TurfPlanner vs the Alternatives: How to Compare Lawn Care Software

To compare TurfPlanner with the alternatives, put each vendor's published monthly price, included users, signup fee and card fee side by side at your real crew size. On list prices checked in October 2026, a three-person crew pays $107 a month for Jobber's Core plan billed month-to-month, $0 a month on TurfPlanner's Free plan plus its card fee, and $34.99 on TurfPlanner's Business plan. Price is the first filter only. Features decide the rest.

How should you compare lawn care software?

Use four numbers, and write them down before you open any pricing page. First, the headcount you pay, because most plans charge per user or cap the number of users. Second, the monthly card volume, because card fees add up fast. Third, any signup or setup fee. Fourth, the features your route uses every week. The first three are arithmetic. The fourth takes a trial, and the trial is where most comparisons go wrong.

I did not run a trial of Jobber or Service Autopilot for this post. Everything below comes from their published pricing pages and from TurfPlanner's own plan settings, so treat it as a check on price and fee terms. It is not a verdict on either product.

What do Jobber and Service Autopilot charge?

Jobber's pricing page lists Core at $49 a month with no commitment, $39 a month on a one-year commitment, and $29 a month billed annually. Core includes one user, and additional users cost $29 a month each across all plans. Its Grow plan is $199 a month with no commitment and includes one user as well.

Service Autopilot's pricing page lists Startup at $49 a month, Pro at $199 and Pro Plus at $499, with Elite on request. It says a signup fee applies to its plans. It also says, in its own words, "All pricing is based on annual subscription rates," which means the monthly figures are annual rates shown per month. Pro lists multi-day job management, route optimization, a dispatch calendar and job costing.

What does a three-person crew actually pay each month?

Take a crew of three: one owner and two employees who need to see the schedule. Jobber's Core plan with three users costs $49 plus two extra users at $29, which is $107 a month month-to-month. Billed annually at the $29 base, the same three users come to $87 a month, assuming the $29 add-on price holds on the annual plan. That annual choice cuts the base plan by $20 a month, or $240 a year, but it locks you in for the year. TurfPlanner's Free plan costs $0 for the same three people, and its card fee is the only cost that scales with sales. Business is $34.99 flat.

Service Autopilot's Startup plan lists $49 a month, but its signup fee is not on the page, so I cannot total that plan for a three-person crew. Ask for the fee in writing before you compare. I also left out each vendor's card processing fees, because I did not verify Jobber's or Service Autopilot's rates. The TurfPlanner card line is the platform fee plus Stripe's standard rate, which Stripe lists as 2.9% plus 30 cents per domestic card payment.

When is the cheapest plan the wrong choice?

The cheapest plan is the wrong choice when it leaves out a task you do every week. A $0 subscription does not help if you end up exporting jobs to a spreadsheet to build invoices, because that hour belongs in the comparison too. Count the steps you would have to do by hand, then price that time at your own hourly rate, the same rate you use in your mowing prices.

For a growing crew, fit matters more than price. If you expect to add two people this season, check how each plan changes at five people, not at three. A plan that is cheap today can get expensive once the headcount climbs, and it is much harder to switch a crew mid-season than to switch a single invoice.

Where does TurfPlanner fall short?

The biggest gap is the crew app. It is an iPhone app that is still in TestFlight, so a crew on Android phones will need the web platform for everything. The second gap is features. The pricing page does not list route optimization or job costing, and Service Autopilot's Pro tier does. If those features run your week, Service Autopilot's published feature list is closer to what you need, even at a higher price.

TurfPlanner's advantage on paper is the price of a crew. A three-person crew can run on the Free plan for $0 in subscription fees, and Business removes the card fee for $34.99. That is hard to beat on list price alone, so the feature check is where the decision gets made.

How do you run your own comparison?

Start with the route. The software comes second. Write down how many stops you run each week and how you bill them. If recurring routes are the core of the work, the guide to a recurring mowing schedule for crews lists what a schedule has to handle, such as rain days and off-season skips. Use that list as your feature checklist.

1. Write your headcount and monthly card volume at the top of a sheet.
2. Copy each vendor's current prices from its pricing page, with the date you checked them.
3. List the five features you would miss most in a week without them.
4. Calculate the monthly total for each option at your headcount, adding any signup fee and card fees you can confirm.
5. Test the top two options with one real estimate and one real invoice before you move any customers over.

A real estimate and invoice will tell you more than any pricing page.