Househound vs ScribeWare: forms, platforms, and price (2026)

ScribeWare costs $99 a month for unlimited reports, or $89 a month billed annually as a $1,068 lump sum. Each added inspector is $69 a month. Without a subscription, reports are $12 each. One-on-one onboarding is $100 an hour. Househound is $99 a month for the first inspector and $69 a month for each added one, or $990 and $690 a year billed annually, with no per-report fee.

Assumptions: list prices on October 27, 2026, monthly billing unless noted, card fees left out.

À la carte stops making sense around 8 or 9 reports a month, when $12 a report passes the $99 subscription. Billed monthly, the two cost the same at every team size. Billed annually, one inspector pays $1,068 a year on ScribeWare and $990 on Househound, $78 less. Househound's annual price for each added inspector is $690 a year.

ScribeWare is also offering Horizon users 50% off an annual subscription plus a free template and library import. For how the whole category prices itself, see what home inspection software costs.

ScribeWare is built around a desktop app; Househound is built around the phone.

ScribeWare installs on Windows or on a Mac running macOS 12 or later, and its iOS and Android apps sync live with it. Both the mobile app and the desktop work offline, and ScribeWare keeps local copies on your computer plus a cloud backup. If you photograph and note in the house and write up at a desk, that's a natural fit.

Househound's iOS and Android apps carry the full report editor: areas, items, findings, photos, video, 360°, markup and dictation. The inspections a week either side of today download to the phone automatically, with every photo and your comment library, so the report can be finished in the driveway with no signal. The web dashboard runs in any browser for editing, templates and the office side, but it needs a connection. More in offline home inspection apps.

Both products can draft report text, in very different ways.

ScribeWare's AI Assistant (MCP) is a beta feature for the desktop app. You connect an assistant you already use, such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code or Gemini CLI, and it can read and edit reports, observations, library entries, tags, photo captions and PDF form mappings through about 50 tools. It can't publish, take payments or change the schedule, and every change can be reverted from a Changes bar. The text you send goes to whichever provider you choose. ScribeWare also names an AI Concierge for setting up and editing templates.

Househound's Autodraft runs in the field. Speak a note on the phone (or type or record one on the web) and it picks the area and item, then reuses a comment from your library word for word, adapts one, or writes a new one, with a suggested severity and recommendation. It always lands as a draft you edit and save, and nothing reaches the client until you do. Notes recorded offline are drafted when the phone reconnects. It's part of the $99, with no separate account to set up.

ScribeWare covers several things Househound doesn't, and some of them decide the question on their own.

• Official PDF forms. ScribeWare ships a Florida template that fills the wind mitigation PDF from report data, and can map report data into "virtually any PDF form". Househound's wind mitigation and 4-Point print as its own layout of the form's questions, and it has no general PDF form fill. Both have a TREC template.
• Video length. ScribeWare allows videos up to 2,000 MB each. Househound caps a clip at 60 seconds, which is short for a sewer scope.
• Re-inspections. ScribeWare has a documented re-inspection workflow. Househound doesn't.
• Integrations. Zapier, ISN, NxtInspekt, iGo Keystone, and a REST API that creates reports and can send a webhook when those reports are published. Househound has no customer-facing integrations.
• Booking and portal extras. Instant quotes with service areas and distance pricing, a portal that holds the report until the client pays, and tracking of what the client viewed. Househound's bookings are requests you approve, its quotes use square footage, bedrooms and units only, and it doesn't track report views.
• Low volume. $12 a report à la carte, for inspectors who write fewer than 8 reports a month.

Both send the client a web report through a link, with a PDF of the same report, in English, Spanish or French.

ScribeWare's reports are interactive HTML pages with full-size images and video, and you can generate a PDF with one click. Clients sign the agreement, pay and open the report on one portal page.

Househound's report opens on any phone with no login. It starts on a count of major, moderate and minor findings, and the client can filter to the major ones. Each publish is a dated version, so later edits never change what the client already has. Agents get their own report-ready emails and a portal.

• PDF. Every published version has a PDF download of the same report, and the delivery email links to it rather than attaching it.
• Spanish and French. Once turned on in Settings, every published report has Spanish and French versions, translated automatically and not edited by a person. English stays the version that governs, and the client switches language in the report. TREC reports aren't translated.
• Repair requests. The client or buyer's agent picks deficiencies from the report, chooses repair, replace, evaluate or a credit, and shares the request as a link, copies it as text, downloads a CSV or prints it. Househound doesn't send it to the seller; the buyer shares the link.
• Repair costs. If you turn it on, you can enter a cost range on any deficiency, and the report totals them by severity. Househound doesn't suggest prices.

ScribeWare describes itself as independently owned. Its co-founders are Dylan Chalk, a Washington State licensed home inspector, and Steve Lamb, a Seattle software developer who serves as CTO. It doesn't publish a headquarters address or founding year.

ScribeWare backs up reports, templates and libraries to the cloud and keeps local copies on your computer. If you close your business, you can keep the cloud storage for a nominal fee. Its documentation doesn't describe a self-serve export of templates, the narrative library or contacts, so ask its support before you rely on one.

Househound is independently owned, with no investors and no parent company. Inspection data is never sold and never used to market to your clients, and card payments go straight to your own Stripe account.

Switching from ScribeWare moves your templates and comment wording, and your past reports as PDFs. Clients and agents come across if you can get them out as a spreadsheet. The schedule starts fresh.

Generate the one-click PDF of a finished ScribeWare report and import it on Househound's Templates page, which rebuilds the areas, items and comments from it. Up to 10 files go in at once, 20 MB each, and Word .docx files import the same way. Gunnysacks and connected fields don't have a Househound equivalent, so expect to tidy the comment library afterward.

For past reports, generate their PDFs and upload them to the past-report archive (Reports → Archive → Past reports): read-only, searchable by address, client and date, and shareable. ScribeWare's documentation doesn't describe a contact export, so ask its support; a CSV or Excel list imports under People → Clients or Agents → Import contacts… on the web. Keep the local report copies ScribeWare saves on your computer, and ask for any other export you want before you cancel.

The full checklist is in how to switch from ScribeWare.