Pricing model: subscription vs pay per loan
The pricing models are opposites, and that's what drives the whole decision. Wisetack takes 3.9% out of each funded job. Finance nothing in a slow month and you pay nothing, simple as that. Hearth charges up front for the year: $1,499 for Essentials, $1,799 for Pro (the plan I see most contractors pick, since it adds quotes, contracts, and automated reminders), or $4,999 for Elite, per Hearth's published pricing. After that, every financed job is fee-free to you.
Percentage fees feel painless until volume grows, and I'll say this flatly: a subscription is easier to budget around than a fee that scales with a month you can't predict. A single $12,000 bathroom job through Wisetack costs you $468. Ten of them cost $4,680, which would've bought two and a half years of Hearth Pro. On the other side, a Hearth subscription that goes unused is $1,799 spent on nothing, and unused subscriptions are the most common complaint in Hearth's one-star Trustpilot reviews.
Winner: Wisetack below roughly $46,000 in annual financed volume, Hearth above it. The break-even table below shows the exact crossover.
The break-even math, dollar by dollar
The break-even calculation is just division: Hearth Pro's $1,799 annual fee divided by Wisetack's 3.9% fee comes out to about $46,100 in financed volume. Here's what each platform costs you at different volumes, using standard (non-promo) loans.
| Annual financed volume | Wisetack cost (3.9%) | Hearth Pro cost | Cheaper option |
|---|
| $15,000 | $585 | $1,799 | Wisetack |
| $30,000 | $1,170 | $1,799 | Wisetack |
| $46,000 | $1,794 | $1,799 | Even |
| $75,000 | $2,925 | $1,799 | Hearth |
| $150,000 | $5,850 | $1,799 | Hearth |
| $300,000 | $11,700 | $1,799 | Hearth |
Two adjustments keep this math honest. First, tack on Hearth's one-time $99 setup fee in year one. Second, if you only need bare-bones financing, Hearth Essentials at $1,499 drops the break-even to about $38,400. For more on what those percentage fees do to margins across the industry, I'd point you to our breakdown of dealer fees in contractor financing.
Winner: whoever runs this table against last year's numbers. At $100,000 financed, Hearth saves you over $2,000 a year; at $20,000 financed, Wisetack saves you about $1,000.
Loan size limits: the $25,000 cap is gone, but Hearth still goes higher
Loan ceilings changed in 2026, and most comparison posts still haven't caught up. Wisetack historically capped loans at $25,000, which locked it out of big remodels. In April 2026, LendingClub started underwriting and originating home improvement loans through Wisetack up to $65,000, per the joint announcement carried by PR Newswire and Wisetack's own press page. Availability varies by merchant and borrower, but the hard $25,000 wall doesn't define the platform anymore.
Hearth still holds the size advantage here. Its lender marketplace offers personal loans from $1,000 to $250,000 with terms from 2 to 12 years, per Hearth's loan pages. If you're selling $80,000 kitchen gut renovations or whole-home exterior packages, Hearth is the only one of the two that covers the full ticket. Kitchen and bath remodelers running big tickets should read how Hearth works for kitchen remodelers and for bathroom remodelers.
Winner: Hearth. The gap narrowed from $225,000 to $185,000, but it's still a gap that decides deals.
Approval speed and the homeowner experience
Speed at the kitchen table favors Wisetack. The homeowner gets a text link, answers a short application, and typically sees a decision in about a minute, no app to download. Hearth's flow is fast too: homeowners see prequalified offers from multiple lenders in about two minutes with a soft credit pull, and Hearth advertises funding in as little as 24 hours. In my experience pitching both, Wisetack feels like a payment step to the homeowner, while Hearth feels like shopping loan offers.
Neither delay is long enough to lose a sale on its own. What loses sales is presenting financing badly, and that's a pitch problem, not a platform problem. Our kitchen table guide to pitching financing covers the wording that works.
Winner: Wisetack, narrowly, for the fastest and simplest homeowner flow.
Promo financing is where the two platforms really separate. Wisetack lets you offer 0% APR promos, but partner documentation (including the Contractor+ help center) lists add-on fees of 4.9% for a 6-month promo, 6.9% for 12 months, and 9.9% for 24 months, stacked on top of the 3.9% base. A $15,000 job on a 24-month 0% promo can run you about 13.8% in stacked fees, close to $2,070 on that one loan.
Hearth folds promotional options into the subscription, so offering 0% APR doesn't add a per-loan charge. If "no interest for 12 months" is a core part of your close, I've seen the subscription pay for itself after just one or two promo jobs. For the mechanics and the fine print homeowners will ask about, see our guide to how 0% APR contractor financing actually works.
Winner: Hearth, decisively, for anyone who sells promo financing regularly.
Approval odds and credit reach
Approval reach comes down to how many lenders actually see the application. Hearth routes one prequalification form to a marketplace of 18+ lenders and advertises options for FICO scores as low as 550, which gives thin-credit and fair-credit homeowners more shots at a yes. Wisetack works with a smaller set of lending partners, publishes no minimum credit score, and quotes APRs from 0% to 35.9% based on creditworthiness, per its consumer page.
In the field, both approve a healthy share of mainstream borrowers, and neither publishes an audited approval rate, so I'd treat any specific percentage you read online as marketing, not data. If your customer base skews toward challenged credit, the multi-lender model gives more shots on goal. Details on the low end of the range are in our piece on Hearth's 550 FICO minimum, and Wisetack's side is covered in Wisetack's credit score requirements.
Winner: Hearth, for breadth of lenders and a published entry point at 550.
