ServiceTitan Cost Per Technician: What HVAC Shops Actually Pay.

ServiceTitan's per-tech pricing runs $245 to $500 per technician per month, depending on whether you're on their Starter, Essential, or The Works tier. That figure comes from operator-reported data collected across BBB complaints and Capterra reviews — ServiceTitan does not publish a public price list (ServiceTitan Capterra).

On top of the monthly per-tech fee, most shops pay a setup fee of $5,000 to $50,000. The lower end is for shops that bring in a pre-built pricebook and clean data. The higher end is for shops that need ServiceTitan's implementation team to configure workflows, train dispatchers, and migrate historical job records. That implementation clock runs 6 to 12 months before most shops feel operational.

Here's the math a 10-tech shop should run before they sign:

| Scenario | Monthly Cost | Annual Cost | |---|---|---| | 10 techs × $245 (low tier) | $2,450/mo | $29,400/yr | | 10 techs × $375 (mid tier) | $3,750/mo | $45,000/yr | | 10 techs × $500 (high tier) | $5,000/mo | $60,000/yr |

Those numbers don't include marketing module, call recording, or financing integrations — each of which carries its own line item.

The base per-tech fee is just the floor. Most shops discover the real cost 90 days in, when the add-ons they assumed were included turn out to be separate SKUs.

Marketing Pro — ServiceTitan's lead-tracking and email marketing module — is a separate monthly charge. Call recording and transcription costs extra. The customer experience module (automated follow-up and surveys) is another add-on. Each of these was likely shown in your demo. None are included in the base per-tech price unless explicitly negotiated into your MSA.

Setup fees deserve a closer look. ServiceTitan's implementation team is paid by project milestone — if your data migration drags, the meter keeps running. Shops that arrive with messy QuickBooks Desktop exports, inconsistent job codes, or no existing flat-rate pricebook consistently hit the high end of the $5,000–$50,000 setup range. One owner on a BBB complaint thread described paying $18,000 in setup fees and still being 'not live' after six months (BBB complaints).

Annual price escalations are also baked into most ServiceTitan MSAs. The contract typically allows 3–7% annual increases without triggering renegotiation rights. Over a 3-year term, that compounding erodes the 'price we negotiated' owners thought they locked in.

ServiceTitan contracts run 1–3 years, and early termination fees are real. Operator-reported ETFs from BBB and Capterra reviews put the numbers at $39,000 to $46,000 for a mid-size shop leaving mid-contract (BBB profile). One filing cites a $40,000 ETF for a shop that cancelled after finding the software 'too complex to use in the field.'

The ETF is typically calculated as the remaining months on the contract multiplied by your monthly contract value. If you signed a 3-year deal at $3,500/mo and you're 14 months in, you owe $3,500 × 22 months = $77,000 — unless your MSA has a different formula.

Before you sign anything — or before you decide to cancel — read the full contract. Look specifically for: the ETF clause (sometimes called 'liquidated damages'), the auto-renewal window (often 60–90 days before expiration), and the data export terms (some plans charge for data extraction after cancellation). Our deeper breakdown of the cancellation process lives in how to leave ServiceTitan.

ServiceTitan's pricebook is powerful — and that's exactly the problem. Operator data shows 42% of ServiceTitan shops never complete pricebook setup, meaning they pay full per-tech pricing for a tool that still can't price a job correctly in the field.

The blocker isn't motivation. It's structure. ServiceTitan's pricebook requires you to build a category hierarchy before you can load services. You need to map parts to services, services to tasks, tasks to estimate templates — and if you built it wrong, you rebuild it. My dad's shop would have been dead in the water at step two. A dispatcher trying to go live in the middle of cooling season doesn't have six hours to audit a category tree.

For shops that do get it live, the average ticket and close rate improvements are real — that's documented in Capterra reviews from shops with dedicated office managers to run the setup. But for an owner-operator or a 5-8 tech shop without admin overhead, the setup cost in human hours can exceed the software cost in dollars. That's a bill you don't see in the per-tech pricing.

Run a Call is $499/mo flat — that covers up to 25 technicians, dispatch, pricebook, job management, and QuickBooks Desktop sync. No per-tech pricing. No setup fee. No ETF. The math is simple: a 10-tech shop pays $499/mo regardless of whether they add two more techs next month.

For the first 25 shops that signed up — the Founding 25 — pricing is $199/mo for life. That window is closed, but it shows the model: we don't build a pricing structure that punishes you for growing.

Our pricebook is designed to go live in hours, not months. You can load a flat-rate structure, map it to your most common HVAC tasks (capacitors, refrigerant, change-outs, SPP add-ons, IAQ accessories), and have techs pricing jobs from the field the same day. There's no category hierarchy you have to architect before you can add a service. If you want to walk through Run a Call, we'll show you the pricebook and dispatch board in one session — no demo theater, no handoff to a closer.

If you're inside your ServiceTitan contract window, the first move is to calculate your ETF before you do anything else. Pull your MSA, find the termination clause, and multiply remaining months by your monthly contract value. If the ETF is less than one year of the cost difference between what you're paying and what you'd pay elsewhere, leaving makes mathematical sense — even accounting for migration effort.

If you're within 90 days of your auto-renewal window, act now. Most ServiceTitan MSAs require written cancellation notice 60–90 days before the renewal date. Missing that window locks you into another full contract term. Set a calendar reminder today.

If you're genuinely using ServiceTitan's full feature set — the marketing module, the financing integration, the advanced reporting — and your shop has the admin bandwidth to maintain it, the per-tech cost may be justified. We're not going to tell you to leave a tool that's working. But if you're paying $3,500/mo and your dispatcher still prints the board every morning, something isn't right. For a full checklist on navigating the exit — including data export, staff retraining, and migration sequencing — read the ServiceTitan exit playbook.