HomeZada vs Centriq: What to Use After the 2026 Shutdown

By the Real Estate Ledger Team

If you searched for "HomeZada vs Centriq" looking to pick between them, the answer changed on January 31, 2026. That is when Centriq shut down, deleted user accounts, and ended a decade of nameplate-scanning, manual-retrieval, and recall-alert features that homeowners had built routines around. HomeZada is still active. So the real comparison today is: what was each app good at, where did each fall short, and what should you actually use now.

The answer is not always HomeZada. Many ex-Centriq users have moved to Homer (the official CSV migration path) for appliance tracking, while others have stepped up to broader property documentation platforms. This guide breaks down the head-to-head, then covers what to do with the answer.

What HomeZada Does

HomeZada is a comprehensive home management platform that has been around since 2012. It covers home inventory, scheduled maintenance, renovation project tracking, financial management, and an AI assistant called Zada AI. According to a 2025 Bankrate study, homeowners spend an average of $21,400 per year on hidden costs including $8,808 in maintenance alone, and 42% of homeowners say those costs were higher than expected. HomeZada's pitch is that putting maintenance and inventory in one dashboard helps you stay ahead of those surprises.

Pricing starts at $59/year for one home (Premium), with a Family plan at $99/year for up to five homes. There is a free basic tier.

The trade-offs: HomeZada is feature-rich enough to have a learning curve, and review sites surface recurring complaints about billing and customer support. There is no document verification. Uploaded files sit in folders without timestamps or fingerprinting. And the G2 profile has been inactive for over a year, which suggests slower public-facing engagement than the breadth of features implies.

What Centriq Did (Past Tense)

Centriq's strength was focus. Snap a photo of an appliance nameplate or UPC barcode, and the app retrieved the user manual, troubleshooting guides, parts listings, and any related how-to videos. It checked owned products daily against the national product safety recall database, pushing alerts when recalls hit.

The app organized appliances by room, supported multiple properties on paid tiers, and let users add receipts, warranties, and maintenance reminders. As This Old House noted in its review, Centriq was the fastest way to go from "what model is this?" to having the full manual on your phone.

But the scope stopped at appliances. Permits, inspection reports, closing documents, renovation records, insurance policies: none of that lived in Centriq. And as users found out the hard way in January 2026, none of the data lived in a portable format either. The export window was tight (closed January 31, 2026), the CSV did not include photos or attached documents, and after the deadline everything was deleted.

HomeZada vs Centriq: The Direct Comparison

The matrix tells the story. HomeZada is broader; Centriq was deeper on appliances. The most useful comparison today is not between them. It is between HomeZada and Centriq's successors.

What to Actually Use in 2026

Three real options have emerged for the use cases HomeZada vs Centriq used to cover.

Option 1: Homer (the official Centriq successor)

Homer is the Sweden-based home management app that absorbed Centriq's user base. It shipped a dedicated Centriq CSV Importer (iOS v3.9.11, December 18, 2025) ahead of the shutdown, and Centriq's own shutdown communications directed users there. Homer covers home inventory, AI-retrieved owner's manuals, receipts and warranties, maintenance tasks, a home timeline, floor plan scanning, and AR notes.

Strengths include strong AI features (AutoMagic auto-fill, an AI Bot that creates tasks and timeline events) and an active weekly release cadence. Available on iOS, Android, Mac, and visionOS in eight languages.

Limitations: No web app, which makes it harder to use at a desk for buyer, lender, or insurer handoffs. No document verification. No property-transfer or transaction-ready guidebook for closings. A per-property paywall ($9.99 "one more home" in-app purchase) penalizes multi-property homeowners. Subscription tiers run up to $69.99.

Choose Homer if you mainly want what Centriq used to do (appliance tracking, manuals, and maintenance reminders) with a modern AI layer on top.

Option 2: HomeZada (the broader incumbent)

If you wanted Centriq's appliance scanning but never actually used it that much, and what you really need is budgeting plus inventory plus maintenance scheduling, HomeZada still does that well. The Family plan ($99/year for up to five homes) is a fair price for the breadth.

Choose HomeZada if you want detailed financial tools alongside maintenance tracking, and you do not need verified records for resale or insurance.

Option 3: Real Estate Ledger (the broader documentation platform)

Real Estate Ledger covers what neither HomeZada nor Centriq fully addressed: property-wide documentation with AI categorization and tamper-evident provenance via Digital Evidence. Every uploaded document, whether a permit, inspection report, warranty, invoice, or maintenance log, is fingerprinted through Digital Evidence, creating a tamper-evident record. AI categorizes documents automatically. A shareable Property Guidebook turns the record into a presentation-ready asset for buyers, lenders, or insurers.

Scott Martin, a retired Air Force brigadier general in Dayton, Ohio, used a Property Guidebook during a January listing. The result: 17 private showings over three days, seven offers, under contract on day three with appraisal gap coverage, and a final sale price $30,000 above asking. The buyer's agent told him: "If I had a dollar for every client who asked for a CARFAX-like report for a home, I'd be rich."

Pricing: free for up to 10 properties with 5 GB storage, AI categorization, Digital Evidence verification, and Property Guidebook reports. No credit card required. Enterprise tier for 11+ properties.

Choose Real Estate Ledger if you want a record that outlasts any single app, with verified documentation you can hand to buyers, lenders, or insurers when it matters.

The Lesson From the Centriq Shutdown

Centriq's closure is a useful reminder that platform durability matters. Years of data disappeared because a single company decided to retire its product. Users who kept backup copies outside the app had a safety net. Everyone else started over.

The CPSC issued 357 product recalls in 2025, the highest in nearly a decade, affecting more than 24 million consumer units. A 2025 American Home Shield survey found that 92% of new homeowners experienced at least one issue in their first year. The records that prove what happened, when, and to which appliance are valuable for warranty claims, insurance disputes, and resale negotiations, but only if they survive the platform you stored them on.

For more on the broader market, see our HomeZada alternative breakdown, our Centriq alternative guide, and our Homer home management app alternative comparison. If you are deciding which records to keep, our homeowner document checklist and appliance warranty tracker template provide a starting point.

Try a Verified Property Record Free

Real Estate Ledger fingerprints every document with Digital Evidence so your property history survives platform changes and travels with the home. Start free for up to 10 properties at realestateledger.io. No credit card required.

Bottom Line

HomeZada vs Centriq stopped being a real choice in January 2026. If you want what Centriq did, choose Homer. If you want broad home management with budgeting, choose HomeZada. If you want a verified property record that outlasts any single app, covering appliances and everything else, Real Estate Ledger is the broader play. The right answer depends on what you are protecting and how long you need the record to last.