SPAN Home vs sonnen
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.
sonnen
Manage your clean energy supply from anywhere. Monitor your solar PV system, battery, and EV charger in real-time. Gain insights into energy consumption and generation to optimize your usage and prepare for outages.
- Real-time energy data and insights
- Monitor solar PV system performance
- Track battery and EV charger status
- View live energy flow and consumption
- Access energy contract details
- Set battery backup buffer
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With the sonnen App, you are empowered to manage your own clean energy anytime from anywhere. Use real-time energy data and insights to guide you on how to stay powered and protected with your solar photovoltaic (PV) system, your sonnenHome battery and energy products. Be part of the sonnenCommunity with the sonnen App and build a clean energy future. The sonnen App allows you to: - Get an overview of the performance of your sonnenHome energy system including your battery, PV system and EV charger (where applicable) - Access details on your sonnen energy contracts - See detailed insights on your household’s live energy flow - Get real-time and historical system data on your household’s energy consumption and generation - Choose a basic or professional mode on how you would like your energy data to be displayed - Set your battery backup buffer so your household is prepared for an energy outage
Screenshots
Verdict
SPAN Home and sonnen both sit at 3.6 stars, but that hides the real split: 38% of sonnen's written reviews are positive against 29% of SPAN Home's. sonnen also leads on iOS requirement (15.1 vs 17.6). SPAN Home's advantage is ratings volume (104 vs 20). On price, rating, update cadence and ads 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.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 3.6 for SPAN Home against 3.5 for sonnen. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: SPAN Home has 104 ratings behind it against 20, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 29% of SPAN Home's written reviews are positive against 38% of sonnen's.
Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly fortnightly. Both last shipped on November 3, 2026.
| Parameter | SPAN Home | sonnen |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.6 (104 ratings) — better | 3.5 (20 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 28.6% of reviews | 38.3% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 104 — better | 20 |
| Update frequency | Fortnightly | Fortnightly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.6 | 15.1 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 120 MB | 66 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Span.io, Inc | sonnen GmbH |
Customer experience
SPAN Home
sonnen
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
Show 18 moreShow fewer
- 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
sonnen
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
SPAN Home
No in-app purchases
sonnen
No in-app purchases
