Every page ranking for this question compares contractor financing companies as if the brand sets the price. It does not. The plan code you select inside the program sets the price, and the published ranges overlap so completely that the logo tells you almost nothing.
Pull the numbers together and the point is hard to argue with. GreenSky's published rate sheets span 0 to 26.6 percent. Service Finance spans 1.25 to 24 percent. EnerBank spans 0 to 24.5 percent. Three different companies, three nearly identical ranges. A contractor paying 4 percent and a contractor paying 22 percent can both be "on GreenSky" and neither is lying.
So the useful comparison is not which company is cheapest. It is which company funds you the way your cash flow needs, approves the customers you actually sell to, and lives inside the software your crew already uses. That is what this breaks down.
The published dealer fee ranges, side by side
These come from rate sheets that vendors, distributors and field-software companies have posted publicly, compiled in Homepros' provider rundown. They are the closest thing this industry has to price transparency, because most dealer agreements treat rate sheets as confidential.
| Provider | Owner or backing | Published dealer fee range | Notable constraint |
|---|---|---|---|
| Service Finance | Truist Bank | 1.25% to 24% | Funding held if the homeowner raises any complaint |
| GreenSky | Goldman Sachs | 0% to 26.6% | Loans to 100,000 dollars, approves on creditworthiness not job size |
| Synchrony | Public company | 0.99% to 15% | Manufacturer programs may subsidise the fee |
| EnerBank | Regions Bank | 0% to 24.5% | Includes a "YES" tier for weaker credit |
| Wells Fargo Home Projects | Wells Fargo | 0% to 15.18% | Homeowner must return a signed completion certificate |
| OPTIMUS | EGIA Finance | 0% to 16.4% | Two-look program, prime through subprime |
| Fortiva | Atlanticus | 6.5% to 9.9% | Positioned as a second-look provider |
| FTL Finance | Private | 3.25% to 12% | Pays exactly the approved amount, not a penny more |
| Wisetack | Independent | Flat 3.9%, up to 10% on certain 0% APR add-ons | Built for repair and mid-size tickets, published minimum of 500 dollars |
| Hearth | Private | None, annual subscription instead | Marketplace of lenders, loans to 250,000 dollars |
| Acorn Finance | Private | None advertised to contractors | Marketplace, customer shops terms and pays you up front |
| Ally Lending | Merging into Synchrony | No public rate sheet, advertises no-dealer-fee plans | Volume thresholds reported by contractors |
Two things jump out. First, six of these programs publish a plan that costs the contractor nothing, and six publish a plan that costs more than a fifth of the job. Second, the spread inside a single company is wider than the spread between companies.
By the numbers
A payments professional with sixteen years in the industry, answering a contractor on r/smallbusiness, put the economics plainly: "Everyone is going to charge a dealer fee to the business. You are outsourcing your receivables without recourse and these are unsecured loans with high default rates. If you paid 0 percent, your customers would be paying 50 percent."
Why the brand is the wrong unit of comparison
The clearest illustration comes from a roofing and exterior contractor on r/Construction who published his own GreenSky numbers. Six months no interest cost him 4 percent of the sale. Twenty-four months no interest cost 13 percent. Sixty months no interest meant baking roughly 20 percent into the bid.
Same lender. Same contractor. Same week. A four-times swing in cost, driven entirely by which promotional term he handed the homeowner.
His conclusion is the one worth stealing. He absorbs the 4 percent plan because he already prices credit card fees into every job, so a 6 month promotion is close to a rounding error against a 2.5 to 3.5 percent card fee. The long promotions he only offers when the customer has made financing a precondition, and then he prices them in advance rather than discovering the fee at funding. If you have never built financing cost into your quote as overhead, our breakdown of how to build overhead into your prices is the mechanic for doing it without a visible surcharge.
The mirror image of that is the contractor who never runs the numbers. Another operator on r/smallbusiness found his GreenSky account only exposed two zero-fee plans: 13.99 percent APR over 120 months, and a variable 9.99 to 22.99 percent plan over the same term. His average ticket is 4,000 dollars. He wanted a five year maximum and a rate near 10 percent. He described the trade honestly: "I know offering financing would help my business but I can't do it to my customers, and I don't want to destroy my brand by marking up 20 to 30 percent."
