What is typically free, and what costs money, in a floor plan and home scanning app?
Most floor plan and scanning apps have a free version and a paid one. The line is rarely drawn where you would expect — it is usually not the features that get locked, but the number of homes and the ability to share with others.
Short answer: in most serious floor plan apps, the actual features — scanning, drawing, measurements, 3D — are the same whether you pay or not. What typically costs money is how many homes you can have open at once, and whether others can see them (sharing with a buyer, a collaborator, a contractor). Always look for whether an app states plainly what the free version cannot do — if it doesn't say, it's usually because the answer is "nothing", and everything is effectively paid from day one.
Why is there almost always a free version?
An app that asks to scan your home is asking for something personal. Most developers know that nobody pays for what they haven't tried. So there is almost always a way in without a card: scan one home, draw one room, see what the drawing turns into. It isn't charity — it's the only way an app can prove its worth before you commit.
The most common ceiling: number of homes or projects
The most frequent limit isn't a feature at all, but a number: how many separate homes, houses or projects you can keep open in the app at once. Free typically gives you one. A subscription raises the ceiling to a handful, and the top tier removes the ceiling entirely. That makes sense for the provider — storage and syncing cost something per home — and it's a limit you can work out for yourself before choosing: if you're only going to use the app for your own home, the free version is often enough.
Features that are rarely locked
- The scanning or drawing itself. It would be strange to sell an app that can't do the thing it's named after.
- Basic measurements and area. Square metres per room and for the whole home belong to the core feature, not a paid add-on.
- Export to PDF or image. Most apps let you pass a drawing on without a paywall — it's the most common way the app gets recommended further.
Features that are more often locked
- Sharing with others. A unique web link for a buyer or a collaborator usually costs something, because it requires a server on the provider's side, not just your phone.
- Advanced export formats. DXF for a drawing program or 3D files for another platform often sit above the free line, because they're aimed at professionals, not the ordinary user.
- Cloud storage across devices. Seeing the same home on both phone and tablet requires a sync service, which costs the provider money per user.
Sharing with others — why it usually costs extra
There's a technical reason sharing almost always sits in the most expensive tier, whichever app you look at: a drawing only you ever see can live locally on your phone and cost the provider nothing to run. A drawing that a stranger needs to open via a link requires a server answering around the clock, whether it's you or a buyer clicking. It's the one feature where "free" is genuinely hard to offer without a paying user somewhere in the chain.
One-off purchase, subscription, or both?
Some apps are sold as a one-off purchase — you pay once and own the app. Others run on subscription, often because they carry an ongoing running cost (cloud storage, sharing, AI calculations somewhere off the phone). A third model blends the two: a free tier, a cheap subscription for private use, and a pricier tier for anyone working professionally with several properties. None of the models is wrong — but if a subscription has no ongoing running cost behind it, you should ask yourself what you're actually paying for.
How to see through an app before you pay
Try the free version on a real room, not just the demo. Check whether the numbers — area, measurements — look right, compared with what you can measure yourself with a tape. And read what actually happens if you later cancel a subscription: do you lose access to your own data, or can you still view it, just not edit it? Far too few apps answer that question clearly in their description.
What HouseSense does
HouseSense has three tiers, and they differ on exactly one point: how many homes you can have open. Free gives you one home, a private subscription gives you five, and the top tier gives you an unlimited number. Every other feature — scanning, drawing, measurements, 3D model, budget, export to PDF and DXF — is the same across all three tiers. The only other feature that requires the top tier is sharing a home with a buyer via a web link, because that feature needs a server to keep the link alive.
Checklist before you choose an app
- Try it on a real room — not just a demo built by the developer.
- Find the free limit — is it a number of homes, a time limit, or watermarks on the drawing?
- Look up what happens if you cancel — do you lose data, or does access simply become read-only?
- Check the export formats before you commit — if you need DXF for an architect, you should know it straight away.
What you shouldn't expect from a free version
Don't expect unlimited storage, sharing with others, or the most advanced export formats in a free version — it's rarely sustainable for a developer to give that away without someone paying for the running cost somewhere. But do expect the core itself — scanning or drawing a room and getting a measurement you can trust — to work just as well whether or not you've paid. If that's locked behind a subscription, it's a sign the app's core wasn't strong enough to stand on its own.
A worked example: when does the free version pay off?
If you're only going to use the app for your own home — one house, one flat — there's rarely any reason to pay for anything. Considering two homes at once, say your current home and one you're looking at buying, you'll typically hit the free ceiling straight away, because it's usually set to exactly one. Working professionally — landlord, contractor, estate agent — with five, ten or more properties, it's the subscription's number of homes you need to work out, not the price per home alone. A rule of thumb: if the number of homes you need open at the same time exceeds what the free tier allows, the choice has effectively been made for you.
An objection: isn't a free-core app just a hook?
That's a fair suspicion, and the answer is mixed. Yes, the free version is deliberately built to show the app off — that's the whole point of it. But that doesn't make it worthless. An app that lets you scan a whole room, see a real area figure and export a drawing to PDF without paying a penny has already delivered something useful, whether or not you upgrade afterwards. Be more sceptical, on the other hand, of apps where the free version only shows a blurred or watermarked version of the result — that's the difference between a hook that shows you the value and one that stops you seeing it.
Why the numbers rarely sit in the features themselves
It seems paradoxical that a developer doesn't lock the feature that's most expensive to build — the scanning or drawing tool itself. But it comes down to where the cost actually sits. Building a drawing feature costs the developer time, once. Keeping your home synced across devices, or keeping a shared link alive for a stranger buyer, costs the developer money for every single user, every single month, for as long as the app runs. It's the ongoing running cost — not the development cost — that usually decides what ends up behind a subscription.