Most of what search results call free field service software is a trial. Fourteen days later the tool asks for a card, and your jobs, customers and invoices are inside it. This page splits the two. A free plan has no end date. A free trial is a paid plan on a timer. We read each vendor’s own pricing page on 9 November 2026 (Joist and GorillaDesk on 10 November) and sorted what we found into those two groups, with the limit that goes with each.
We earn from qualifying sign-ups through our links. How we make money
Free Plans vs Free Trials
The word “free” gets stretched. We use it for one thing only: a plan you can keep using, at no charge, with no end date. Everything with a countdown is labeled “free trial” and sits in its own section below.
| Option | Type | The limit |
|---|---|---|
| ServiceM8 Free | Free plan | 1 user, 30 jobs a month, costs $0/mo |
| Our estimate, work order and invoice generators | Free tools | No account, no email, runs in your browser |
| ServiceM8 | Free trial | 14 days, no credit card required |
| Jobber | Free trial | 14 days on the Grow plan, no credit card required |
| Housecall Pro | Free trial | 14 days with full access to Max, no credit card required |
| GorillaDesk | Free trial | 14 days, no credit card required |
| Joist | Free trial | 14 days on Run, no credit card required |
Two things in that table are worth a second look. First, only one vendor we checked publishes a permanent free plan with jobs, scheduling and customers in it. Second, several trials run on the most expensive plan, not the one you will land on when the trial ends. A trial that shows you every feature is a demo of a bigger bill.
How We Sorted Them
We did not use review sites, comparison blogs or search engine summaries to decide what counts as free. Each line in the table comes from the vendor’s pricing page, read on the date above. If a vendor lists a plan at $0/mo with no time limit, it goes under Genuinely Free. If it lists a number of days, it goes under Free Trials, even when the page calls it “free” in big letters.
What We Did Not Find
We did not find a permanent free tier at Jobber, Housecall Pro, GorillaDesk or Joist. Their pricing pages list paid plans and a trial, and Joist’s own FAQ says its free plan is no longer available. Vendors change this, so check the live page before you sign up.
Genuinely Free Options
These are the ones you can run a business on without a card, within limits.
ServiceM8 Free
ServiceM8’s US pricing page lists a Free plan at $0/mo. The page calls it completely free for solo operators, with one user and 30 jobs a month. It also says you can earn unlimited bonus jobs by accepting card payments, and we did not read the conditions behind that. Paid plans on the same page list unlimited users, so the Free plan is built for exactly one person.
- Who it suits: a solo operator or a side business that handles a few jobs a week. One person does the quoting, the work and the invoicing, so one user is enough.
- Who should skip it: anyone with a helper, a partner or an office person who needs a login. The Free plan is for one user, and the first hire breaks it.
- The catch to plan for: the 30 jobs a month cap is the number to plan around until you have read ServiceM8’s card-payment bonus terms. We work out what it means in practice in the section on when free stops being enough.
We did not test ServiceM8’s features for this page. Open the Free plan’s feature list on ServiceM8’s site and compare it with how you work before you move your customers in.
Free Templates and Generators
Not everyone needs a full field service platform. If your real problem is that you are writing estimates and invoices in a notes app, a free document generator may be all you need today, and it costs nothing to start.
Ours are built for contractors. You fill in a form, see the finished sheet on the right as you type, and download a PDF. There is no account, no email step, and what you type stays in your browser.
- Estimate template: labor, materials with markup, sales tax, a deposit and an expiry date.
- Work order template: the job sheet you hand to a tech or a client.
- Free invoice generator: a clean invoice you can send the same day.
A generator is not scheduling, dispatching or a customer list. It gives you good documents. For many solo contractors, that is the part that was missing, and it is the right place to start before you pay for anything else.
What About Other Free Tools?
Some small contractor tools advertise a free tier. We only list what we have read on a pricing page ourselves, so a tool does not appear here until we have. If a free option you have heard of is missing, that does not mean it does not exist. It means we have not confirmed it yet, and we would rather leave it out than guess its limits.
Free Trials Worth Running
A trial is useful if you treat it as a test, not a freebie. Put a real week of jobs through it. The point is to learn, before you pay, whether the software saves you hours.
Our rule for trials: write down what you did on day one, day seven and day fourteen. Count the minutes you saved on quotes, scheduling and chasing invoices. If you cannot point to saved time by day fourteen, you probably do not need the tool yet.
Jobber
Jobber’s trial is 14 days with full access to the features of the Grow plan, and no credit card is needed. The plan you land on after the trial may be smaller. Core, the cheapest, starts at $29/mo billed yearly for one user. Note which Grow features you used, so you know whether Core covers you. Our Jobber alternatives page lists cheaper routes if the numbers do not fit.
Housecall Pro
Housecall Pro gives you 14 days with full access to its top plan, Max, and no credit card is needed. The entry plan, Basic, is $59/mo billed yearly for one user, or $79/mo month to month. Max is a different price point entirely, so decide early which plan you would really buy.
GorillaDesk
GorillaDesk offers a 14-day trial with no credit card required. It prices by route, not by user: Basic is $49/mo per route, with unlimited admin, manager, sales and crew users. If you run fixed weekly routes, test the trial on a real route and see whether the per-route price fits your week.
Joist
Joist’s trial runs 14 days on its Run plan, with no credit card required. If you only need estimates and invoices, the plans you would keep afterward are cheaper than Run. Basics is $8.34/mo billed yearly or $10/mo monthly, capped at five documents a month. Read the document cap before you rely on it.
