Aspire vs Service Autopilot: Owner Comparison 2026

The short choice

Aspire and Service Autopilot are both operations systems for companies that maintain properties, run crews, and send invoices. They are not two prices for the same product. Aspire's main platform is a quote-based system aimed at larger multi-service contractors. Service Autopilot prints monthly rates for recurring route work and keeps its top plan as a quote. A third door sits in Aspire's family: Crew Control, with a published per-crew price for smaller firms. Neither product has been renamed or discontinued. Aspire's news post still sells Aspire and names ServiceTitan as the parent in Aspire's Command Center announcement. Service Autopilot still sells under that name as Service Autopilot by Xplor.

The core idea is simple. One system is the record of estimates, visits, hours, and invoices, and the other choice is whether that record is priced in public or only after a sales conversation. The TL;DR is this: pick Service Autopilot when you want a number on a page and your office can live inside one business login plus a small set of mobile licenses, and pick Aspire's main platform when estimating, purchasing, job cost, and many users matter more than seeing the fee before the call.

Market size: $188.8 billion according to NALP (2025). That same NALP page, citing an IBISWorld industry report, says the industry employs more than 1.4 million people, counts 692,777 businesses, rose 4.8% from 2024, and grew an average of 6.5% a year from 2020 through 2025. Those figures describe the market you sell into. They do not say which software contract fits your shop.

Key Takeaways

• Aspire's main platform does not print a dollar price. A single monthly license is described with no user cap, and implementation is included, while payments, payroll, and GPS are quoted on top.

• Aspire's reporting FAQ sorts products by revenue: Crew Control under $3 million, Growth from $1 million to $3 million, Corporate from $3 million to $15 million, and Enterprise past $15 million, with the open API placed on Enterprise.

• Service Autopilot's pricing page lists the Startup plan at $49 per month, the Pro plan at $199 per month, and the Pro Plus plan at $499 per month, all as annual subscription rates plus a sign-up fee whose amount is not printed. Elite is contact for pricing.

• Included logins are tight on Service Autopilot: the comparison chart shows 1, 1, 1, and 2 business users and 1, 2, 5, and 8 mobile licenses from Startup through Elite. Extra license prices are not on the page.

• Crew Control, sold by Aspire, prints $39 per crew per month and $59 per crew per month on the PLUS plan, with a stated 30% savings on annual plans. It is not the same depth as the main Aspire platform.

• Command Center, announced for Aspire, is an early-access layer and is not something to treat as generally available. Buy what the contract includes today.

How we evaluated these two platforms

This is a buyer's weighting, not a lab test and not a score from either vendor. The job was to judge the public record on the decisions an owner makes in the last weeks before a signature: what work the tool is built to hold, whether the price is visible, whether estimate-versus-actual is in the product, whether recurring routes are a first-class feature, how the books get a copy of the invoice, and what it takes to go live. Weights sum to 100. A higher weight means a wrong answer on that row should knock a vendor out even if the other rows look fine.

Match to the work you sell is 20 points because a route of weekly mows and a book of multi-week installs do not stress the same screens. Price visibility is also 20 points because a quote you cannot see is a different purchase from a rate you can multiply by twelve before you book a call. Job cost is 18 points because margin on crews is won or lost in hours and materials, not in a pretty schedule. Routes are 15 points because drive time is a daily cost on maintenance work. The accounting handoff is 15 points because a second typing of every invoice is where small shops lose evenings. Go-live help is 12 points because a cheaper seat that sits unused for a season is not cheaper.

Editor score: 9.2 out of 10 according to iTechGuides (2026). That page, updated in October 2026, also says Aspire's main price is on request and that there is no free plan. iTechGuides discloses that it may earn a commission on some clicks, so the 9.2 figure is their editor score, not a count of your peers. It did not change the weights above. Our read uses the weights only to keep the comparison honest: a vendor can be strong on job cost and still be the wrong signature if the license math does not fit the crew.

Who this is for

This comparison is for an owner who already runs crews, already bills recurring or project work, and is choosing the system that will hold the schedule and the invoice. It fits a maintenance company, a grounds contractor that also does installs, or a mixed shop that adds snow and ice in winter. It is less useful if you are still deciding whether to leave paper, because the first decision is then "any system" rather than these two contracts.

