Jobber vs Housecall Pro vs ValLedger for Small Crews (1–15 People)

Before anything else: I'm biased. I built ValLedger, so I'm one of the three options in this post, and you should read everything I say about it with that in mind. What I can promise is that every Jobber and Housecall Pro number below comes from their own pricing pages, which I checked on October 5, 2026: getjobber.com/pricing and housecallpro.com/pricing. Prices move. If you're reading this months from now, check those pages before you trust my table.

I own a cleaning company in Colorado's Vail Valley, and "Jobber vs Housecall Pro" was the exact search I typed when I went shopping. What I found were feature checklists. A checklist doesn't tell you what your crew will cost, or which plan the feature you need is sitting on. That's what this post answers, for crews of 1 to 15 people.

The short answer

• Solo, and you just need quotes, scheduling and invoices: Jobber Core at $29/month (billed annually) is the cheapest way in. Cheaper than ValLedger.
• You want marketing tools, call answering, consumer financing, payroll with tax withholding, or a big integration marketplace: Jobber or Housecall Pro. Both are bigger and sell things I don't.
• You have a crew of 3 to 15, want routing, GPS clock-in, job costing and QuickBooks without climbing tiers, and some of your people work in Spanish: that's the gap ValLedger was built for.

How each one charges

Jobber prices by plan and team size. On its pricing page you choose "Just me," "2-5 people," "6-10 people" or "11-15 people," and the price of each plan changes. Every plan card also says you can add users for $29/month each. Pick a team of 2 to 5 and the Core plan disappears from the options; you're shown Connect, Grow and Plus.

Housecall Pro has three plans with a set number of users included: Basic includes 1 user, Essentials includes 5, and Max includes 8, with "$35/mo per additional user" listed on Max. Their page doesn't publish an extra-user price for Basic or Essentials, so if you're between those numbers, ask them.

ValLedger has three plans that differ only by seats: Starter is $59/month for 1–5 users, Growth is $139/month for 6–15, and Business is $249/month for unlimited users. Every feature is on every plan. The only reason to move up is headcount.

Here's what that looks like for real crew sizes. For Jobber and Housecall Pro I've listed the annual-billing price first, then month to month.

Two notes so this is fair. The Housecall Pro rows for 10 and 15 people are my arithmetic, using the only extra-user price they publish. And Jobber's team pricing beats the "$29 per extra user" math many comparison posts still use: five people on Connect is $149/month billed annually, not $99 plus four times $29.

What's locked behind the higher tiers

Price per seat is only half of it. The other half is which plan a feature lives on. Here's the cheapest plan that includes each feature, according to each vendor's own pricing page.

One correction to older comparisons, including some of ours: Housecall Pro now lists job costing and its price book on Basic. If you work alone and job costing is what you need, Basic at $59 has it.

The pattern still holds. On Jobber, the features a crew uses daily start at Connect, and job costing at Grow. On Housecall Pro, real route optimization is a Max feature at $299/month. On ValLedger there's nothing to unlock.

Payments and processing fees

All three pass card processing fees on to you. Here's what each one publishes:

• Jobber: 2.9% + 30¢ for credit cards, 2.7% + 30¢ for Tap to Pay, and 1% for bank (ACH) payments, the same on every plan. Instant payouts cost an extra 1%.
• Housecall Pro: card processing "as low as 2.59%," and a 1% fee on bank payments. Their page also says you can deposit checks through the app for no fee.
• ValLedger: payments run through Stripe, connected to your own Stripe account. We don't charge a transaction fee, so you pay Stripe's standard processing fees and that's it. Stripe's published US rate is 2.9% + 30¢ for domestic cards and 0.8% for ACH Direct Debit, capped at $5 (stripe.com/pricing, checked October 5, 2026). Clients can pay invoices by card or by ACH bank transfer.

Do the math on your own invoices. On a $2,000 job paid by bank transfer, a 1% ACH fee is $20 and Stripe's capped fee is $5. If most of your volume is cards, Housecall Pro's "as low as 2.59%" could beat everyone, so ask them what rate you'd actually get.

QuickBooks sync

• Jobber syncs with QuickBooks Online and Xero, starting on Connect.
• Housecall Pro includes QuickBooks Online sync starting on Essentials.
• ValLedger syncs invoices, payments and expenses to QuickBooks Online on every plan. No Xero.

If your accountant lives in Xero, that settles it: Jobber.

Spanish

This is the reason I started building ValLedger in the first place, so I'll be specific.

• Jobber: the FAQ on their pricing page says the mobile app is available in Spanish "to all team members, with the exception of administrators and account owners." So your crew can work in Spanish. The person running the office can't.
• Housecall Pro: "App available in English and Spanish" is on every plan, and their FAQ says they have a Spanish-speaking support team. That support team is a real advantage.
• ValLedger: the web app and the iOS app are both in English and Spanish, and each person picks their own language. The owner can run the office in Spanish while someone else runs it in English. One honest limit: the client portal your customers see isn't translated to Spanish yet.

Route optimization and GPS clock-in

On ValLedger, the route optimizer takes a day's jobs and reorders them to cut drive time. Jobs with a set appointment time stay in time order, and everything else gets slotted in wherever it adds the least driving. GPS clock-in takes one location reading when someone taps Clock in and checks it against the job address. It's on by default, and only the owner can turn it off. (I wrote up how GPS clock-in actually works, and where it falls short if you want the details.)