Good fit if
- You run a real week of jobs through the trial and count the hours it saves.
- You note which plan the trial runs on and price the plan you would actually keep.
- You export your customer list before the trial ends, in case you walk away.
Skip it if
- You are only curious: a half-used trial teaches you little and puts your data in someone's system.
- You have no time to test for two weeks: a trial you do not use is a wasted countdown.
- You expect it to stay free: every trial above ends in a paid plan.
When Free Stops Being Enough
Free plans have two edges: the number of users and the number of jobs. Users are easy to count. Jobs take a little arithmetic.
The 30 Jobs a Month Math
ServiceM8 Free allows 30 jobs a month. A month has about 20 working days when you take weekends off. Thirty jobs divided by 20 working days is 1.5 jobs a day. That is the ceiling, and it includes every job you create in the system, not only the ones you finish.
What does that look like in a real week? A handyman who does two or three small jobs a day is over the line by Wednesday of the second week. A plumber who does one big repair and one quote a day sits right at it. A landscaper who mows ten lawns a day cannot use it at all. A painter who runs one job for a week at a time barely touches it.
The simple test: count the jobs you ran last month, quotes included if you plan to create them as jobs. If the number is over 30, the Free plan is not for you. If it is under 20, you have room to grow before you pay.
Other Signs You Have Outgrown It
- You hired someone. The Free plan is for one user. A second person who needs to see the schedule means a paid plan.
- You are spending your evenings on paperwork. If admin eats the hours you would rather spend on the next job, the time saved by a paid tool may be worth more than its price.
- You want to take card payments in the app. Check the plan’s feature list on the vendor’s site. Payment tools often come with paid plans, and processing fees are charged per transaction on top.
- Customers expect reminders and reviews. These sit in different plan levels at different vendors, so read the list before you assume.
What Not to Do
Do not split one business across two free accounts to dodge the cap. It splits your customer list and doubles your admin. If you are at the cap, you have a business big enough to pay for software. That is a good problem.
Cheapest Paid Step Up
When you pass the free limit, the next step does not have to be large. Two entry points on the pricing pages we read:
- ServiceM8 Starter: $29/mo, up to 50 jobs a month, with unlimited users. If the Free plan fits your work except for the cap or the one-user limit, this is the smallest move. Our ServiceM8 pricing page has every plan.
- Joist Basics: $8.34/mo billed yearly, or $10/mo monthly, capped at five documents a month. It suits you if estimates and invoices are the real job. Our Joist pricing page covers the rest of the range.
These two do different things. ServiceM8 is built around jobs. Joist’s plans are sold by the number of documents you send. Match the tool to what you do all day, and not to the lowest number on the page.
Is Paying Worth It at All?
Divide the monthly price by what an hour of your time is worth. The answer is how many hours a month the software must save you. If the Starter plan has to save you two hours to pay its way and a trial shows it saving six, the case is easy. If you cannot find the hours, keep the free plan and the free generators for another quarter.
When You Need a Full Platform
If you have a crew, several vehicles or recurring routes, a free or entry plan will not be enough. Our guide to field service management software for small business compares the full platforms by crew size. And if the biggest name in the category costs more than you want to pay, see the Jobber alternatives.
A Simple Plan for a New Solo Contractor
If you are just starting and want to spend nothing for now, this order works for most people.
- Start with the free generators. Get professional estimates and invoices out of a notes app and into PDFs today.
- Add ServiceM8 Free if you need a schedule and job list. One user, 30 jobs a month.
- Count your jobs for a month. The count tells you whether you are near the cap.
- Run one trial with real work when you get close. Pick the tool that fits your trade, and write down the hours it saves.
- Pay only when the hours saved are worth more than the price. Move to the cheapest plan that covers you, not the one the trial showed off.
How We Checked
Every claim about a plan, limit or trial on this page comes from the vendor’s own pricing page, read on 9 November 2026: ServiceM8, Joist, Jobber, Housecall Pro and GorillaDesk. We did not test the free plan’s features and do not rate them. We state limits only where the page states them. The date at the top of this page changes only when we read the sources again.
Sources
Each one opened and checked on November 9, 2026.
Questions people ask
Is there free field service software for small business?
Yes, with limits. The one permanent free plan we found on vendor pricing pages is ServiceM8 Free: one user and 30 jobs a month, and ServiceM8's page says you can earn bonus jobs by accepting card payments. Our own estimate, work order and invoice generators are also free and need no account. Everything else we checked is a 14-day trial, which ends in a paid plan.
What is the best free field service software?
For a one-person business with light volume, ServiceM8 Free is the best permanent free plan we found, because it is a real plan with no end date. The cap is 30 jobs a month and one user, and its page says accepting card payments earns bonus jobs. If you need more than that, the cheapest paid step is ServiceM8 Starter at $29/mo, or Joist Basics at $8.34/mo billed yearly if you mainly need estimates and invoices.
Is a free trial the same as a free plan?
No. A free plan has no end date and no bill, so you can use it for as long as you stay inside its limits. A free trial is a timed test of a paid plan: Jobber, Housecall Pro, ServiceM8, Joist and GorillaDesk each run 14 days on their pricing pages, and then you pay or lose access. Before you enter real customer data in a trial, decide whether you will pay for the plan it runs on.