· Independent
One free plan in this group is real: ServiceM8's, for a single user doing up to 30 jobs a month. The others hand you a trial. Here is what the free tier costs you the week work picks up.
Loistrofi Editorial — Aug 23, 2026 — 9 min read
Yes, one. ServiceM8's pricing page names a Free plan built for sole traders: one user, 30 new jobs a month, 10 AI uses a day, and what the page calls "All Essential Features." Jobber, Tradify and Kickserv give you a trial instead — Kickserv's is 30 days on its Run plan. If you run a single van and book fewer than about seven jobs a week, you can stay on ServiceM8's free plan indefinitely.
Write down how many people will log in, and how many new jobs you booked last month. Those are two different pricing units and the vendors here split on which one they charge for. Jobber, Tradify and Kickserv count seats — a login for you, a login for whoever chases invoices. ServiceM8 charges by job volume and, on its FAQ, states plainly that it does not charge per user: "The only plan which limits the number of users you can have is the Free plan." So on ServiceM8 the number that costs you money is jobs. Everywhere else it is people.
The seat arithmetic diverges fast. On Jobber, a second person is $29/mo on top of your plan. On Tradify, pricing is $47 USD per user/month on Lite, so a second van doubles the bill to $94/mo. Kickserv goes the other way: its Start plan is $60/mo and includes 5 users, so seats two through five are already paid for whether you use them or not. If you are genuinely one person with one van, you are buying four seats you will not touch.
| Option | One-van list price | Cheapest published one-van path | Year 1 | Year 2 | Free tier? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ServiceM8 Free | No dollar figure printed on the page we read | 1 user, 30 jobs/mo, 10 AI uses/day | — | — | Yes — named "Free plan" |
| Jobber Core | $49/mo, 1 user | $21/mo for 12 months, billed annually | $252 | $348 ($29 × 12) | No — trial only |
| Jobber Connect | $139/mo, 1 user | $70/mo for 12 months, billed annually | $840 | $1,188 ($99 × 12) | No — trial only |
| Jobber Grow | $199/mo, 1 user | $105/mo for 12 months, billed annually | $1,260 | $1,788 ($149 × 12) | No — trial only |
| Kickserv Start | $60/mo, includes 5 users | "Save 20% with annual subscription" | $720 at monthly list | $720 | None shown on the page |
| Kickserv Run | $119/mo, includes 10 users | 30-day free trial of Run | $1,428 at monthly list | $1,428 | Trial only |
| Tradify Lite | $47 per user/month | — | $564 | $564 | Trial only |
| Tradify Pro | $51 per user/month | — | $612 | $612 | Trial only |
Every dollar figure above is printed on the vendor's own pricing page; the yearly totals are those figures multiplied by twelve. Kickserv states a 20% annual discount but does not print the resulting rate — 20% off $60 works out to $48/mo, or $576 a year, and you should confirm that number in checkout rather than trusting our subtraction. ServiceM8's tier prices did not render in the page text we captured, which is why its rows are blank rather than guessed.
ServiceM8's free tier is not a stripped shell. The page lists it with "All Essential Features" — the same phrase attached to every paid tier above it. What separates the free plan from the rest is three caps: one user, 30 new jobs per month, and 10 AI uses per day. Compare that to a trial, where every feature works for 14 days and then the whole thing stops. If your work is steady and low-volume — a specialist who does two or three deep jobs a week, a semi-retired operator, someone running a van alongside a day job — this is a permanent free tool, not bait.
Two costs sit outside the plan. ServiceM8 Phone is listed as an add-on "From $19/mo" against every tier shown, so caller ID and the smart phone workflow are extra whatever you pay. And the free plan is the one with the user limit, which means the moment your partner wants their own login to send invoices, you are on a paid plan regardless of how few jobs you did that month.
Thirty jobs across roughly 21 working days is 1.4 jobs a day. If you do two calls a day, you hit 42 jobs a month and blow the cap somewhere in week three — every month, permanently. That is the first failure and it is not gradual. The second is the seat: hire one helper, or hand the books to a bookkeeper, and the free plan is over even at 12 jobs. The third is the AI cap at 10 uses a day, which only bites if you lean on it for quote text or job notes.
The honest gap in planning for this: the pricing page we read did not render the dollar amount for the next tier up (unlimited users, 50 jobs per month). A single $349/mo figure appeared in the page text with no tier attached to it, and we will not guess which plan it belongs to. Before you build a business on the free plan, drag the job slider on ServiceM8's live pricing page to 50 and to 150 and write down what appears. That is your real cost of growth.
