Tradify review: who per-user pricing suits (and who it doesn't)

Tradify’s pitch is simple job management at a flat price per person. No job caps, no counting credits, no surprises in a busy month. For some businesses that’s the cheapest option on the market. For others it’s the most expensive of the big three.

This review works through who sits on which side of that line. It’s based on Tradify’s Australian pricing page and plan features, checked in October 2026, compared with ServiceM8 and Fergus. We haven’t run Tradify on live jobs for this version, and we’ll add hands-on notes when we do.

Tradify started in New Zealand and has an Australian office in Chatswood, Sydney. For the three-way comparison, see ServiceM8 vs Tradify vs Fergus.

Tradify plans and prices

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All from the Tradify Australian pricing page, October 2026. There’s also a Custom plan for large teams, priced on request, and an Instant Website add-on at $19 a month.

Our job app cost comparer works out Tradify, ServiceM8 and Fergus for your own team size and job count, with GST shown both ways.

Lite is aimed at “tradies who just want the basics”, and it is basic. Pro adds almost everything a working trade business uses day to day: photos, recurring jobs, templates, appointment reminders, quote options with online acceptance, quote and invoice reminders, progress invoicing, timesheets, subcontractor scheduling, and health and safety forms and compliance certificates. Plan on Pro.

When per-user pricing wins

Per-user pricing is good news when you do a lot of jobs with a small team. Here’s how it compares with ServiceM8, which charges by jobs created each month and includes GST.

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These are list prices only, from each vendor’s pricing page in October 2026. They leave out card fees, SMS and add-ons. ServiceM8’s comparison table also lists extra jobs at 20c each, so check whether topping up is cheaper than moving up a plan.

The pattern is clear. High job volume with few people favours Tradify. Lots of people with modest job volume favours ServiceM8. A one or two-person service business doing several calls a day is the sweet spot for Tradify.

What Tradify does well

• It’s quick to learn. The screens are uncluttered, and most tradies can have quotes going out on the first afternoon. That matters if you’re the one who has to set it up after work.
• Quoting that chases itself. Quote options, online acceptance with comments, and automatic reminders for quotes and invoices on Pro.
• Progress invoicing. Deposits, progress payments and retentions on Pro. Builders, chippies and renovators doing staged work will use this every week.
• No job caps. A huge month costs the same as a quiet one. No credits to watch, no upgrade prompts.
• Simple contracts. Month to month, cancel any time.

What it doesn’t do so well

Bigger crews pay a lot. Five people on Pro is $286 a month with GST. If those five people do a modest number of larger jobs, ServiceM8’s job-based pricing will usually be far cheaper.

Lite isn’t really a working plan for most trades. Without photos, recurring jobs and templates, you’ll be back to texting pictures and copying quotes by hand. Treat $52 ex GST as the real starting price.

Supplier-heavy trades may want more. Tradify lets you import supplier pricing by CSV and track bills against jobs. If you’re a plumber or sparky buying from wholesalers every day, compare that with Fergus’s supplier integrations during the trial. Our Fergus review covers those.

Start a Tradify free trial → Affiliate link. Opens the merchant site in a new tab.

Is Plus worth the extra $10?

Plus costs $10 more per user a month than Pro ($62 versus $52, ex GST). What you get for it:

• Purchase orders, created from scratch or from a quote and sent straight to the supplier.
• SmartRead for bills, which Tradify says uses AI to capture costs from supplier bills.
• SmartWrite, for generating descriptions and tidying up your writing.
• Service reminders for scheduled maintenance, which suits air con, fire and appliance servicing.
• Job tasks, bulk invoicing, kit bundles, staff activity history and reporting.

For a two-person crew, Plus is $20 a month more ex GST. If you raise a lot of purchase orders or run maintenance contracts, that’s easy to justify. If you mostly quote, do the job and invoice, stay on Pro.

Setup and support

Tradify says its experts can help set up your account, train your team and answer questions, and that training and support are free. You can import your own pricing lists and supplier pricing by CSV, and set up quote templates with preloaded descriptions and line items. If you haven’t got a website yet, the Instant Website add-on is $19 a month on any plan.

There’s no lock-in: Tradify bills month to month and says you can cancel any time. That makes the trial low risk. The main cost of switching later is the time to move your clients, price lists and templates, so set them up properly once.

Tradify or ServiceM8?

Pick Tradify if you’re one to three people, you do a high number of jobs, you want staged invoicing for builds, and you’d rather not count job credits.

Pick ServiceM8 if you’re a sole trader under 30 jobs a month (the free plan is hard to beat), or a crew of four or more doing a moderate number of jobs, or if automatic “on the way” texts and arrival tracking are high on your list. Our ServiceM8 review covers its free plan in detail.

Compare: try ServiceM8 free → Affiliate link. Opens the merchant site in a new tab.

Before you sign up

1. Trial on Pro features. The 14-day trial includes all features. Make sure what you rely on is in the plan you’ll actually pay for.
2. Sync your accounting software on day one. Tradify syncs with Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks Online. Check invoices, payments and items land where your bookkeeper expects. Our Xero vs MYOB guide helps if you haven’t chosen yet.
3. Load your price list. Import supplier pricing or your common items by CSV so quoting is quick from the start.
4. Add your crew last. Each user costs from the first bill, so add people once you’ve decided.

Next step: work out your real per-month figure with the table above, then book the trial for a fortnight when you have a normal workload.