ServiceM8 charges by job volume, and every paid plan comes with unlimited logins. That makes it cheaper than a per-user tool like Tradify for most crews, right up until the monthly job count forces the jump to the top tier. All figures below are NZD, as at July 2026.
At a glance:
- ServiceM8: unlimited users, five tiers priced on monthly job volume, from Free up to $349/month.
- Tradify Lite: $48/user/month, flat, regardless of job volume.
- The tier jump from Premium ($149, 500 jobs) to Premium Plus ($349, 1,500 jobs) is where ServiceM8 can suddenly cost more than a small crew would pay per user elsewhere.
- Crews of 8 or more almost always still win on ServiceM8, even at its top tier.
- SMS and some add-ons sit outside the headline job-tier price.
How do the job tiers work?
As at July 2026, ServiceM8's tiers run, in NZD: Free (1 user, 30 jobs a month, 10 AI uses a day), Starter at $29/month (50 jobs), Growing at $79/month (150 jobs), Premium at $149/month (500 jobs), and Premium Plus at $349/month (1,500 jobs, then 20 cents for every job over that). ServiceM8's pricing has nothing to do with headcount: every paid plan includes unlimited user logins, and the only thing that moves you up a tier is how many jobs you run through the app each month. Run a 51st job on Starter and you're on Growing. Run a 1,600th job on Premium Plus and you're paying 20 cents for it, not jumping tiers, because there's nowhere left to jump to.
When does job-based pricing cost less than per-user pricing?
Compare that against a per-user tool. Tradify's Lite plan runs $48 a user a month, as at July 2026, and that number doesn't move whether you run one job a month or a hundred. Fergus starts around $53 a month for its base plan, and unlike Tradify's clean per-seat pricing, that figure covers the plan rather than a seat, so it doesn't scale the same way as your headcount grows. Treat any per-head comparison against Fergus as indicative only until you've checked its current plan structure. I've gone through the fuller structural comparison of ServiceM8 against Tradify separately; this post is only about the maths.
Set the two pricing models against each other and solve for the crew size where they meet. A crew of N people on Tradify Lite pays 48 × N a month, flat. ServiceM8's most expensive standard tier, Premium Plus, is $349 a month flat, however many people are logged in. 349 ÷ 48 ≈ 7.3. That means for a crew of 8 people or more, even ServiceM8's top tier undercuts Tradify Lite, because 8 × 48 = $384, already above $349. Below that headcount, a crew that runs enough jobs to force the jump to Premium Plus can end up paying more on ServiceM8 than they would per user elsewhere, purely because the jump from Premium's $149 to Premium Plus's $349 overshoots what a small headcount would cost on a per-user model.
That's the crossover, and it's the opposite of what the marketing page implies. The crews who get caught out are the small ones running unusually high job volume for their size, quick-turnaround crews like locksmiths or appliance techs doing five or six short jobs a day each. A five-person crew at that pace can clear Premium's 500-job cap inside three weeks and land on a $349 bill that a $240-a-month Tradify Lite subscription would have beaten.
Run the same check for bigger crews and the overage maths shows why they rarely get caught. A 10-person crew on Tradify Lite pays $480 a month. On ServiceM8, that figure isn't reached until job volume passes roughly 2,150 a month: (480 − 349) ÷ 0.20 = 655 extra jobs on top of the 1,500 included, so 1,500 + 655 = 2,155. That's over 200 jobs a month per person, more than ten a working day, each. A 20-person crew doesn't cross over until volume passes about 4,550 jobs a month for the same reason. Most trades crews, even busy ones, don't run that many jobs per head, so past about eight staff, ServiceM8 keeps winning by a wider margin as the crew grows, not a narrower one.
What do the costs look like at 5, 10 and 20 staff?
| Crew size | Realistic jobs/month (~3.5/tech/day) | ServiceM8 tier | Tradify Lite cost | Cheaper option |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 staff | ~350 | Premium, $149/mo | $240/mo | ServiceM8, by $91/mo |
| 10 staff | ~700 | Premium Plus, $349/mo | $480/mo | ServiceM8, by $131/mo |
| 20 staff | ~1,400 | Premium Plus, $349/mo | $960/mo | ServiceM8, by $611/mo |
Swap the 5-person crew's job mix for a high-volume call-out business, say six jobs a tech a day instead of 3.5, and monthly volume climbs past 500 to around 600. That forces the jump to Premium Plus at $349, above the same crew's $240 Tradify Lite cost. Same five people, same tool, a different job mix flips who wins. That's the number worth pulling from your own job log before you trust a table like this one, mine included.
What costs are not on the sticker price?
SMS is bundled into each plan with a monthly credit allowance. Premium Plus ships with 3,000 SMS credits as one published example, and ServiceM8's own help centre describes a per-message overage fee, 10 cents each on the free tier, once you exceed your plan's cap. The lower paid tiers' SMS allowances aren't spelled out as clearly on the pricing page itself, so check yours against your own text volume rather than assuming it's covered. Some ServiceM8 add-ons, delivery tracking, network features, margin billing among them, are priced separately from the plan and aren't in any of the figures above. Tradify has its own version of this: an optional SMS add-on billed at 20 cents a message on top of the per-user fee. Neither vendor's headline number is the whole bill once the crew is using the thing daily.
How do I compare pricing against my own job log?
Pull your last two or three months of completed jobs from wherever you track them now, and divide by the number of months for a realistic monthly average. Check which ServiceM8 tier that volume actually lands you in, then multiply your headcount by Tradify's per-user rate, and check Fergus's own plan pricing directly since it's sold by plan rather than by seat, for the same comparison. The arithmetic in this post doesn't change: only your inputs do, and they're worth five minutes with your own numbers rather than trusting anyone's average. If you're weighing this alongside the wider field, I've covered the options in job management software for NZ tradies.
Common questions
Does ServiceM8 charge per user like Tradify or Fergus?
No. ServiceM8 is priced by monthly job volume, with unlimited user logins on every paid tier, as at July 2026. Tradify and Fergus charge a fixed amount per user per month regardless of how many jobs that user runs. That is the opposite pricing model, so the two bills move for completely different reasons.
At what point does ServiceM8 get more expensive than a per-user tool?
The risk sits mainly with smaller crews running unusually high job volume. If a crew of seven or fewer runs enough jobs to force the jump from ServiceM8's Premium tier to Premium Plus, from $149 to $349 a month, that jump can land above what the same headcount would cost on Tradify's per-user Lite plan. Crews of eight or more almost always still come out ahead on ServiceM8, even at its most expensive tier, because eight times a per-user rate already exceeds $349.
Does ServiceM8's price include SMS and add-ons?
SMS is bundled into each plan with a monthly credit allowance, Premium Plus ships with 3,000 SMS credits as one published example, and overage is billed per message once you exceed it. Several ServiceM8 add-ons sit outside the base plan price and are billed separately, so check the add-on marketplace before assuming the tier price is the whole bill.
Not sure which side of the line your crew sits on?
Free 30-minute call. Bring your last few months of job counts and I'll run the numbers with you.