Jobber's page title advertises plans from $29/month. Here is where that lands. Core, one user, month-to-month, is $49/mo. Commit to a year but pay monthly and it is $39/mo. Prepay the year and it is $29/mo — and right now there is a promotion knocking that to $21/mo for 12 months. So year one on the cheapest path is $21 × 12 = $252. Year two, when the promo lapses, is $29 × 12 = $348. Budget for $348, not $252, because that is the number you will be paying every year after the first.
The step up is steep. Connect for one user is $139/mo month-to-month against Core's $49 — nearly triple. On the annual track that is $99/mo ongoing ($1,188 a year) versus Core's $29 ($348 a year). Grow for one user is $199/mo month-to-month, or $149/mo annually, which is $1,788 a year. Also note the promotion carries an end date of August 31 on the page, and the year is not printed. If you are reading this after that date, re-check every discounted figure above.
There is no free tier in the Kickserv pricing text we captured today. The entry point is Start at $60/mo for 5 users — $720 a year at monthly list, or a derived $576 with the stated 20% annual discount. That is more than Jobber Core's $348 ongoing annual rate for one seat, and you are paying for four logins you do not have. Kickserv's free-for-30-days offer applies to Run at $119/mo, which is a trial, not a plan. Run also carries a QuickBooks Desktop accounting integration at $50/m, which is a 42% surcharge on a $119 plan.
The Kickback discount is worth doing the arithmetic on before it influences your choice. On Start you get 5% off for processing at least $1,000 a month in online payments. Five percent of $60 is $3 a month — $36 a year — in exchange for routing $12,000 of annual card volume through their payments product. The page does not print the processing rate you would pay on that volume. Treat Kickback as a small rebate on payments you were already taking, never as a reason to move your card processing.
Tradify is the simplest to model and the least forgiving of growth. Lite is $47 USD per user/month — $564 a year for you alone. Pro is $51 ($612 a year), Plus is $61 ($732 a year). The Instant Website add-on is $12 per month, which adds $144 a year if you take it. One van on Lite with the website is $59/mo, or $708 a year. Add a second van and Lite alone becomes $94/mo, $1,128 a year, at which point Kickserv's $60 for five seats is cheaper for more people.
- If you book fewer than 30 jobs a month and nobody else needs a login, pick ServiceM8's Free plan, because it is the only plan in this comparison that costs nothing on an ongoing basis and still carries the full essential feature set.
- If you are past 30 jobs a month but still a single operator, pick Jobber Core on the annual track, because $29/mo ongoing ($348 a year) is the lowest committed price for one seat here, well under Tradify Lite's $564 and Kickserv Start's $720.
- If you are hiring a second and third person within the year, look hard at Kickserv Start, because $60/mo covers 5 users while Jobber would charge $29/mo per extra seat and Tradify $47 per user/month.
- If your job count is high but your headcount will stay at one or two, pick ServiceM8's paid ladder, because it is the only vendor here that explicitly does not charge per user — your bookkeeper's login is free.
- If you cannot commit to twelve months, ignore every discounted figure and compare month-to-month only: Jobber Core $49, Kickserv Start $60, Tradify Lite $47. Jobber's cheap headline price disappears entirely without the annual commitment.
- Open ServiceM8's pricing page and drag the job slider to 50 and 150, then write down the two prices — that is what outgrowing free actually costs you, and it did not render in the text we pulled.
- Confirm with ServiceM8 what happens at job 31: whether the account blocks new jobs, auto-upgrades you, or bills an overage. The page does not say.
- On Jobber's checkout, verify that the $21/mo Core rate is for 12 months and reverts to $29/mo, and check whether that promotion is still running at all.
- Ask Tradify what its trial length is and whether there is a minimum user count — the pricing page states $47 per user/month but no trial duration and no feature list we could read.
- Check every vendor's payment processing rate separately from the subscription. Kickserv's Kickback requires $1,000/mo in online payments for a 5% discount and no processing percentage is printed anywhere on that page.
- Ask all four how you export customers, jobs and invoice history if you cancel or downgrade. None of the four pricing pages addresses it.
Start on ServiceM8's free plan today. It is the only genuinely free option in this group, it is not time-limited, and one van doing under 30 jobs a month is exactly the shape of business it was built for. Run your real work through it for two months and let the caps tell you whether you have outgrown it, rather than guessing.
When you do outgrow it, the decision splits on headcount. Staying solo with more volume, move to Jobber Core on the annual plan and budget $348 a year from year two — the lowest committed one-seat price on this page. Adding people, stay with ServiceM8 and pay for job volume instead, because unlimited users on paid plans is the single biggest structural advantage here for a business that grows a crew. What we would not do is pay Kickserv $720 a year for five seats, or Tradify $564 for one, while you are still one person in one van.
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.
