Best free home maintenance apps in 2026: where free holds up

Owning a home is a slow drip of small jobs. Flush the water heater, swap the furnace filter, clean the gutters before the first freeze, register the new dishwasher so the warranty actually means something, and remember which paint color you used in the hallway two years ago. Miss enough of these and the cheap fixes quietly turn into expensive ones. The right app keeps the whole list in one place and nudges you before a task becomes a repair.

A good home maintenance app keeps that list for you. The good news is you do not have to pay to get started: several apps in 2026 ship free tiers that are genuinely useful rather than a two-week trial wearing a costume. The trick is knowing where "free" holds up and where it is a doorway to a subscription. Below are the six best home maintenance apps worth your home screen, free and paid, with a quick comparison table first and a couple of honorable mentions at the end.

For the full ranking on features as well as price, see the best home maintenance apps. This post sticks to what each one gives you for free.

One disclosure up front: we build DIYProject.ai, which is first on this list. We have tried to be as straight about our own catch as we are about everyone else's, and every other app here is a real product we respect. If a competitor fits your home better, use it.

The 6 apps at a glance

App	Price	Free tier	Best for
DIYProject.ai	$7.99/mo or $49.99/yr (7-day trial on annual)	Unlimited calculators and cheat sheets, no account	Upkeep reminders plus a priced plan for the repair itself
Dwellin	Prime, about $99/yr	Auto maintenance plan and guided Journeys, iOS and Android	Hands-off upkeep and guided seasonal chores
HomeZada	Premium, about $99/yr	Inventory and basic maintenance	The whole financial picture of your house
Homer	Premium or lifetime purchase	Nameplate scan, records, reminders, iOS/Mac/Android	Appliance records, manuals, and warranty alerts
Dwellable	Pro, about $19.99/yr	Autofill, guided inspection, Local tab	Low-friction setup and a feel for your block
HomeKeep	Service bundles, around $699/yr	Recall alerts, auto registration, Android	Recall safety and warranty coverage, hands-off

Which home maintenance app is best overall?

For most homeowners, DIYProject.ai is the best overall home maintenance app in 2026: it is the only one on this list that turns a flagged task into a priced, step-by-step plan, and its 48 calculators and 100+ cheat sheets are free without an account. If you want an app that stays free and you never plan to pay, Dwellin is the strongest purely free pick, with an automatic maintenance plan built from your address.

1. DIYProject.ai: the only one that plans the repair, not just the reminder

Most maintenance apps are very good at telling you something is due. DIYProject.ai is built around what happens next. Describe a project in plain words, "replace the leaking hose bibb" or "repaint the deck," and the AI breaks it into steps, generates a shopping list with cost estimates, and tracks what you actually spend against the plan. So when your maintenance schedule flags a task, you are one tap from a real plan instead of a vague to-do. Appliances get their own help too: photograph a nameplate and the app fills in brand, model, and serial as a draft you confirm, finds the owner's manual, suggests a maintenance schedule you choose from, checks the appliance daily against CPSC recalls, and rolls it all into a PDF home report for your insurer. Coming from Centriq? Upload its CSV export on the web and your appliances come across.

The free side is where it earns a spot on this list at all: unlimited access to 48 material calculators and more than 100 cheat sheets, no account required. Concrete, paint, deck boards, drywall, tile, and more, all free forever. The app itself, including the maintenance scheduling with its subscribable ICS calendar feed (it drops tasks straight into Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, or Outlook), is paid, with a 7-day free trial on the annual plan. Multi-model AI (Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok) does the planning.

Best for: People who want upkeep reminders and a way to actually do the work once something breaks.

Price: Calculators and cheat sheets are free forever with no account. The app is $7.99 per month or $49.99 per year, with a 7-day free trial on the annual plan.

The catch: Unlike the rest of this list, the maintenance app itself is not free past the 7-day trial; only the calculators and cheat sheets are. There is also no Android app yet, though the web app works on any phone. And treat the AI plan as a strong starting point to sanity-check scope and budget, not a permit-ready drawing.

2. Dwellin: guided journeys that walk you through the hard seasons

Dwellin does one thing that feels great the first time you use it: enter your address and it pulls public property records to autofill the basics, then builds an automatic maintenance plan around your home. Its standout feature is "Journeys," guided sequences for the moments that stress people out, like winterizing, recovering after a storm, or getting a house ready to sell.

If your goal is staying on top of upkeep with as little setup as possible, Dwellin is one of the smoothest free experiences here, and it runs on both iOS and Android.

Best for: Homeowners who want a hands-off plan and structured guidance through seasonal chores.

