SPAN Home vs RAB Lightcloud Blue
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
SPAN Home
This app provides smart control over your home's electrical panel, allowing you to monitor energy usage, manage individual rooms and appliances, and uncover cost-saving insights. It enhances home energy management and offers advanced features when paired with solar and battery systems, including EV charging.
- Real-time energy dashboard
- Room and appliance level control
- Cost saving insights
- Power outage protection
- EV charging integration
- Over-the-air updates
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For SPAN Panel MAIN 32 “This thing is a game changer. This is how you save money” - Jon Dawson, Next-gen builder “A long-overdue, borderline genius product that puts much-needed control back into the hands of homeowners.” - Wired Magazine “SPAN is now the center of my smart home. I’ve been waiting most of my life for this product” - A SPAN customer SPAN reinvented the 100-year-old electrical panel with smarter controls for smarter savings. It replaces your existing electrical panel and gives you complete control over every room and appliance in your home right from your phone. From anywhere in the world, the SPAN Home® App allows you to: Centralize your home’s energy data into one real-time dashboard, giving you a 360° view of your home’s energy performance Make real-time energy changes at the room and appliance level to suit your needs and lower your energy bill Uncover cost-saving insights designed to lower your energy bill and save you money When paired with solar panels and a home battery system, SPAN gives you the best protection against power outages by extending battery life by 40%, providing whole-home backup on a single battery system, and the unmatched flexibility to change what your battery system powers in an outage. Your SPAN Home can include SPAN Drive, a universal EV charger that delivers up to 41 miles of range per hour (48A, 11.52kW) of charging for the fastest charging speeds available - all without a service upgrade to install. The SPAN Home App is constantly improving with free, over-the-air updates designed to improve your experience and unlock greater savings.
RAB Lightcloud Blue
Control your lighting devices with a Bluetooth mesh system. Easily commission and manage thousands of lamps and fixtures from your phone. Customize lighting with dimming, color control, and create custom scenes and schedules.
- Bluetooth mesh system
- Quick commissioning
- Control thousands of devices
- Customizable scenes and schedules
- Circadian lighting (SmartShift)
- Occupancy sensor control
- At-Home and Emergency modes
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The Lightcloud Blue products use a Bluetooth mesh system to quickly commission and control lighting devices. Scale as you need, with RAB’s vast lighting portfolio of Lightcloud Blue enabled products. Control thousands of different lamps and fixtures from your phone, or for added convenience use RAB’s handheld Remote Control. QUICK AND SIMPLE COMMISSIONING RAB’s simple-to-use mobile app allows users to quickly pair and commission a residence or even large commercial project, in record time. Each device in our Bluetooth Mesh system can communicate with any other device, eliminating the need for a Gateway or Hub. Lightcloud Blue offers the ability to commission hundreds of devices simultaneously and begin controlling your space in minutes. SECURE Lightcloud Blue offers the industrial-grade security communications within the mesh network. All messages within RAB’s Lightcloud Blue network are encrypted and authenticated. SCALABLE Lightcloud Blue allows users to grow their system from a handful of devices to up-to 3,000 devices per app login. As devices are added, the system’s range increases – no Gateways or Hub required. Learn how to expand your system even further with Lightcloud Enterprise at www.lightcloud.com. CUSTOMIZABLE Personalize your space with a click of a button. The mobile app offers easy on/off, dimming, and color control. Group lamps and fixtures into Areas for the ability to control multiple devices at once. Create Scenes and Schedules and assign them to individual devices or Areas to quickly configure the lighting for your space. LUMINAIRE LEVEL LIGHTING CONTROL (LLLC) Qualifies for LLLC utility incentive programs. Wireless, integrated Lightcloud Blue controls enable fast commissioning and simple management. Make quick adjustments to sensor settings directly from the mobile app, including occupancy/vacancy, sensitivity levels, and manual settings for occupancy timeout. Reduce energy costs and improve occupant experience with granular or Area control using occupancy, dimming, high-end trim and more. SMARTSHIFT SmartShift is a circadian lighting system that matches the natural patterns of daylight and helps our bodies get back in sync with the sun. When enabled, it automatically tunes the color and intensity of lamps and fixtures throughout the day, mimicking the sun's changing light as it rises and sets. We’ve already created some SmartShift Presets for you in the app or create your own for customizable control. SPECIALTY Lightcloud Blue offers unique embedded features such as At-Home and Emergency Mode. At-Home creates the appearance that the space is occupied, by automatically scheduling lamps and fixtures to randomly turn on, dim, and turn off throughout the day. Emergency Mode serves as a visual notification that, when enabled, will randomly flash the lights to deter trespassers or signal there is an emergency. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS iOS 13 or higher Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) 4.0 or higher
