Eave vs. Spectora vs. HomeGauge: which is right for a solo inspector?

If you run a one-person home inspection business, the software decision is mostly a cost decision. Spectora and HomeGauge are both excellent products built over many years, and both are priced for a company with employees. Eave is newer, narrower, and priced for one person.

This is a fair look at all three. Prices and features below are taken from each company's own pricing page and support docs as of August 2026 — check them before you buy, because they move.

First, a thing most comparisons don't mention

Spectora and HomeGauge are the same company. Spectora announced its acquisition of HomeGauge on April 1, 2025.

Both platforms continue to run independently. Spectora's support article on the acquisition states that pricing stays the same for both, there's no forced migration, and both support teams keep operating. Nothing has been taken away from anyone.

But it's worth knowing when you're weighing them against each other: the two biggest names in home inspection software now sit under one roof. If part of why you're comparing them is to keep a competitive option in your back pocket, that's the situation you're actually choosing between.

The short version

Sources: spectora.com/pricing, homegauge.com/one/pricing, and Eave's pricing page.

What you actually pay in year one

For one inspector, no add-ons:

• Eave — $120/year. First 5 inspections free, no credit card to start.
• HomeGauge — about $1,068/year at $89/mo, after a 30-day trial.
• Spectora — $1,090/year paid annually, or $1,308 paid monthly. Two free inspections first, with no time limit and no card required.

That's roughly a $950–$1,190 per year difference. For an inspector doing 8 inspections a month at $450, Spectora is about two and a half inspections a year of pure overhead; Eave is about a quarter of one.

Where the money actually goes: client payments

All three let a client pay online. The difference is who takes a cut.

Spectora Payments charges inspectors 3.25% + $0.40 per transaction. HomeGauge applies a 3.95% technology fee that you can choose to pass on to the client as a line item; their card processing rate isn't published on the pricing page.

Eave uses Stripe Connect, which means the money goes into your own Stripe account and Eave adds nothing on top of Stripe's standard rate. We're not a payment processor and we don't want to be one. Clients can pay by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or bank transfer, and refunds and payouts happen in your own Stripe dashboard. See collecting payment for how it works.

On a $450 inspection, a 3.25% + $0.40 platform rate costs you about $15.03 where Stripe's own card rate costs about $13.35. Small per job. Not nothing across a year.

Reporting: three genuinely different models

HomeGauge is a Windows desktop application paired with a mobile Companion app for field data collection. Their system requirements state plainly that Desktop runs on Windows 10 or 11 only, and that Mac and Linux users need to install a Windows virtual machine. If you work on a Mac, budget for Parallels and a Windows license before you budget for the software. The upside of the desktop model is real: it's fast, it's local, and twenty-plus years of narrative and grid report styles live in it.

Spectora is web-first with polished native iOS and Android apps, and it has gone furthest on AI — Comment Assist, plus Report Assist with voice and photo input. If you want to talk your report into existence, Spectora is the one building that.

Eave is web-based for everything, with a native iOS app for the field that works offline and syncs when you get signal back. You fill out a structured template on site, attach photos and video, annotate them on your phone, and publish a branded PDF plus a share link. Template building stays on the web — the phone is for inspecting, not authoring.

There's no Android app. If you inspect on an Android phone, Eave works in the mobile browser but requires a connection, and that's a real limitation, not a roadmap wink.

Templates, and getting yours out of the other guy

This is usually the thing that keeps people where they are. Your comment library is years of work.

Eave has an AI template importer that takes CSV, XLS/XLSX, PDF, TXT, or HTML exports and asks which software they came from — Spectora, HomeGauge, or other. It turns deficiency checklists into structured Issues fields with severities, and picks section icons. It isn't perfect and you'll review the result in the editor, but it's the difference between an afternoon and a fortnight.

There's also a sample library to start from — Standard Home Inspection, Radon, Mold, Sewer Scope, Pool & Spa, Foundation, Energy Audit and more — plus a full editor with conditional fields, warning triggers by severity, and home-care tips that attach themselves based on your answers.

Two honest caveats: free accounts get two AI imports before a subscription is needed, and editing a template doesn't retroactively change inspections you've already created — each one keeps the version it was built from.

The business side

All three cover the same ground: online scheduling, pre-inspection agreements with e-signature, online payments, and report delivery.

A few Eave specifics worth naming, since they're where a solo operator's time actually goes:

• Booking links are request-and-confirm. A client picks a slot, you confirm or decline. Nothing lands on your calendar without you. The date picker draws your other inspections, buffers, and time off so you can see the day. (Scheduling overview)
• Agreements can be imported from your existing PDF and use merge fields for client name, address, date, fee, and company. Signing unlocks the report.
• Repair requests are free and built by the buyer's agent, not by you. They open the report link you already sent, pick findings, and assemble the ask list themselves.

When Spectora or HomeGauge is the better call

Genuinely — and this list isn't short:

• You have or plan to have employees. Eave bills per user with no org-level plan, so a three-person shop pays three subscriptions and manages them separately. Spectora's team features are built for this.
• You inspect on Android. Spectora and HomeGauge both ship Android apps. Eave doesn't.
• You want a website done for you. Both offer hosted inspector sites with SEO built in. Eave doesn't offer one at all.
• You want to dictate reports. Spectora's voice-driven Report Assist is further along than anything Eave has.
• You want a big peer community and phone support six days a week. HomeGauge has been at this since 2001 and Spectora since 2015. There are forums, user groups, and people at your local chapter who can answer your question. Eave is a young product with a small team and email support.
• You need a deep, battle-tested template library out of the box. Two decades of refinement is a real asset.

When Eave is the better call

• You're solo, and $1,000+/year of software is a meaningful line item.
• You're just starting out and want to build a real report before deciding whether the business works. Five inspections free, no credit card.
• You want the payment fee to be Stripe's, not a platform's.
• You work on a Mac and an iPhone.
• You want something you can learn in an afternoon. Eave does less than Spectora. For a lot of one-person shops that's the feature.

The honest summary

If you're running a multi-inspector company, or you've spent years building a comment library inside HomeGauge and it works, the money is probably well spent and switching costs more than it saves. Spectora is the most complete product in this category, and it's priced accordingly.

If you're one person — especially in your first couple of years, where $1,000 a year of fixed cost is a real decision — the gap between $10 and $109 a month buys a lot of marketing, or a lot of nothing at all.

You can create an account and do five full inspections without entering a card. That's usually enough to know.