Home Security Monitoring Companies

Who answers

You are buying an operator on a headset, not a box

A monitoring company is a room full of people. When a sensor trips, the signal reaches a monitoring station where a trained operator decides whether to call you, your emergency contacts, or the police. UL 827, the Standard for Central-Station Alarm Services, describes systems in which protection circuits are "signaled automatically to, recorded in, and supervised from a central-station or residential monitoring station having trained operators on duty at all times"². It is currently at Edition 9².

That room can be audited, or it can be nobody's business but the company's. UL Solutions inspects a monitoring station on site before listing it, then audits every listed station annually¹. Listed stations can issue Protected Property Alarm System Certificates for a specific address, which UL says "are often required by insurance companies and code officials"¹. UL Listed is a checkable claim about a facility, not a slogan.

Prices are where this category gets slippery. SimpliSafe, Ring, Wyze and Abode publish monitoring prices on their own pages. ADT and Vivint block automated access to theirs, so this guide states no ADT or Vivint monthly price. Treat any third-party site quoting one as unverified.

Six kinds of monitoring company, and how to tell them apart

The differences that matter are who owns the monitoring station, how the company reaches you, and whether it will put a price in writing before you talk to a salesperson.

Providers who publish a price

SimpliSafe lists Standard at $22.99 a month, Core at $32.99, Pro at $49.99 and Pro Plus at $79.99, and states "Plans are paid monthly, with no contracts or hidden fees"³. Wyze lists professional monitoring at $9.99 monthly or $99.99 annually⁵. You can compare those before anyone visits.

Camera brands that added dispatch

Ring sells professional monitoring inside its Ring Pro tier at $19.99 a month or $199.99 a year, and notes plans "auto-renew until canceled" with "One device or location covered per plan"⁴. Abode Pro is $26.99 a month or $245.99 a year and adds 4G cellular backup and automatic emergency dispatch⁶.

Companies whose price you cannot check

ADT and Vivint both refuse automated requests to their pricing pages, which means no monthly figure for either could be read off their own sites for this guide. You can still get a quote from a human. Just do not accept a number you found on a comparison site as their published price.

Door-to-door dealer networks

The FTC complaint against Vivint described a model in which the company "uses door-to-door sales representatives working on a commission-only basis to sell the company's home security devices and monitoring services"⁷. Commission-only pay at your front door is a structural fact about the sale, and it is worth knowing before the knock.

Telemarketing sellers

In 2014 the FTC settled with a home security telemarketer that had made more than two million calls in about eight months, at least one million of them to numbers on the Do Not Call Registry⁹. The same operator was later permanently banned from all telemarketing, with a suspended judgment of $9,845,021⁹.

Licensed technicians versus temporary registrations

California's consumer guide states that a temporary alarm employee registration is valid for 120 days and that "individuals working with a temporary registration have not undergone a criminal history background review by the Bureau"¹⁰. Ask who is coming, and what their status is, before you let anyone survey your house.

Lowest published pro monitoring$9.99 a month, Wyze

Highest published plan$79.99 a month, SimpliSafe Pro Plus

What does it cost?

Four providers publish a monitoring price you can read directly. Wyze Home Monitoring is $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year⁵. Ring's professionally monitored Pro tier is $19.99 a month or $199.99 a year⁴. Abode Pro is $26.99 a month or $245.99 a year⁶. SimpliSafe runs $22.99 for Standard, $32.99 for Core, $49.99 for Pro and $79.99 for Pro Plus³. Abode's self-monitoring Standard plan is $79.99 a year or $8.49 a month, and Abode states its system "works straight out of the box with no subscription required" for app access and live video⁶.

Installation and hardware are a different matter. Ring publishes professional installation "starting at $129.99 per device (billed separately)"⁴. No government body, trade association or manufacturer publishes an average whole-system installation cost, and every starter kit price tested was injected by JavaScript rather than served in the page, so no kit price appears here. If you need a hardware number, get a written quote with the equipment list attached.

Every figure here was read off the provider's own pricing page on 7 August 2026, covers monitoring service only, and excludes equipment, installation, taxes, local alarm permit fees and false alarm fines.

Hiring

How to hire a monitoring company

1

Who does the work

Two separate businesses are usually involved: the dealer who sells and installs, and the monitoring station that watches the account. They are often not the same company. Ask which monitoring station holds your account, whether it is UL Listed under UL 827, and whether that listing covers residential accounts¹². Then ask what happens to your contract if the dealer sells its account book.

2

What pros will ask

Expect questions about door and window counts, pets that could trip a motion sensor, who your emergency contacts are, and whether you want cellular backup. A licensed seller in California must also disclose local permit fees on any contract over $250¹⁰, so a good salesperson will already know your city registers alarms. If nobody asks about your local permit, that is a signal.

3

What to check before signing

California caps the down payment on an alarm contract at $1,000 or 10 percent of the contract price excluding finance charges, whichever is less¹⁰. Check the initial term, the renewal clause, and whether the monthly price you were quoted matches the published plan. If the company will not name its monitoring station, or the price only exists in conversation, stop there.

Monitoring company questions, answered straight

What does UL Listed actually mean for a monitoring company?

It means the monitoring station itself was inspected and certified, not that the doorbell camera passed a test. UL Solutions conducts an on-site examination of the facility and its operations before listing it against UL 827, and then audits every listed monitoring company annually¹. UL 827 is the Standard for Central-Station Alarm Services and is currently at Edition 9². Listed stations can issue Protected Property Alarm System Certificates for an individual address, which UL notes are often required by insurance companies and code officials¹.

Why will you not tell me what ADT or Vivint costs per month?

Because neither company's pricing page could be read directly. Both refuse automated requests, so no ADT or Vivint monthly monitoring price is established here, and quoting one from a comparison site would mean publishing a number nobody can trace. The four providers whose prices appear in this guide all publish them on their own support or plans pages³⁴⁵⁶. If you want an ADT or Vivint figure, get it in writing from the company, dated, with the equipment list attached.

Has the FTC actually taken action against monitoring companies?

Yes, repeatedly. Vivint agreed to pay $20 million in April 2021, a $15 million civil penalty plus $5 million for consumer redress, over allegations it misused credit reports to help unqualified customers obtain financing⁷. The FTC alleged some representatives used a technique it called "white paging", finding another consumer with a similar name and using that person's credit history to qualify a buyer⁷. In December 2024 the FTC sent its first round of payments to 470 consumers, averaging $1,056⁸.

Does the company or the monitoring station call the police?

The monitoring station does, and how fast depends on your city as much as your contract. Some jurisdictions require the alarm company to supply a unique identifying number with every dispatch request. Some stop dispatching to addresses with a history of false alarms. Ask the company what its verification procedure is before it calls police, how many contacts it tries first, and what your local police department requires. Those answers change the value of the service far more than the brand name does.

Will a monitored system lower my home insurance?

Insurers do offer the discount, but no regulator publishes a percentage. The Texas Department of Insurance lists it among available discounts, stating companies "may offer discounts for having a monitored burglary or smoke alarm system"¹¹. It does not quantify it, and discounts are set per company. Any specific percentage you see quoted in this category is unsourced as far as this research could establish. Ask your own insurer what it would credit, in writing, before you factor a discount into the decision.

Sources

Where these facts came from

Every figure on this page was read out of the page linked below. We do not cite cost aggregators.

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