You are in the right seat if you can name how many office people log in, how many phones go to the field, whether QuickBooks or another ledger is the book of record, and whether you sell routes, projects, or both. You are also in the right seat if you will read a revenue band as Aspire's sorting rule and not as a promise that the software fee is a percent of that revenue. Aspire does not publish that percent.

Red flags: you want a public price and unlimited office logins in the same cheap plan, which neither vendor's published offer gives you; nobody in the office will review exceptions before an invoice or a payroll figure changes; you expect the software fee to replace a bookkeeper.

If the shop is a small route and the real finalists are lighter job tools, read Service Autopilot compared with Jobber for lawn companies before you treat this pair as the only shelf. If several products still feel plausible, other Service Autopilot options for lawn companies lays out a wider set. Companies whose work is closer to project crews than to weekly routes can also scan field service software for construction crews so Aspire is not the only construction-side name in the room.

What each vendor publishes

Published record for Aspire. The plans page does not list a dollar amount. It says pricing varies with company size and complexity, that one license fee is billed monthly and covers the contracted functions, and that there is no limit on users. The same page says every client gets unlimited user licenses, implementation, training, and later upgrades inside that fee, and that electronic payments, payroll, and GPS fleet management are quoted separately. Live support on weekdays, a dedicated success manager, and a one-to-one implementation are listed there. Aspire's plans page is the pricing source for that structure.

Growth band: $1 million to $3 million according to Aspire (2026). That reporting FAQ also describes Crew Control for companies under $3 million in annual revenue, the Corporate tier for companies between $3 million and $15 million with unlimited users and the full platform, and Enterprise past the $15 million mark with advanced reporting and an API for custom integrations. The same FAQ says yes, there is an open API, and it places that API at the Enterprise level. It lists QuickBooks and QuickBooks Online among Corporate capabilities, along with mobile time tracking, Clover Connect for card and ACH payments, telematics, and a payroll service. The plans page, separately, lists an open API in the general feature grid. Those two pages do not say the same thing about who receives API credentials. Treat that as a question for the contract, not as a guess.

Our read on Aspire. Best fit is a multi-service contractor in the Corporate or Enterprise description: maintenance plus installs, purchasing and inventory that matter, many people who all need a login, and a willingness to take a quote. Best fit is weaker if you need the fee on a website tonight. Limitations that should disqualify it for some owners: no public dollar price on the main platform, an API that the reporting FAQ withholds until Enterprise, add-on quotes for payments, payroll, and GPS, and a new Command Center layer that the 2026 announcement describes as early access rather than a feature you can assume is switched on. Implementation is included in the monthly fee, which is a real concession, and it is still a project. One-to-one onboarding means your people will spend time on templates, production rates, and roles. Primary evidence is the plans page, the reporting FAQ, and Aspire's API release notes, which document endpoints such as GET /Opportunities, GET /WorkTickets, and GET /Invoices.

Published record for Service Autopilot. The product remains a route and job system for lawn care, cleaning, snow removal, pest control, and pool service. Route cap: 10,000 stops according to Xplor (2025). That January 16, 2025 release, updated March 31, 2026, says members can open the NextBillion routing tool from Optimized Stops on the Dispatch Board or from Smart Maps. The same release says Xplor served over 106,000 customers and processed over $37 billion in payments across 20 markets in 2023. Those last two figures describe the parent, not your route density. The 10,000-stop line is the vendor's statement about the routing partner, not a promise that your plan includes Smart Maps. On the pricing page, Smart Maps is an Elite line item.

Our read on Service Autopilot. Best fit is a recurring-route company that wants the price in writing, can operate with one business user on the published plans, and will step up to Pro if job costing and route optimization matter. Pro Plus is the published plan that adds automations, and it is also the plan that states 5 mobile licenses and 1 business user. Limitations that should disqualify it: Elite is the card that lists QuickBooks integration, two-way texting, email integration, Smart Maps, a client portal, and multi-location management, so those are not in the Startup, Pro, or Pro Plus feature lists. The sign-up fee has no printed amount. Extra licenses have no printed amount. Downgrades wait until the contract ends, while upgrades can happen sooner, which the pricing FAQ states in plain language. Customer service and the mobile app are described as included on every plan. Implementation on the published plans is lighter than Aspire's one-to-one language, and Academy is not a clearly priced line. Primary evidence is the pricing page and the comparison chart.

