Free Christmas Light Software: What Free Really Costs

Three kinds of free exist in Christmas light software, and they cost different amounts. LightQuoter's free plan has every feature and charges a 2 percent platform fee on each payment your customer makes through it, which is $1,000 on $50,000 collected and $3,000 on $150,000, by its own pricing page. LightMaster Free is mockups only. Jolly Lights and Inchr are free and stop at a picture or a number. GlowBid's roofline tool is free with no login until you export.

Written by the GlowBid founder; prices checked on each vendor's site on September 7, 2026. I run a permanent lighting company in Ottawa, and this page is written from that seat. Where a vendor's own page states a number, it is linked.

What does "free" cost on each tool?

The table assumes every dollar of a season's revenue is collected through the tool. Real shops take some cheques and e-transfers, so the fee column is a ceiling. Stripe's own processing (2.9 percent plus 30 cents on domestic cards) applies to every tool that takes card payments, ours included, so it is left out of the comparison. Deposits collected through GlowBid also carry a platform margin under 1 percent, shown before you connect Stripe; on $50,000 that is under $500, and it is in the table.

Where does LightQuoter's money come from?

From the 2 percent, and they say so. Their free-software page, written by Michael Caldwell on July 5, 2026, puts it in one sentence: when your customer pays you through LightQuoter via Stripe, a 2 percent platform fee applies on top of Stripe's standard processing. The home page repeats it: $0 per month, all features, 2 percent on Stripe payments, and a Pro plan at $497 a year that takes the platform fee to zero.

Credit where it is due. That is the most honest free plan in this market. There is no feature wall, no user cap, no watermark, and you pay nothing until a customer pays you. Their own page gives the $50,000 example and the $25,000 break-even, and both check out: 2 percent of $24,850 is $497.

What the page does not do is show the fee against a season that grows. A first-season shop collecting $20,000 through the tool pays $400 and should be happy. A third-season shop collecting $150,000 pays $3,000 a year for software that a flat plan replaces for $187 to $499. The fee is the same 2 percent on both, and only one of those shops is getting a deal.

The other cost is not on any pricing page. LightQuoter's measuring is a satellite trace and its mockup is drawn on Street View. Both lean on Google imagery, and Google's terms do not allow storing or creating data from it. I wrote that up separately in the Street View and satellite rules guide and in our LightQuoter alternative page; here it is enough to say the free plan is not the only thing to weigh.

What do the picture-only tools give you for $0?

A picture, and a good one. The free Jolly Lights app puts strands on a photo with adjustable bulb size, colour and spacing, then exports a photo, a GIF or a 10-second video. The Professional version adds warm and cool whites, greenery, wreaths and a catalogue editor for $29.99 a month or $149.99 a year. Its developer, Wrinkle-free Games, says in the App Store replies that it is a visualization tool and that a single 2D snapshot does not hold enough information to compute measurements, so no bulb counts. I respect that answer. It is true of a bare photo, and it is why the tools that do measure ask you for a known length first.

LightMaster Free is the same idea inside a bigger product: Mockups Lite, one user, and a pricing page that says you can keep your data but cannot open saved customers or quotes without upgrading. It is a trial that does not expire, which is fair, and everything an installer actually bills with starts at Lite for $187 a year.

Inchr is the free measuring tool Strandr bundles with its plan. Set a reference object in your photo, measure the runs, take the numbers with you. The site itself is an app shell with almost no text on it, so there is nothing to link beyond the home page. It works. It does the same reference-object method I describe in how to measure a roofline from a photo, and then it stops, because Strandr prices the mockup at $197 a year and nothing in the pair prices the job.

What does the 2 percent add up to over a season?

Here is a second-season shop I would call typical: 60 jobs at an average of $1,350, or $81,000 for the season. Say 70 percent of that comes in by card through the software (deposits plus most balances) and the rest by cheque and e-transfer. That is $56,700 collected through the tool.

Every row still pays Stripe's 2.9 percent plus 30 cents on card payments. The difference between the free plan and GlowBid Core on this season is at least $268 and up to $835, depending on how much of the $56,700 is deposits through GlowBid, and the difference between the free plan and its own Pro plan is $637. Price a house of your own in the free tool and multiply by your job count; the arithmetic takes a minute.

When is free the right call?