That is the whole comparison in one sentence. You can pay the fee, pass the rate to the homeowner, or mark up the job. There is no fourth option, and no provider has invented one.
The column nobody publishes: when you actually get paid
Fees get compared endlessly. Funding behaviour almost never does, and it is the thing contractors actually complain about once they are two months into a program.
| Provider | Funding trigger | Reported speed | The risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Service Finance | Payment authorisation submitted, subject to a daily cutoff | Next business day once established | Money withheld if the homeowner voices any complaint |
| GreenSky | Job completion confirmation, funded by ACH | Fast, reported approvals in under a minute | Contractors report accounts closed without notice |
| Wells Fargo Home Projects | Homeowner signs and returns a completion certificate | Slow, gated on the customer | You wait on a homeowner who is in no hurry |
| Wisetack | Customer confirms the job is complete | Two to three business days after confirmation | No progress payments, and jobs can be flagged for review |
| FTL Finance | Systems and scope submitted | Reported inside 24 hours | Pays exactly the approved amount, so approve the right figure |
| Hearth and marketplaces | Lender funds the homeowner, homeowner pays you | Reported inside 24 to 48 hours | The money lands with the customer first, not with you |
Read that last row twice, because it is the trade-off buried inside every no-dealer-fee marketplace. A contractor summarising Hearth in a trade forum flagged exactly this: the customer receives the funds and pays you when the job is complete, which puts the risk back on the contractor. You saved the dealer fee and bought back collection risk. Whether that is a good trade depends entirely on your deposit and draw structure, which is why a defensible progress payment schedule matters more once financing is in the mix, not less.
The Wisetack constraint is equally specific. Asked whether it supports progress payments, the company told a contractor it does not, and suggested splitting a job into segments so the customer takes multiple loans and coordinates the payments on their end. Workable for a two week install. Not workable for a six month remodel.
Financing closes the jobs you already quoted. It does not create quotes. If the real constraint is estimate volume rather than affordability, we build the lead system that fills the calendar first.
Approval rate is a stack, not a company
The single most expensive mistake in this category is signing one lender and treating its credit box as the market. When that bank tightens, your close rate drops and nobody tells you. You find out from lost deals.
Contractors describe this happening in real time. One reported using Ally successfully for two years, then watching declines skyrocket on lower FICO customers as the lender tightened. Another was told by EnerBank, in effect, that his customer mix was the problem: "Been using EnerBank, but they don't want my business because of the low credit score customers." A third found Ally would not even open an account without roughly 400,000 dollars in financed volume the prior year, at a company already doing seven figures.
The architecture experienced shops use instead has two layers, and a roofing contractor laid it out clearly on r/Roofing:
- First look: a soft-pull marketplace. Hearth, Acorn, Enhancify or similar. One application, no credit impact, multiple lenders quoting at once. The customer sees real options in front of you.
- Second look: a direct lender or subprime specialist. Service Finance, FTL, Fortiva, OPTIMUS. This is where the applications the marketplace could not place go, usually at a higher customer rate or a higher dealer fee.
His reasoning for that order is the part most contractors get backwards: "It is usually better to use Enhancify or Hearth as your first look lender because they do a soft credit check to show what someone qualifies for. A lot of direct lenders are still in the Stone Age of only doing hard credit pulls." Every hard pull you burn on a customer who will not qualify costs them points and costs you goodwill.
Approval numbers the providers publish are worth reading with that structure in mind. Wisetack states an approval rate near 80 percent of applicants. An OPTIMUS user reported a 97.8 percent approval rating on the two-look program. Those are not comparable figures, because a two-look program is measuring something structurally different from a single product. What they do tell you is that stacking works.
Watch out
Soft pull and pre-qualification are not the same as approval. Contractors using Wisetack report customers pre-qualifying for less than the project cost, "project is 13k and they qualify for 7 to 8k." A pre-qualification that lands under your quote is a stalled deal, not a closed one. Ask every provider what percentage of pre-qualified customers fund at full project value, not just what percentage get approved for something.
Integration is a fee you pay in labour
If financing does not fire automatically from inside the quote your crew already sends, it does not get offered consistently, and a program nobody offers has an infinite cost per closed job.
