Monitored vs Self Monitored

Who calls 911

The real question is who decides to call the police

Self-monitoring means your phone buzzes and you decide. Professional monitoring means an operator in a monitoring station decides, using your contact list and your city's rules. Everything else about this comparison, the app, the sensors, the cameras, is usually identical hardware. You are buying a decision-maker.

The price gap is small enough to work out exactly, because several providers publish both tiers. Abode's self-monitoring Standard plan is $8.49 a month or $79.99 a year, and its Pro plan with 24/7 professional monitoring, 4G cellular backup and automatic emergency dispatch is $26.99 a month or $245.99 a year¹. SimpliSafe lists self-monitoring with camera recordings at $9.99 a month and its Standard professionally monitored plan at $22.99².

One thing does not change with the choice. Phoenix requires a permit "for alarm systems monitored by an alarm company as well as those that are not"⁶. Self-monitoring is not a way around your city's registration rules, and in several jurisdictions it is not a way around its false alarm fees either.

Six differences that decide this for most people

Compare the two on published prices, on what happens at 3am, and on what your city and your insurer expect.

What self-monitoring costs

Less than most people assume, and sometimes nothing. Abode states its system "works straight out of the box with no subscription required" for app access, live video and push notifications, and prices its self-monitoring Standard plan at $8.49 a month or $79.99 a year¹. SimpliSafe's self-monitoring plan with camera recordings is $9.99 a month².

What professional monitoring costs

Entry pricing among providers that publish it starts at $9.99 a month with Wyze, or $99.99 for the year³. Ring includes 24/7 professional monitoring in its Pro tier at $19.99 a month or $199.99 a year⁴. Abode Pro is $26.99 monthly¹ and SimpliSafe Core is $32.99².

The gap, worked out

Within one provider the step up is easy to price. Abode: $26.99 minus $8.49 is $18.50 a month, or $245.99 minus $79.99, which is $166.00 a year¹. SimpliSafe: $22.99 minus $9.99 is $13.00 a month². That is the price of not having to make the call yourself.

What only the paid tier includes

Read the tier contents, not the label. Abode puts 4G cellular backup and automatic emergency dispatch in Pro alongside monitoring¹. Professional monitoring also opens the option of a UL Listed station, which is inspected on site before listing and audited annually¹². Self-monitoring gives you none of that.

Verified response narrows the difference

In some cities the monitoring company cannot simply call police. Under verified response, companies "must verify the legitimacy of alarms (except holdup, duress, and panic alarms) before calling the police", usually visually⁵. Where that applies, professional monitoring is buying verification and escalation rather than an instant dispatch.

Permits apply to both

Phoenix requires a permit for alarm systems whether or not a company monitors them⁶. Montgomery County, Maryland requires that every burglar alarm system be registered before it is placed into service, at $30 initially and $10 every two years⁷. Neither rule asks who watches the panel.

Cheapest published professional monitoring$9.99 a month, Wyze

Abode step up to professional$18.50 more a month

What does it cost?

Here is the arithmetic, using each provider's own published plan prices and comparing only within that provider. Abode charges $8.49 a month for self-monitoring Standard and $26.99 for Pro with professional monitoring, a difference of $18.50 a month. Annually that is $245.99 minus $79.99, which is $166.00¹. SimpliSafe charges $9.99 for self-monitoring with camera recordings and $22.99 for Standard, a difference of $13.00 a month². Across the four providers that publish, self-monitoring with recordings runs $3.99 to $9.99 a month and entry professional monitoring runs $9.99 to $32.99¹²³⁴.

Set against that monthly gap are costs on the other side of the ledger that nobody publishes a figure for. If you self-monitor and are asleep, the alarm is a siren and a notification. If you use professional monitoring and your system misfires repeatedly, you pay your city's false alarm ladder either way. Neither of those has a price you can look up in advance, and no source publishes an equipment or installed system cost that meets the standard used here, so plan on getting an itemised written quote instead.

All plan prices were read off each provider's own pricing page on 7 August 2026, the subtractions are shown so you can check them, and the figures cover monitoring service only, excluding hardware, installation, taxes and municipal alarm fees.

Hiring

How to hire for either approach

1

Who does the work

With self-monitoring, you do, at every hour. With professional monitoring, a monitoring station does, and you should ask which one. UL Solutions examines a station on site before listing it against UL 827 and audits every listed company annually, so UL Listed is a checkable claim about a facility rather than a slogan¹². Ask for the station's name and its listing status.

2

What pros will ask

Expect a contact list, a verbal passcode, and questions about who else can disarm the system. Ask them what the station does before it calls police, how many people it tries first, and how long that takes. If your area uses verified response, ask specifically how they verify, since the rule generally exempts holdup, duress and panic alarms from verification⁵.

3

What to check before signing

Read the renewal clause carefully. There is currently no federal FTC rule requiring an alarm company to offer easy cancellation of an auto-renewing monitoring contract⁹. California invalidates an auto-renewal longer than one month unless you separately signed or initialled a disclosure before signing the contract¹¹, so check what your own state requires.

Monitoring questions, answered straight

How much more does professional monitoring actually cost?

Compare within one provider and the answer is precise. Abode charges $8.49 a month for self-monitoring and $26.99 for Pro with professional monitoring, so the step up is $18.50 a month, or $166.00 a year against its annual prices of $79.99 and $245.99¹. SimpliSafe charges $9.99 for self-monitoring with camera recordings and $22.99 for Standard, a $13.00 monthly step². The cheapest published professional monitoring of the four is Wyze at $9.99 a month³.

If I self-monitor, do I still need an alarm permit?

In several jurisdictions yes, and the ordinances are written to say so explicitly. Phoenix requires a permit "for alarm systems monitored by an alarm company as well as those that are not", and assesses $96.00 for each burglar alarm response to an unpermitted address⁶. Montgomery County, Maryland requires every burglar alarm system to be registered before it is placed into service, and charges $30 to register plus $10 every two years to renew⁷. Check your own city before you assume.

Will self-monitoring still get me an insurance discount?

Ask your insurer, because the published wording points at monitoring. The Texas Department of Insurance lists that companies "may offer discounts for having a monitored burglary or smoke alarm system"⁸, and publishes no percentage. Separately, policing research on verified response notes that insurers kept giving discounts in those cities, "as it is the monitoring itself, not whether it is done by police or private security, that appears to matter"⁵. Get your own insurer's answer in writing before you count on it.

What is verified response, and does it make monitoring pointless?

No, it changes what monitoring does. Under verified response, monitoring companies must confirm an alarm is legitimate before calling police, except for holdup, duress and panic alarms, and confirmation is typically visual on-scene verification⁵. Cities adopting it have seen alarm calls fall by around 90 percent, and Salt Lake City adopted it in 2000, gaining the equivalent of five full-time officers⁵. One caution: that source describes a mid-2000s position, and no current national count of verified response cities is published.

Can I cancel professional monitoring whenever I want?

That depends on your contract and your state, not on a federal guarantee. The FTC's 2024 click-to-cancel rule was vacated by the Eighth Circuit and the Commission restored the earlier Negative Option Rule effective 12 February 2026⁹. What survives federally covers prenotification merchandise plans, where a seller announces goods it proposes to send and bills subscribers for them¹⁰, not monitoring. California invalidates auto-renewal clauses over one month without a separately signed disclosure¹¹.

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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