Crew Control is the published-price product in Aspire's catalog, not a rename of Aspire. Crew plan: $39 per crew according to Aspire (2026). The PLUS plan on that page costs $59 per month per crew, both plans list QuickBooks Online, route optimization, scheduling, time entry, invoicing, and payments, and the page says annual plans save 30%. PLUS adds request forms, electronic proposals, on-site estimates, and customer text notifications. Our read: choose Crew Control when you want Aspire's company and a per-crew rate, and you do not need the purchasing, inventory, and work-ticket depth described on the main Aspire plans page. Do not assume the Enterprise API comes with the $39 rate. The revenue descriptions overlap on purpose or by accident: Crew Control is described for firms under $3 million, and Growth is described from $1 million to $3 million. In that overlap, ask which product they will actually sell you.

Pricing checked on the public pages

Pricing checked October 10, 2026. Every dollar below was read on a vendor page that day. Where a page does not print a dollar amount, the cell says Quote-based. Nothing here is an estimate of a hidden Aspire fee.

Startup rate: $49 per month according to Service Autopilot (2026). On that page the Pro plan costs $199 per month and the Pro Plus plan costs $499 per month, each shown as an annual subscription rate plus a sign-up fee with no amount printed. Elite says contact for pricing. The Pro Plus card states 5 mobile user licenses and 1 business user license. The Elite card states 8 mobile user licenses and 2 business user licenses, and it is the card that adds QuickBooks integration and two-way texting.

The lower license counts are on the comparison chart, not only in the two top cards. Included business users are 1, 1, 1, and 2, and included mobile licenses are 1, 2, 5, and 8, for Startup, Pro, Pro Plus, and Elite, according to Service Autopilot (2026). A sixth phone on Pro Plus is therefore outside the included 5, and the price of that extra license is not published. Do not invent it. A year of software is twelve times the monthly rate on an annual contract, and that multiplication still excludes the unknown sign-up fee.

Our read of the table. A one-office, one-phone startup can see $49 before anyone calls back. A company that wants route optimization and job costing steps to $199 and still has one office login and two mobile licenses. Automations on the published menu sit at $499 with five phones. The moment you need QuickBooks in the feature list, the public price stops and Elite begins. Aspire's main row stays Quote-based at every crew size, which is the point of that product's contract. Crew Control is the row that lets a smaller Aspire buyer do seat math: three crews at the published $39 rate are 3 × $39 = $117 per month before the 30% annual saving the page states. That $117 is multiplication of the printed per-crew rate, not a separate plan. The same three crews on PLUS are 3 × $59 = $177 per month before that saving. Neither figure includes payment processing.

What the table cannot tell you is Aspire's monthly fee at $4 million or at $16 million of revenue, the Service Autopilot sign-up fee, or the price of a seventh phone. Those gaps are reasons to ask in writing. They are not reasons to paste a number from a forum into a budget.

Where the daily work splits

Job cost is the first split. Aspire's plans page lists job costing, estimating, purchasing, inventory, and work tickets in one platform, and the API notes add fields on GET /WorkTickets such as BudgetVariance, OnSiteHours, PercentComplete, and Revenue. Those names are CamelCase fields without a dot. The dotted name that matters for status is on opportunities, covered in the worked example below. Service Autopilot puts job costing and analysis on the Pro card, not on Startup. A Startup buyer who thinks the $49 plan will show estimate versus actual is reading the wrong card. Pro also adds multi-day jobs, a dispatch calendar, and asset, expense, and employee tracking.

Routing is the second split. Service Autopilot lists route optimization on Pro and above. Xplor's 2025 release adds Optimized Stops and a stated capacity of 10,000 stops, while the pricing page still parks Smart Maps on Elite. Ask which screen your plan actually opens. Aspire's main plans page talks about scheduling and work tickets. Crew Control's own page is where route optimization is spelled out for the per-crew product. If your day is a dense residential route, Service Autopilot's Pro plan or Crew Control is the closer published match. If your day is a job that spans crews, materials, and change orders, Aspire's work ticket is the closer published match.

Accounting is the third split. Aspire's reporting FAQ names QuickBooks and QuickBooks Online at the Corporate tier and the open API at Enterprise. Service Autopilot names QuickBooks integration on the Elite card only. Owners who need the sync steps written out can use moving Service Autopilot invoices into QuickBooks as a companion, including shops that run a cleaning division beside the lawn work. Until that link is in the contract, assume a person still exports or retypes.