When you collect under about $25,000 a year through the software, or when you only need a picture.

First season, a few dozen jobs, deposits by card. LightQuoter Free. It is the cheapest complete workflow on the market below that line, and the fee only bites when you get paid. Know that the measurement is a satellite trace and read the rules on that before you rely on it.

You sell on the picture and quote on paper. Jolly Lights, free. It is fast, it looks good on a homeowner's phone, and it does not pretend to measure.

You want to measure before you decide on anything. Inchr or our free roofline tool. Both are free, both use a known length in your own photo, and ours draws the lights on the same photo and shows the footage by run type.

You want to see a full product before paying. LightMaster's 7 days of Professional or GlowBid's 7-day trial, neither with a card.

Where do the free tools stop?

Four places, and they are the same four on every one.

A sketch is not a measurement. Jolly Lights and LightMaster Free put lights on a photo. Nothing in the file knows the eave is 48 feet. When the homeowner says yes, you still measure.

A measurement is not a price. Inchr gives you feet. LightQuoter's trace gives you feet and prices them, which is more than the rest. But feet that arrive in your head and leave through a spreadsheet get re-typed, and re-typing is where November mistakes live.

Imagery has terms. Satellite traces and Street View mockups sit on Google's content, and Google's Maps Platform terms bar storing, caching and creating data from it. A tool built on that is a tool whose measuring method could change. Owned photos have no such clause.

Free has a ceiling. For LightQuoter it is 2 percent, forever, on everything you collect. For LightMaster it is the upgrade wall on saved quotes. For the picture apps it is the lack of a quote. None of these is hidden; all of them arrive in your second season.

Moving from a free tool to GlowBid

This is an afternoon, not a project, because nothing in the free tools holds your data hostage.

1. Your photos are the migration. Every tool above works from a photo you took or the homeowner sent. GlowBid needs the same photo. There is no importer for Jolly Lights, Inchr or LightQuoter files and I am not promising one; upload the photo, draw once, and the drawing carries the footage and the price from then on.

2. Start in the free tool. glowbid.io/tools/roofline-measure is the GlowBid canvas without the login. Drop a photo, set the reference length from the garage door, draw the runs, see the footage and the lights. If the free tool feels right, the product will.

3. Set the rate card in 15 minutes. Per-foot rates by run type (roofline, ridge line, peak, jump, ground, tree) and by product line (track, no-track, C9 seasonal), premiums for peaks, storeys and rush, flat per-jump and per-peak charges, add-ons, minimum job, deposit and tax. If you were quoting from a spreadsheet, it is a copy job.

4. Quote the next house end to end. Address, live Street View preview to recognise it (display only, never stored or measured), your photo, the drawing, the priced quote PDF, the signature on the customer's phone, the Stripe deposit. Budget under an hour for the first one.

5. Decide inside 30 days. The money-back window is 30 days. If the free tool was enough, you will know by then.

Mistakes I see with free software

• Counting the platform fee as zero. It is 2 percent of collections, not of profit. On a 25 percent margin job it is 8 percent of what you keep.
• Sending a sketch as a quote. The homeowner approves the picture, then the price moves after you measure. Measure before you send the picture, or send both.
• Storing satellite or Street View images in the customer file. Google's terms do not allow it, and the imagery is often years old. Take your own photo from across the street.
• Re-typing footage from a measuring app into a quoting app. Every hand-off is a chance for 48 to become 84.
• Judging a free tool in September. Every tool is fine on a quiet Tuesday. Judge it on the day nine quotes are owed by dinner.
• Paying for a picture you cannot price. $149.99 a year for Jolly Lights Pro or $197 for Strandr is fine if the quote lives elsewhere; it is not fine if the quote lives nowhere.

What GlowBid's free tool does, and does not do

It measures and draws. Drop a photo you own, set the scale from a door or a tape measurement, draw the runs by type, and the footage by run type and the lit mockup come off the same drawing. Every run carries a source tag and a confidence level, runs that angle away from the camera get a foreshortening warning, and the export says photo measurements are estimates confirmed on site. No login until you export.

It does not price, sign or collect. That is the paid product, from $299 a year at the founding price, opening November 1, 2026, with a 7-day trial and no card. The founding price locks while the subscription stays continuous, and there are 100 places. If the free tool is all you need this season, use it; it costs nothing.