On Jobber and Housecall Pro, see the tiers in the table above. One thing Housecall Pro has that I don't: a vehicle GPS and dashcam add-on, if you want hardware tracking in your trucks.

Timesheets, payroll and 1099s

Here's where you should read me carefully, because this is where ValLedger does less than the other two.

ValLedger has timesheets with owner approval, and pay runs that turn approved hours into gross pay. You record pay day (cash, check, Zelle, whatever you use), and each worker gets a pay stub. ValLedger doesn't move the money and doesn't withhold taxes. Every stub says so. For subcontractors, there's a 1099 report that totals what you paid each one for the year and flags who's over the reporting threshold. It can also produce 1099-NEC recipient and payer copies. Those aren't the IRS filing copy, so you or your accountant still file.

Housecall Pro sells Payroll as an add-on. Their payroll page says it handles "federal, state, and local payroll taxes" and supports 1099 contractors. I couldn't find a published price for it.

Jobber integrates with Gusto from Connect up. Timesheets and reimbursable expenses sync over for payroll. I couldn't find a 1099 contractor feature on Jobber's pricing page.

So if you need payroll that withholds taxes, either competitor is the better choice. If your accountant handles payroll taxes and you need clean hours, pay records and 1099 totals, ValLedger covers that. If you're not sure which of your people are employees and which are contractors, this explainer on 1099 vs W-2 is a good place to start.

AI

• Jobber: Jobber AI Voice and AI Chat are checked on every plan, Core included. Receptionist, which answers calls and texts and can book jobs, is a $29/month add-on that comes included with Plus.
• Housecall Pro: "AI team members" are listed in every plan. CSR AI, which answers calls and chats around the clock, is an add-on.
• ValLedger: Val is an assistant built into the app on every plan. Ask it things like "who owes me money" or "how did last month go," and it answers from your own data. It can also draft quotes and invoices, create jobs, clients, leads and expenses, and send overdue reminders. Quotes and invoices it creates start as drafts, and bulk changes and reminder emails wait for you to confirm. Receipt scanning reads a photo of a receipt into an expense. Val is for owners and office staff. Field workers can't use it.

What ValLedger doesn't have is an AI receptionist answering your phone. If missed calls are costing you jobs, that's a real reason to pick Jobber or Housecall Pro.

Mobile apps

Both Jobber and Housecall Pro have iOS and Android apps on every plan.

ValLedger has an iOS app on the App Store, in English and Spanish, with jobs, GPS clock-in and the rest of the day's work. There's no Android app yet. Crew members on Android use ValLedger in their phone's browser, and GPS clock-in works there too. If most of your crew carries Android phones and you want a native app, count that against me.

When Jobber is the better choice

• You work alone and need only the basics. Core at $29/month billed annually is the lowest entry price of the three.
• You want the biggest ecosystem: Jobber advertises 100+ tools in its app marketplace, and from Connect up it syncs with QuickBooks Online and Xero and connects to Gusto and Zapier.
• You want marketing on autopilot. Marketing Suite is a $99/month add-on, and Jobber also gives you a website builder and online booking.
• You want an AI receptionist answering calls, or Jobber Capital financing for your own business.
• You want a big, established product with a community behind it. Every Jobber plan includes membership in their Home Service Community, and ValLedger is the newest and smallest of the three.

When Housecall Pro is the better choice

• You want consumer financing, so your customers can pay for bigger jobs over time. Every plan includes access to it.
• You want payroll that handles tax withholding and filings inside the same product.
• You want a business phone system (their Voice add-on), AI call answering, or vehicle GPS and dashcams.
• You're solo and need job costing and a price book. Basic at $59 includes both.
• You want Spanish-speaking support staff, not only a Spanish app.
• You want the scale. Housecall Pro says it's trusted by more than 200,000 pros, and its app comes on iOS and Android.

Where ValLedger fits

ValLedger is a smaller, newer product built by someone who runs a crew. Every plan, starting at $59/month for up to 5 users, includes leads, quotes with online approval, scheduling, recurring jobs, invoicing, Stripe card and ACH payments with no ValLedger transaction fee, route optimization, GPS-checked clock-in, timesheets and pay runs, expense tracking, job costing, 1099 reports, QuickBooks Online sync, automatic overdue-invoice reminders and quote follow-ups, and Val. All of it in English and Spanish.

What it doesn't have: an Android app, an app marketplace, payroll tax withholding, consumer financing, an AI phone receptionist, or a Spanish client portal. If any of those is a must-have, you already have your answer, and it isn't me. I've also written a broader roundup of Jobber alternatives for small businesses if you want more options than these three.

How to decide

1. Price your real headcount. Pick your team size on each pricing page and write down the plan that has your three must-have features, not the one with the lowest number on it.
2. Run one real job through each trial. All three offer 14 days free with no credit card. Jobber's trial runs on Grow and Housecall Pro's runs on Max, so check that what you're testing is on the plan you'll actually pay for.
3. Ask your crew. Hand the app to the person who'll clock in with it every morning, in the language they think in.

For a side-by-side view, see our comparison page, or the head-to-heads for ValLedger vs Jobber and ValLedger vs Housecall Pro.

If ValLedger sounds like a fit, start a trial: 14 days free, no credit card required at signup. Add your crew, set up your QuickBooks connection, and run a real week of jobs through it. You'll know by Friday.