InspectorData vs Inspector Hub

Quick Answer

Choose Inspector Hub ($49.99/active seat) if the lowest per-seat price matters most, or if you specifically want open-source software you can host on your own server. Choose InspectorData ($79/mo) if you want AI that analyzes the photo itself — automatically filing it into the correct category and subcategory and drafting the comment — and if you need Florida insurance forms such as wind mitigation and 4-point, which Inspector Hub does not currently ship.

Nearly every inspection platform now advertises AI, which makes the word almost meaningless on its own. What matters is where the AI sits in your workflow and how much of the work it removes.

Inspector Hub's AI works on text. You write or dictate a note, and the AI rewrites it into a cleaner, more formal paragraph. Its own documentation describes the feature as comment assist, its policy requires the AI to introduce no fact that is not already in the report, and it asks you to supply your own Gemini API key. That is a genuine time-saver for wording, and it is honest about its limits — but you have already done the identifying, the categorizing and the describing before the AI is involved.

InspectorData's AI works on the photograph. When a photo uploads from the field, the system sends the image itself to a vision model, which returns the category and subcategory the photo belongs to — drawn from your template's actual section names, not a generic list — and writes that to the photo record. In the report writer, the AI then drafts the comment from the image, structured as what was observed, what it could lead to, and what action to recommend.

The practical difference shows up in the evening. Filing a few hundred photos into the right sections of a report is the part of the job that eats an inspector's night. A text-polishing assistant does not touch that work. A vision model that files the photos as they arrive does.

How long does it take? Categorization runs in the background as photos upload, so it is not something you sit and wait for. We deliberately do not publish a stopwatch figure, because real-world time varies with image size, connection quality and how busy the model is.

• You want to own and host the software. Inspector Hub publishes its engine under AGPL v3 and you can run it on your own infrastructure at no licence cost. That is a real guarantee of continuity that a hosted product cannot match, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
• You want to read the code. If you or someone you trust can audit a repository, you can verify exactly how data is handled rather than taking a vendor's word for it.
• Lowest per-seat price is the deciding factor. At $49.99 per active seat it is cheaper per inspector than our $79 base, and their seat is only billed while active.
• You do not need Florida insurance forms. If you never write wind mitigation or 4-point reports, that gap does not affect you.

One caveat worth understanding before you choose self-hosting: running your own server means you are responsible for uptime, security patching, and backups of your clients' data. For an inspection company without technical staff, that is a real ongoing job, and losing a database of signed agreements and reports is a serious problem. Self-hosting is genuine freedom, and it is genuine work.

For inspectors in Florida and other coastal states, wind mitigation and 4-point inspections are a significant share of the work and are often the more profitable jobs. These forms have to match the carrier's official layout exactly, which is why they are difficult to add as an afterthought.

InspectorData ships wind mitigation, 4-point, roof and mold forms with official PDF output, autofill from the job record, and photo attachment.

Inspector Hub's published template set covers residential, pre-listing, new construction, sewer scope, radon and mold. A wind mitigation template file does exist in its public repository, but it is not referenced anywhere in the application code, so it is not something you can select and use today. There is no 4-point form in the project at all. If your revenue depends on insurance inspections, that is the difference between a platform you can use and one you cannot.