Housecall Pro vs Workiz: Which Is Better for Your Shop?

Housecall Pro and Workiz look alike on a feature checklist: scheduling, dispatch, GPS, estimates, invoices, payments, reviews and marketing. The difference is who each one was built for. Housecall Pro leans toward residential HVAC, plumbing and electrical shops, with flat-rate pricing, service plans and consumer financing. Workiz leans toward on-demand work like garage doors, locksmithing, appliance repair and junk removal, with a phone system and inventory at its center. Housecall Pro publishes its prices as of October 2026. Workiz now quotes every plan.

The short answer

Pick Housecall Pro if you're a residential HVAC, plumbing or electrical shop that sells flat-rate repairs, replacements and tune-up agreements. You'll know the price before you talk to anyone, and the plan tiers line up with how those shops grow.

Pick Workiz if you're an on-demand trade where the phone rings, you quote on the spot, and a tech is at the door within hours with the part on the truck. That's the job Workiz was shaped around.

Pricing: published vs quote-only

Housecall Pro, as of October 2026, billed annually: Basic $59/mo (1 user), Essentials $149/mo (up to 5 users), MAX $299/mo (up to 8 users). Month to month, those are $79, $189 and $329. MAX adds $35/mo per extra user. Housecall Pro doesn't publish an extra-user price for Basic or Essentials. Intro promos run on all three plans ($26 for the first month on Basic and Essentials, $99/mo for three months on MAX), so budget off the regular price.

Workiz switched to quote-only pricing in 2026. Standard, Pro and Ultimate all show "request pricing." A third-party record of the last published list (April 2026) showed Kickstart at $225/mo billed annually for 3 users, Standard at $275/mo for 5 users, and Pro at $325/mo for 5 users, with extra users around $46 to $54/mo on annual billing. Treat those as reference points only. The current price is whatever your quote says.

Both sell phone and AI answering as extras. Housecall Pro lists Voice and CSR AI without prices. Workiz sells Genius Phone, Genius Answering and Genius Marketing separately, also unpriced. Owners on both platforms commonly report that the features they wanted most sit behind add-ons, so ask for every quote with the add-ons itemized.

Where Housecall Pro is stronger

Flat-rate selling. Essentials adds flat-rate pricing, and MAX adds a sales proposal tool (valued by Housecall Pro at $40/mo). Consumer financing is listed on every plan. When a tech is quoting a water heater or a condenser in someone's kitchen, set prices and a financing option close more jobs than a handwritten estimate.

Service plans. MAX includes Recurring Service Plans, so an HVAC shop can bill agreements monthly or yearly and track the visits owed. Workiz doesn't feature anything comparable on its pricing page.

Published prices and a longer trial. You can budget Housecall Pro without a sales call, and its 14-day trial on MAX features gives you two full weeks to run real jobs.

Weak spots: QuickBooks Online sync starts on Essentials, not Basic. Owners commonly report inconsistent support response times, and that advanced features sit behind MAX or add-ons.

Where Workiz is stronger

Phones. Workiz built its name on putting calls, call tracking and the job board in one place. For a shop where a missed call means the customer just dials the next company on the list, that's the main reason to pick it.

Inventory. Workiz lists inventory as a core feature. A garage door company stocking springs and openers, or an appliance repair shop carrying common parts, needs to know what's on each truck and what to reorder.

Speed on same-day work. Workiz's layout favors jobs that get booked, dispatched and closed in one day, which is how on-demand trades run.

Weak spots: no published prices, a short 7-day trial, add-ons for the phone features most buyers want, and occasional mobile app sync glitches reported by users.

Two hypothetical shops, two different answers

A 6-tech residential HVAC shop. It has 240 maintenance agreements, sells replacements with financing, and gets most new customers from referrals and online booking. On Housecall Pro MAX that's $299/mo billed annually with 8 users included, and service plans, route optimization and the proposal tool are in the plan. On Workiz, the shop would be paying for phone strengths it doesn't lean on, and it would still need a way to run agreements. Housecall Pro is the clear fit.

A 5-tech garage door company. It runs paid search ads, books 70% of jobs by phone the same day, and stocks springs, rollers and openers on every truck. Housecall Pro can run the jobs, but the shop would still need outside call tracking to know which ads pay. Workiz puts the phone, the lead source and the inventory in one system. Its last public price for 5 users was $275/mo on Standard, and Genius Phone is extra, so the bill may be higher than Housecall Pro Essentials at $149/mo. If it replaces a separate phone and call-tracking service, it can still come out ahead.

Switching between them

Both export customer lists, and both import from CSV, so contact records are the easy part. What needs hand work: saved card details (customers usually have to re-enter them), open invoices (finish them in the old system), and recurring work. Coming into Housecall Pro, rebuild each maintenance agreement as a service plan with its correct next-visit date. Coming into Workiz, set up your inventory counts by truck before the first day live, or the numbers will be wrong from the start. Pick a slow month for either move. For HVAC that's usually late winter; for garage door and locksmith work, there's rarely a slow month, so plan a one-week overlap instead.

How to use the trials

With Housecall Pro's 14 days, build out your flat-rate price list for your 20 most common tasks, set up one service plan, and run a week of real jobs through it.

With Workiz's 7 days, start the phone side on day one. Forward a line, take real calls, and see how quickly a call becomes a scheduled job with a tech assigned. Add your five most common parts to inventory and use them on actual jobs. If you get to day five without having touched the phone tools, Workiz's main advantage isn't doing anything for you.

Final verdict by shop type

Residential HVAC, plumbing or electrical, 2 to 8 techs: Housecall Pro Essentials at $149/mo, or MAX at $299/mo once you sell service plans.

Garage door, locksmith, appliance repair or junk removal: Workiz, with a written quote that itemizes the phone and answering add-ons.

Solo operator: Housecall Pro Basic at $59/mo if you don't need QuickBooks sync. If you do, Essentials or a cheaper competitor makes more sense.

Shop that's half service calls, half installs: Housecall Pro, unless inbound calls from paid ads are the backbone of your marketing.