15,540 | $17,760 | $16,260 |
| Bank / ACH rate | 1%, no cap published | 0.8%, $5.00 cap | 0.8%, $5.00 cap |
| Keyed-entry surcharge | not published | +0.5% | n/a |
| Dispute fee | not published | $15.00 received, $15.00 countered | $15.00 received, $15.00 countered |
| Monthly platform fee | $59–$299/mo (annual) | none | none |
At the published floor, $50,000 × 2.59% = $1,295 a month, or $15,540 a year. Against Stripe's online rate that saves $185 a month ($1,480 − $1,295), which is $2,220 over twelve months. Housecall Pro's Essentials plan costs $149 a month billed annually — $1,788 a year. So if you genuinely get 2.59% and you invoice online, the processing saving covers the software and leaves $432.
The load-bearing word is "as low as." A floor rate is not a quote. The phrase appears in the feature list for the Max plan ($299/mo billed annually, $329/mo otherwise), while the FAQ states rates "start at 2.59%" without naming a plan. We could not confirm from the page whether Basic and Essentials customers get the same floor, whether it requires a volume minimum, or whether there is a fixed cents-per-transaction fee stacked on top. If there is a 30¢ component you were not told about, that is another $30 a month at 100 transactions and the advantage over Stripe's card-present rate largely evaporates.
Housecall Pro charges 1% on bank payments. Stripe charges 0.8% on ACH Direct Debit with a hard $5.00 cap. The cap is the whole story. On a $2,000 invoice, Housecall Pro takes $20 and Stripe takes $5 — the 0.8% would be $16, so the cap bites. On a $10,000 commercial job, Housecall Pro's 1% is $100 and Stripe is still $5.
If you push 25 bank payments of $2,000 through each month, that is $500 with Housecall Pro against $125 with Stripe: $375 a month, $4,500 a year, on the same money moving the same way. No cap is published on Housecall Pro's 1% fee, so treat it as uncapped until someone tells you otherwise in writing. For anyone doing replacement HVAC systems, re-pipes or commercial contracts, this line matters more than the card rate does.
Jobber's page is unusually detailed about software pricing and silent about processing. You can price seats to the dollar: Core is $49/mo, or $21/mo for twelve months then $29/mo when billed annually — $252 in year one, $348 in year two. Grow with 5 users is $299/mo, or $161/mo for twelve months then $229/mo billed annually, which is $1,932 in year one and $2,748 in year two. Plus with 5 users is $499/mo, or $280/mo for twelve months then $399/mo. Extra users are $29/mo each on any plan.
None of that tells you what a $500 card payment costs. At the volumes above, processing is roughly eight times the software bill, so a Jobber comparison built only on subscription price is comparing the smaller half. Get the rate in an email before you sign a twelve-month term, and ask specifically about tapped, keyed and online rates separately.
Jobber counts a user as anyone who accesses the account at the office or in the field, and charges $29/mo for each one past the included count. Housecall Pro's Essentials includes 5 users and charges $100/mo for each additional one; Max includes 8 users and charges $75/mo each after that.
Adding a sixth person therefore costs $348 a year on Jobber and $1,200 a year on Housecall Pro Essentials. That is a real number and it runs the opposite direction from the processing saving. If you are at five people and hiring, model both lines together: Housecall Pro's cheaper card rate can be wiped out by two additional seats.
If you run $40,000 a month or more in cards, mostly collected online from emailed invoices, and your headcount is stable at five or fewer — pick Housecall Pro Essentials at $149/mo billed annually, on the condition that you get 2.59% confirmed in writing for your plan. The $2,220 a year processing gap against Stripe's 2.9% + 30¢ is the largest single number in this comparison.
If a meaningful share of your money arrives by bank transfer on invoices above $500 — keep or add Stripe for those payments specifically. The $5.00 ACH cap against an uncapped 1% is not close; a single $10,000 invoice costs $5 versus $100.
If you are a solo operator under about $5,000 a month in cards — pick on software fit, not rate. At $5,000 and 10 transactions the gap is 2.59% = $129.50 against 2.9% + 30¢ = $148, a difference of $18.50 a month. Jobber Core at $21/mo for twelve months ($252) is the cheapest way in; just diarise the jump to $29/mo in month thirteen.
If you are hiring past five people this year — lean Jobber and negotiate the processing rate. Six users on Housecall Pro Essentials adds $1,200 a year; on Jobber it adds $348. That $852 difference eats most of the processing advantage at moderate volume.
If your team taps cards on site rather than emailing invoices — the gap narrows to almost nothing. Stripe in person is 2.7% + 5¢, or $1,355 a month on our example, against $1,295. Sixty dollars a month is not a reason to change software.
- Ask for the processing rate card in writing, broken out three ways: tapped or dipped on site, keyed in by hand, and paid online through an invoice link. Stripe publishes a +0.5% surcharge for manually entered cards; assume every processor prices these differently unless told otherwise.
- Ask whether 2.59% is tied to the Max plan or to a monthly volume threshold, and what rate you would actually be given on the plan you intend to buy. "As low as" is a floor, not your price.
- Ask whether there is a fixed per-transaction fee on top of the percentage. At 100 transactions a month, an unmentioned 30¢ is $360 a year.
- Ask whether the 1% bank payment fee is capped, and at what amount. If it is uncapped, price your largest typical invoice against Stripe's $5.00 ACH cap before deciding where to route big jobs.
- Ask what a chargeback costs and how long payouts take. Stripe publishes $15.00 per dispute received and 1.5% (50¢ minimum) for instant payouts; get the equivalent figures for your platform so you are not surprised in month two.
- Confirm the month-thirteen price in writing. Jobber's annual Grow plan with 5 users is $161/mo for twelve months then $229/mo — an $816 jump you should have on the calendar before you sign.
At $50,000 a month in cards, mostly invoiced online, with a crew of five or fewer, we would take Housecall Pro Essentials at $149/mo billed annually and spend the first phone call getting 2.59% and the per-transaction structure confirmed by email. If they will not put the rate in writing, that answer tells you what the rate probably is.
We would route bank payments over roughly $500 to Stripe regardless of which platform we ran the business on, purely because of the $5.00 ACH cap. And we would not sign a twelve-month Jobber commitment without the processing rate in hand — the software pricing is the clearest on the market and the payments pricing is invisible, which is an odd combination to accept on trust when it is eight times the size of the bill you can see.
Loistrofi does not take vendor briefings or speak to sales teams. Every figure here comes from a page the vendor publishes itself, checked on Aug 23, 2026. Where a number could not be confirmed at source, it is marked rather than smoothed over.