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: SPAN Home at 3.6 against RAB Lightcloud Blue's 3.1. SPAN Home also leads on update cadence (fortnightly vs every 3 months) and ratings volume (104 vs 22). RAB Lightcloud Blue's advantage is review sentiment (43% vs 29%) and device support (3 vs 1). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
SPAN Home holds the better App Store score, 3.6 against 3.1. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 104 and 22 respectively. Written reviews complicate that: 29% of SPAN Home's written reviews are positive against 43% of RAB Lightcloud Blue's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
SPAN Home ships an update fortnightly, RAB Lightcloud Blue every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on November 3, 2026 and November 12, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | SPAN Home | RAB Lightcloud Blue |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.6 (104 ratings) — better | 3.1 (22 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 28.6% of reviews | 42.9% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 104 — better | 22 |
| Update frequency | Fortnightly — better | Every 3 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.6 | 15.6 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 120 MB | 63 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Span.io, Inc | RAB Lighting Inc |
Customer experience
SPAN Home
RAB Lightcloud Blue
Bugs and requests
SPAN Home
Reported bugs
34 issues- App freezes on iPad
- Circuit switching sometimes fails
- App shows ads for other products
- Energy usage data is inaccurate or delayed
- PowerUp feature control is hidden
Show 29 moreShow fewer
- App needs force quit to work
- Data fails to load or stalls
- App loses connectivity with batteries
- System does not function as intended during power outages
- Estimated battery hours/minutes are incorrect
- App shows panel offline when it's online
- App recently deleted backup instructions
- App displays data hours old
- App crashes or encounters problems constantly
- App is slow to load
- App is sluggish and chunky
- App shows solar production at night
- App does not support Powerwall 2
- Responsiveness for switching breakers is poor
- Circuit monitoring breaks frequently
- Panel does not function offline
- Password change process is difficult
- App does not integrate multiple panels correctly
- Setup was a pain
- App in a cycle of constant loading
- App does not have native iPad support
- App UI looks dated
- App crashes and takes a while to launch
- App loses connection to battery system frequently
- App disconnects way too often
- App is seriously dumbed down from v1
- App has basic inconsistencies in real-time stats
- App data does not match Tesla App
- App only supports Alexa and it doesn't work
Requested features
23 requests- Unified view for multiple panels
- Improved app customization
- More robust connectivity
- Better Tesla battery integration support
- Easier labeling of breakers
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- Darker, more readable app interface
- Desktop dashboard/web app
- Smaller SPAN sub-panel option
- Modular sub-panel breaker monitoring
- Public API for Home Assistant integration
- Native iPad support (split screen, hover)
- More smart home integration (Apple HomeKit)
- Ability to toggle between panels with swipe
- Increased character limit for circuit names
- iOS Widget for at-a-glance data
- Schedule breakers to turn on/off automatically
- Better daily data view for breaker level changes
- 2FA for account security
- Historical usage per circuit
- SPAN Drive mode for solar-only charging
- Basic voltage readouts for grid diagnostics
- Improved Time of Day Plans functionality
- Fix for 'areas' feature for multi-panel setups
RAB Lightcloud Blue
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
SPAN Home
No in-app purchases
RAB Lightcloud Blue
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is SPAN Home free?
Is RAB Lightcloud Blue free?
Which has better reviews, SPAN Home or RAB Lightcloud Blue?
Do SPAN Home or RAB Lightcloud Blue have ads?
Which is updated more often, SPAN Home or RAB Lightcloud Blue?
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