Price: Free tier with an auto maintenance plan and Journeys. Prime (about $99 per year) unlocks deeper cost intelligence.

The catch: It is upkeep-focused, so it will not help you build or renovate anything, and the sharpest cost data sits behind the paid tier.

3. HomeZada: the whole financial picture of your house

HomeZada takes the widest view of any app on this list. It treats your home as an asset, not just a chore list. The free tier covers home inventory and basic maintenance, which is plenty for most people. Where it separates from the pack is money: the Premium tier layers in whole-home finances, tracking value, equity, cost basis, and forecasts so you can see your house the way an accountant would.

Best for: Owners who think about their home as an investment and want inventory, maintenance, and finances under one roof.

Price: Free tier for inventory and basic maintenance. Premium (about $99 per year) adds the financial tools.

The catch: It is dense. There is a lot of app here, and on the free tier you will realistically use a fraction of it. Give yourself an afternoon to set it up properly.

4. Homer: the best digital binder for appliances and warranties

Homer nails the one job a lot of people actually want: keeping every appliance, manual, and warranty in a single tidy place. Point your camera at a nameplate and it scans the model details for you, then stores manuals and fires reminders before a warranty lapses. It runs on iOS, Mac, and Android, so the whole household can reach the same records.

Best for: Anyone who wants appliance records, manuals, and warranty alerts without the busywork of typing it all in.

Price: Strong free tier. Some standout features sit behind a premium subscription or a one-time lifetime purchase.

The catch: It is a binder, not a project planner. Homer will remember your dishwasher's model number beautifully, but it will not help you plan the repair when that dishwasher dies.

5. Dwellable: address autofill plus a genuinely local feel

Dwellable is newer and lighter, and that is part of its charm. Enter your address for public-records autofill, then walk through a guided room-by-room inspection to build out your home profile. Its most distinctive feature is the "Local" tab, which surfaces neighborhood-level information like trash and recycling changes, road work, and municipal news. It is available on iOS, Mac, and Android, with a very affordable Pro tier.

Best for: New homeowners who want a low-friction setup and a feel for what is happening on their block.

Price: Free tier with autofill and the guided inspection. Pro is about $19.99 per year.

The catch: Being newer, it is thinner on the actual project side. It is excellent for knowing your home and staying oriented, less so for executing bigger jobs.

6. HomeKeep: recall alerts and automatic warranty registration

HomeKeep leans into a job the others mostly skip: it registers your products and warranties automatically and pushes product recall alerts so you hear about a safety issue before it becomes a problem. Each maintenance task even comes with a tool list, which is a thoughtful touch when you are staring down a chore and unsure what to grab.

Best for: People who want recall safety and warranty coverage handled for them, hands-off.

Price: Free tier with recall alerts and automatic registration. It is available on Android.

The catch: Its done-for-you service bundles are pricey (around $699 per year), and the app often reaches people through a homebuilder rather than a straight consumer download, so availability can vary.

One name you will not find here, in case you go looking: Centriq, long the benchmark for scanning appliances into a home profile, shut down on January 31, 2026. If an old blog post points you to it, that is why the links are dead. (You may see it listed as a 2025 shutdown around the web; that date is a widely-copied error, and the app was still live and taking signups in late November 2025.)

Honorable mentions

Two more worth a look. Dib runs a daily Recalls Watch across CPSC, NHTSA, and USDA sources and layers an AI assistant grounded in your home's own inventory, which makes it a sharp pick if recall safety is your top worry. And for the true minimalist, do not overlook a plain shared calendar. A recurring event for filters, gutters, and the water heater, shared with everyone in the house, costs nothing and never lets a task fall on one person. It will not scan a nameplate or plan a repair, but it beats forgetting.

How to actually use this list

Pick by the job you keep dropping. If you never remember to register warranties, start with Homer or HomeKeep. If you want the financial picture, HomeZada. If you want a hands-off seasonal plan, Dwellin or Dwellable. If you are still torn between two of them, our comparison library breaks each one down side by side, with pricing and honest best-for calls. And if the thing you actually dread is the doing (figuring out steps, materials, and cost the moment something breaks) that is where DIYProject.ai fits, because it is the only one here that turns a flagged maintenance task into a priced plan.

You do not have to commit to anything to try that last part. Open one of the 48 free material calculators, run the numbers on a job you have been putting off, and see how close your gut estimate was. If it clicks, the annual plan's 7-day free trial gets you the AI plans, the maintenance scheduling, and a calendar feed you can subscribe to today. Your house will keep handing you jobs either way. The apps above just make sure you see them coming.