Wisetack is the deep integration play. It is native inside Jobber, Housecall Pro, FieldPulse, ServiceTitan and Thryv, which is the entire reason many contractors are on it. A low voltage contractor on r/Contractor described the whole decision: "We utilise Housecall Pro for our invoicing and estimates, so adding Wisetack was super simple since they're partners. I honestly never explored other options."
That is not laziness, it is a real cost calculation. He also described how he uses it, and it is the highest-leverage detail in this entire article: "By default, we send it to every client when we initially book them so they can look at the options themselves without us directly asking them if they're interested in financing." No pitch, no awkward money conversation, no rep who has to be trained to raise it.
The bank programs integrate too, but usually through the manufacturer and distributor channel rather than the field-software channel. Synchrony runs through Rheem, LG, Samsung, Mitsubishi Electric and Generac. Wells Fargo runs through Trane, American Standard and Carrier. GreenSky runs through FieldEdge, Payzer, Leap and ServiceTitan. If you are a branded dealer, the cheapest program you can get is often the one your equipment manufacturer subsidises. A Synchrony user noted exactly that: "You need to contact your dealer, some manufacturers kick in on the fees, for example Mitsubishi, 36 month interest free, and no cost to me."
That is a genuinely free lunch, and it is invisible unless you ask your distributor rep rather than the lender's sales rep.
Compliance is part of the comparison
On 12 July 2021 the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a consent order against GreenSky. The Bureau found the company had engaged in origination activity on thousands of loans to consumers who did not request or authorise them, and that the program was structured in a way that enabled those originations. GreenSky was required to refund or cancel up to 9 million dollars in loans, implement enhanced loan authorisation and verification procedures, and pay a 2.5 million dollar civil penalty.
The mechanism matters more than the headline. Unauthorised originations in a merchant-facilitated program happen at the point of sale, which means they happen with a contractor's login. Whatever program you sign, the authorisation trail is partly your exposure.
Two related items belong on the same checklist:
- Price parity. Many dealer agreements require the financed price to match the cash price, which is why the standard advice is to build the fee into all pricing as overhead rather than adding it at the end. A homeowner on r/Construction described a contractor adding a 1,240 dollar financing fee after the fact on a job that had listed the financed total as "TBD." That is how complaints and chargebacks start.
- Steering. Some jurisdictions restrict how far a contractor can go in recommending a specific financial product. "Here are the options, talk to your own advisor" is a safer posture than "you should take this plan," and it costs you nothing at the table.
How to choose in 20 minutes
You do not need a six week evaluation. You need five answers from every provider, in writing, before you sign.
- Send me the full rate sheet, not the highlight plan. If they will not, that is the answer. Every plan code, every term, every dealer fee.
- What is the funding trigger and the funding window? Completion confirmation, homeowner signature, or authorisation submission. And what happens if the homeowner is unhappy about something unrelated to payment.
- Soft pull or hard pull on the first application? And how many lenders see that single application.
- What percentage of pre-qualified customers fund at the full project amount? Not the approval rate. The fund-at-full-value rate.
- How much notice do I get before plans or fees change? Get the clause number, not a reassurance from a salesperson.
Then match the shape of the program to the shape of your work. Small tickets and high volume through field software point to a flat per-transaction product. Large replacement tickets with a trained in-home process point to a bank program where a 4 percent plan on a short promotion beats everything. Heavy financed volume points to a subscription marketplace, where the crossover is simply the annual licence divided by 3.9 percent of your average ticket: that quotient is the number of financed jobs per year at which the flat fee stops being cheaper.
And if the answer to "should we run a paid program at all" is still open, the arithmetic behind that decision is a separate question with a separate answer, worked through in should I offer financing to my customers.
The honest version
There is no best contractor financing company, and every page that names one is either selling that company or being paid by it. The published rate sheets from twelve providers show ranges that sit almost on top of each other, which means the brand you pick is a weak lever and the plan you pick is a strong one.
What actually varies is mundane and unglamorous: who holds your money and for how long, whose credit box matches your customers, and whether the offer appears inside the quote your crew already sends without anyone remembering to open a second tab. Compare those three things and the choice usually makes itself.
The last thing worth saying is the one lenders never will. Financing converts estimates you already have. It does not produce estimates. A contractor closing 38 percent of ten quotes a month does not have a financing problem, and no dealer fee on earth fixes a thin pipeline. If that is the actual constraint, the fix lives upstream in lead generation, not in a rate sheet.