Free mold risk checker vs paid inspection
Free mold risk checker vs paid mold inspection: the free checker estimates conditions from records. The paid inspection sends a person with instruments and is the only one that confirms anything.
The free risk checker vs A paid mold inspection
| Axis | The free risk checker | A paid mold inspection |
|---|---|---|
| What it actually measures | Conditions from records, with a score, a band and the driver list that produced it. | Moisture in actual materials, read against a dry standard, plus thermal contrast and visible evidence. |
| What it cannot see | Anything inside the building. It also stops short of parsing a disclosure — that is the paid tier. | Anything behind a finished surface without opening it, and any history nobody recorded. |
| Cost range (USD) | $0. No account, no email, no card. | $300–$800 for a specialist moisture inspection; $300–$600 for a general home inspection that usually excludes mold assessment. |
| Time to result | Seconds. | 2–4 hours on site, report in 24–48 hours, and often a week or more to book. |
| When it is required or accepted | Never. | Never legally. It becomes effectively required by a contingency clause you negotiate. |
| Who accepts it (lender / insurer / court / buyer) | By nobody as evidence. | By buyers, sellers, insurers and courts. |
The free one is not a trial of the paid one
There is no version of this where the free check substitutes for an inspection, and we are not going to imply there is. What it does is decide whether the inspection is worth buying and what it should look at. If every driver is regional and nothing about the building or its record is flagged, that is a real answer and it cost nothing. If the drivers name construction, terrain or a documented event, book someone.
What the free check actually withholds
Almost nothing about the score itself. The number, the band, the module breakdown and the driver list are all there, because a decision made on a partial view is a bad decision and gating it would produce exactly that.
What the paid tiers add is the twelve-section written report at $29, and parsed seller-disclosure analysis at $79 — which is the largest module in the model, and inert without a document to parse.
So the honest split is: free tells you what the model thinks and why. Paid documents it, and reads the disclosure properly.
When free is the whole answer
Screening several properties. Comparing a shortlist is exactly what a free estimate is for, and buying reports on four candidates you will not pursue is money spent on paperwork.
No disclosure exists. Rentals rarely generate one, and exempt sales — estates, foreclosures, some investor sales — often have none. Without a form, the $79 tier's main addition has nothing to work on.
Every driver is regional. Climate and terrain are not addressable and not specific to the building. A report documenting them at greater length changes nothing you would do.
When to stop reading and book someone
You can smell something musty. That is the volatile output of an active colony and it outranks any estimate, free or paid.
You can see staining, tide lines or efflorescence. Those are records of water that already arrived.
The drivers name a documented water event. An unresolved one sets a floor the score cannot fall below, and it is naming a specific thing to go and look at.
You are about to commit money. At the scale of a purchase, an inspection is a rounding error against what it protects.
The basis for these figures
General US ranges for planning, not quotes. Our three prices are exact.
Questions people ask
- Is the free checker a limited trial?
- No. It gives the score, the band, the module breakdown and the drivers. The paid tiers add the written report and disclosure parsing, not a better number.
- Cost of mold inspection vs a mold risk score subscription — which is cheaper over time?
- There is no subscription. Reports are bought per property and the check is free, so there is no recurring cost to compare an inspection against.
- Does paying make the score more accurate?
- Not by itself. Supplying a disclosure or a verified construction year does, because it moves the model from inference about a category of building to a statement about this one.
- Why give the score away?
- Because the decision it supports — whether this is worth looking at more closely — is not one anyone should have to pay to make, and because a gated estimate gets read as a sales device rather than a tool.