HailRecon vs RoofHeadsUp: maps or address lists?
Two different answers to the same storm. Here's an honest breakdown of what each tool actually does — written by the founder of one of them.
Full disclosure up front: I built RoofHeadsUp, so read this knowing where my paycheck comes from. I'm going to be straight about what HailRecon does well, because plenty of good roofing companies use it and some of you reading this should too.
What HailRecon is
HailRecon, by Interactive Hail Maps, is a radar-based hail mapping tool. It draws detailed hail swaths from radar data — the footprint of where hail likely fell, at what sizes — usually within minutes of a storm. It has a mobile app for canvassing, and its historical archive reaches back to 2011, which matters when you're knocking a neighborhood and want to say "this street also took hail in 2023." They offer single-state and multi-state plans; pricing isn't published on their site, so ask them directly.
What RoofHeadsUp is
RoofHeadsUp doesn't sell maps. When NOAA/NWS reports hail in your service area, our scheduled hourly scan turns it into an alert with a ready-to-drive address list: the streets and candidate homes near the report, ranked by distance and hail size, as a spreadsheet your crew can work that morning. We cover Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, and Missouri, and every paid plan includes a weekly feed of government roofing bids for the off-season. Pricing is public: $39–$149/month with a 14-day free trial.
| Them | RoofHeadsUp | |
|---|---|---|
| Core output | Radar hail swath maps you interpret | Alert email + address list you drive |
| Data source | Radar-derived swaths (granular storm footprint) | Official NOAA/NWS storm reports + county property records |
| Speed | Maps within minutes of the storm | Email alert after the scheduled hourly NOAA/NWS scan |
| History | Archive back to 2011 — excellent | Storm archive since 2026; growing |
| Canvassing app | Yes — built for door-knocking | No app; the spreadsheet works with any canvassing tool |
| Government bids | No | Yes — TX/OK/KS/CO/NE/MO roofing solicitations, weekly digest |
| Pricing | Not published — contact them | Public: $39–$149/mo, 14-day free trial |
Where HailRecon is the better choice
Be honest with yourself about how your crew works. If your team lives inside a canvassing app, marks houses on a map all day, and you want radar swaths with a decade-plus of history behind them, HailRecon is built for exactly that. Radar swaths also show the shapeof a storm's footprint in more granular detail than point reports do. Public adjusters and PDR companies use it for good reason.
Where RoofHeadsUp is the better choice
If your bottleneck isn't knowing where it hailed — it's turning that knowledge into a route before your competition does — that's the job we built for. A map still requires someone to study it, pick neighborhoods, and build a list. We skip to the list. You also get transparent pricing, no demo call, and the government-bid feed that keeps the pipeline alive when it isn't hailing.
The honest bottom line
These tools aren't really substitutes — they answer different questions. HailRecon answers "where exactly did the storm go, and what's the history here?" RoofHeadsUp answers "which doors should my crew knock this morning, and what do we work on in the off-season?" Some serious storm chasers run both. If you only run one and your goal is speed-to-doorstep with the least homework, start our free trial and compare against whatever you use today.
Competitor details verified against public sources as of July 2026 — features and plans change, so confirm current specifics on their site.