A proposed configuration from US Tech Automations starts when a work ticket is complete in Aspire or a job is marked done in Service Autopilot. The trigger is that completion record, read through an API scope or a scheduled export. The action compares the billed amount with the hours and writes an exception only when they disagree. The output is a review list for the office. Nothing posts to the ledger until a person approves the row. The prerequisite is real: Aspire's reporting FAQ places API access at Enterprise, and Service Autopilot lists QuickBooks on Elite, so a lower plan may not expose the feed. An admin still has to create credentials and limit the scope to the endpoints you need, such as GET /WorkTickets and GET /Opportunities.

A second proposed US Tech Automations workflow targets skipped visits, which is where route businesses lose the week. The trigger is the end-of-day route export. The action opens one line per property that was scheduled and not completed. The output is a morning queue, with the original price still unbilled. A dispatcher confirms whether the visit is rescheduled or credited. This is a design you would configure, not a live deployment and not a measured result. It still needs the export, a stable property identifier, and a named reviewer. If those three are missing, the workflow should not be turned on.

The honest alternative is to stitch the same handoff in Zapier, Make, or n8n, or to have a developer build it. Those tools can keep a run history, retry a failed call, branch when a record is missing, and store an audit trail when you configure them that way. The buyer then owns observability, idempotency so the same visit is not billed twice, escalation when a retry keeps failing, access control, and the repair work when a vendor renames a field. A proposed US Tech Automations design can package that handoff with the review step written in before any write to the books. It does not remove the prerequisite or the reviewer. It also does not replace Aspire or Service Autopilot. If the system of record is wrong, an integration layer will only move the wrong record faster.

Skip US Tech Automations when the simpler tool already closes the day. If one office person reconciles Service Autopilot invoices to the ledger every week and you are not connecting a second system, another queue is overhead. If you stay on the Startup plan and never buy an accounting link, there is no feed to orchestrate. If Aspire's own dashboard already shows the margin you act on and you will not be on the Enterprise API, stay inside Aspire and skip the extra product.

An illustrative week on the route

Here is an illustrative week, not a customer and not a test. A route of 80 weekly properties at $55 a visit produces 80 × $55 = $4,400 that week. Held for 4 weeks at the same rate, the month is 4 × $4,400 = $17,600. If 3 of those 80 visits are skipped and nobody catches them, 3 × $55 = $165 never becomes an invoice. Before that month is treated as won work, a configurable check can read JobStatus.JobStatus on the opportunity payload from Aspire's GET /Opportunities endpoint, which the API release notes list among fields added to that endpoint, and hold billing until a person confirms the status. The same $165 leak exists on Service Autopilot. The software price does not change the arithmetic. The catch does. Against a Pro Plus rate of $499 in a month when the illustrative book bills $17,600, the published software rate is 499 ÷ 17600, or about 2.8% of that month's visit revenue, before the unknown sign-up fee. That percentage is scenario math, not a discount either vendor offers.

Set that story next to the industry median so a small route is not confused with a large firm. Participants in NALP's 2025 benchmark study had a median of 355 customers and generated $14,682 per customer, the typical company reported sales growth of 8.5%, the most profitable companies grew 7.2%, and labor costs are expected to rise roughly 20% from now through the end of 2029, according to NALP (2025). Multiplying the two medians is 355 × $14,682 = $5,212,110 of annual revenue. That product is our arithmetic on NALP's two published figures, not a third statistic NALP printed. A firm near that median is inside Aspire's Corporate description of $3 million to $15 million. A firm whose whole book looks like the 80-property illustration is not that firm, and it should not inherit that firm's software contract by default.

Median book: 355 customers (NALP, 2025). Use 355 and $14,682 together. Quoting one without the other makes a tiny route look like the median, or makes the median look like a one-crew shop. Labor pressure at roughly 20% by the end of 2029 is why job costing earned 18 points in the weighting. A schedule that cannot show hours against the price will not warn you when wages move.

Mistakes before you sign

Owners repeat the same misses when these two names show up in one search.

• Treating a blank Aspire price as either "expensive" or "a bargain." The plans page does not support either claim. Quote-based means unknown until they answer.

• Buying the Pro Plus plan for automations and discovering, after the annual contract, that it includes 5 mobile licenses and 1 business user. The sixth phone has no public price.

• Assuming QuickBooks is included because a brochure mentions sync. On Service Autopilot's pricing page it is an Elite line. On Aspire's reporting FAQ it is described at Corporate, with the API at Enterprise.

• Counting Command Center as a feature in this month's contract. The announcement describes early access and tells readers that purchase decisions should rest on what is generally available.