Software and everything beyond financing
Hearth is trying to be more than a financing button. The Pro plan bundles quotes, contracts, invoicing, digital payments, and automated payment reminders, which can replace a couple of small software subscriptions if you're not already on a field service platform. Wisetack does the opposite: it stays a pure financing layer and plugs into tools contractors already run, including Jobber and Housecall Pro.
Which approach wins depends on your stack, honestly. If you already run a full platform (see our HVAC software stack guide for an example), Wisetack disappears neatly into it. If you're still quoting from a notepad, Hearth's bundled tools carry real value beyond the loans.
Winner: Hearth for contractors who need the business tools; Wisetack for contractors whose software stack is already set.
Commitment and risk
Risk allocation is the quiet difference between these two. Wisetack carries none for you: no contract, no setup cost, and a fee only when a loan funds. Hearth asks for the year up front, and its unhappy reviews on Trustpilot cluster around exactly that: contractors who paid $1,600 to $2,200, financed little or nothing, and got no refund. Nobody's getting scammed there. It's a subscription working exactly as designed, and that means it punishes wishful thinking about your volume.
Here's my honest test: if you didn't finance at least $40,000 last year and don't have a concrete plan to hit it, don't buy the subscription yet. Our assessment of whether Hearth is worth it for small contractors digs into that decision.
Winner: Wisetack. Zero commitment is the safer default until your numbers prove otherwise.
What users actually say
Review platforms rate the two closely. Hearth sits around 4.6 out of 5 on Trustpilot across roughly 1,000 reviews as of mid-2026, with 84% five-star ratings driven by praise for support and the multi-offer comparison, and a 13% one-star block dominated by unused-subscription complaints. Wisetack also lands around 4.6 on Trustpilot across 1,200+ reviews (some snapshots run higher), with reviewers highlighting the fast application and clear terms, and it holds 4.6 from 24 business reviews on G2. Neither one shows the pattern of systemic complaints I've seen crop up around some legacy dealer-fee lenders.
Choose Hearth if
- You financed, or will realistically finance, more than about $46,000 in projects this year.
- Your tickets regularly land above $65,000, where Wisetack still cannot go.
- 0% APR promos are part of your standard pitch and you refuse to eat 10%+ per promo loan.
- You want quoting, contracts, and invoicing bundled instead of buying them separately.
- Your customers span a wide credit range and you want 18+ lenders competing for the approval.
Choose Wisetack if
- You are new to offering financing and want zero commitment while you learn what homeowners take.
- Your financed volume is under about $40,000 per year, where 3.9% simply costs less.
- Your jobs are mostly service work and small installs between $500 and $25,000.
- You already run Jobber, Housecall Pro, or similar software and just need a financing layer inside it.
- Approval speed during the in-home visit matters more to you than squeezing the last dollar of fee savings.
Final verdict
Start with Wisetack, graduate to Hearth. That's the pattern I'd recommend to most contractors, because Wisetack is free to try and Hearth's flat fee only makes sense once your financed volume clears $46,000 a year at the Pro price, or $38,000 on Essentials. High-ticket remodelers and heavy promo sellers should skip straight to Hearth: the $250,000 ceiling and fee-free 0% APR options are worth the subscription from day one. Both are legitimate platforms with strong user ratings, so this decision comes down to arithmetic, not trust.
If you want the wider field before deciding, our four-way comparison of Hearth, Wisetack, GreenSky, and Improvifi covers the alternatives. Ready to run Hearth's numbers against your own book? Get started with Hearth here.
How I checked these numbers
I pulled published pricing straight from Hearth's pricing and loan pages, then did the same against Wisetack's consumer site, help center, and partner documentation. I confirmed the LendingClub loan expansion against the actual April 2026 announcement on PR Newswire and Wisetack's press page, not a secondhand summary of it, and pulled the ratings from Trustpilot and G2 myself. The break-even figures are just arithmetic run on those published fees. Everything here was last verified in July 2026, and both companies change pricing without much warning, so call and confirm current terms before you sign anything.
Frequently asked questions
Can I offer both Hearth and Wisetack at the same time?
Yes. Nothing stops you from running both, and some contractors do: Wisetack for small service tickets, Hearth for large projects and promo offers. The only cost of overlap is Hearth's subscription, so I'd only run both once your volume already justifies Hearth on its own.
Does Wisetack still cap loans at $25,000?
Not as a hard platform-wide limit anymore: since April 2026, LendingClub originates loans up to $65,000 through Wisetack, per the companies' joint announcement. Standard Wisetack financing still runs $500 to $25,000, and the higher tier's availability varies by merchant and borrower, so check your account's limit before you quote it to a homeowner.
Which is cheaper for a contractor financing under $40,000 a year?
Wisetack, clearly. At $40,000 in funded loans you'd pay about $1,560 in 3.9% fees, versus $1,799 plus a $99 setup fee for Hearth Pro, and the gap widens the less you finance.
Does Hearth charge dealer fees per loan?
No. Hearth charges no per-transaction dealer fees; the annual subscription is the whole contractor cost, per Hearth's pricing page. Homeowners pay the interest on whatever loan they accept, which ranges from about 4.9% to 35.99% APR depending on credit.
What credit score do homeowners need for each platform?
Hearth advertises lender options for FICO scores as low as 550, while Wisetack publishes no minimum and evaluates credit history, income, and loan amount together. Both use a soft pull to prequalify, so checking offers doesn't ding the homeowner's score.
How fast do homeowners get a decision?
Wisetack typically returns a decision in about a minute through its text-based application, and Hearth shows prequalified offers from its lender network in about two minutes. Funding differs more than approval: Hearth advertises money in as little as 24 hours, while Wisetack pays out after the work milestone you set.