• Ignoring the overlap between Crew Control under $3 million and Growth from $1 million to $3 million. Ask which product, and which contract, they intend to sell.

• Skipping the sign-up fee because the pricing page never prints it, then learning the annual term only allows a downgrade at the end. Get the fee and the end date in the quote.

• Comparing Crew Control's $39 per crew with Service Autopilot's $49 company rate as if both buy the same office depth. One is per crew. The other is a company plan with a login cap.

A useful checklist before any signature has six yes-or-no lines. Do we sell routes, projects, or both? How many office logins do we need in month one? How many phones go to the field? Is QuickBooks in the plan we are buying, or only on a higher tier? Is the API in that same plan? What is the dollar fee, the sign-up fee, and the date a downgrade is allowed? If any line is "we will find out later," you are not at the signature yet.

Terms worth knowing

• Work ticket: Aspire's record of scheduled work after an opportunity is won. The API exposes it at GET /WorkTickets.

• Opportunity: the Aspire record that can carry JobStatus.JobStatus, stage, and won dollars on GET /Opportunities.

• Job costing: hours, materials, and other direct cost set next to the price. On Service Autopilot it is listed from the Pro plan up.

• Business user: an office login. Service Autopilot's chart includes 1 on the published-price plans and 2 on Elite.

• Mobile license: a field login. The chart includes 1, 2, 5, or 8 depending on plan.

• Quote-based: the vendor will not print the fee. Aspire's main platform and Service Autopilot's Elite plan are both in this bucket.

• Annual subscription rate: Service Autopilot's page says all pricing is based on annual rates, even though the numbers are shown per month.

• Per crew: Crew Control's unit. Two crews are two times the printed monthly rate, not one company fee.

Questions to settle before you sign

Are Aspire and Service Autopilot the same product under two brands?

No. They are separate products with separate owners, separate price styles, and separate login rules. Aspire is a ServiceTitan company. Service Autopilot is sold by Xplor. Crew Control is a third product in Aspire's catalog, with its own per-crew rates.

Did either tool get renamed, merged, or shut down?

No. Both names are still on sale in 2026. Aspire has announced Command Center as an added layer in early access, which is not a rename and not a feature to assume is live for every customer. Service Autopilot's 2025 routing release still uses the Service Autopilot name.

How much does Service Autopilot cost?

The Startup plan costs $49 per month, the Pro plan costs $199 per month, and the Pro Plus plan costs $499 per month, on annual rates, and Elite is quote-based. Those are the figures on the pricing page cited above. The sign-up fee is real and unpriced on that page. Included mobile licenses are 1, 2, 5, and 8 across the four plans.

Does the main Aspire platform publish a dollar price?

No. The plans page describes a single monthly license with no user cap and does not print the fee. Separately, the Crew Control plan on Aspire costs $39 per month per crew and the PLUS plan costs $59 per month per crew, with a stated 30% saving when you pay annually. Revenue bands on the reporting FAQ are eligibility descriptions, not software prices.

Which published plan includes job costing and route optimization?

On Service Autopilot, both show up on the Pro plan at $199 per month, not on the $49 Startup plan. Automations are the step up to $499. On Aspire, job costing and scheduling are part of the platform description, while the explicit per-crew routing language sits on the Crew Control page. Confirm the screens in the quote so a marketing label is not doing the work of a feature list.

Is QuickBooks included on the plan I can buy today?

Only if the plan card or the FAQ tier says so. Service Autopilot lists QuickBooks integration on Elite, which is quote-based. Aspire's reporting FAQ lists QuickBooks and QuickBooks Online at the Corporate tier and places the open API at Enterprise, while the plans page also mentions an open API without that gate. Get the tier and the integration named in the order form. Until then, plan on a person moving the file.

Who should walk away from an integration layer on top?

Owners whose current tool already produces a clean invoice and a weekly reconciliation, and who are not connecting a second system, should stay with that simpler setup. A proposed review workflow only pays for itself when a completion record, an export or API, and a human approver all exist. If any one of those is missing, fix the system of record first. Owners who have chosen that system and want the review step designed around it can see how US Tech Automations configures this as a layer above the record, with prerequisites and approval points written down before anything posts.

The choice in front of you is still Aspire, Crew Control, or Service Autopilot. Price the logins you will actually issue, name the accounting link in the contract, and do not pay for a layer above a system you have not picked.