Your builds deserve
better than
a whiteboardand a prayer.
Track every job, every tech, every part. Intake to invoice. Built for performance and drift shops done losing money to disorganization.
No credit card required
“With Third Gear I no longer have the need to hire an office assistant for my shop.”
Nico D., Owner, Car Buffet, Holly Hill, FL
Not a shop? Track your own builds. Free.
The same build tracking real shops use, sized for your garage. Log mods, parts, photos, and costs on up to 3 cars. Then show the build off with a public page and a QR code made for car meets.
3 cars, free forever. No credit card, no trial clock.
Full build log: services, parts, photos, and costs on every entry
VIN decode fills in your engine and drivetrain specs
Public showcase page with a QR code you can print
Recall alerts straight from NHTSA
If the hobby becomes a business, upgrade in place. Your build history comes with you.
About a minute to sign up. Works great from your phone.
How a real shop day actually works.
No training manual. No onboarding call. If you've ever written a work order on a napkin, you already know how to use this.
Intake the vehicle, assign your tech, log the work. Takes 60 seconds. Then get back to the shop floor where you belong.
Parts ordered, parts installed, hours logged, tracked in real time as the job progresses. You always know where every build stands without asking anyone.
Invoice generates straight from the job. Parts, labor, and taxes already populated. On Shop Pro it carries a pay link: your customer opens it on their phone and pays by card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay. The money lands in your own Stripe account and the invoice marks itself paid.
Your shop is running you. Not the other way around.
You opened a shop to build cars. Not to chase invoices, babysit spreadsheets, and answer “where’s my car?” texts at midnight.
Built for the work,
not the paperwork.
Open a job, add parts, track time, send an invoice. No app-switching, no filing cabinets, no lost work orders.
Every build in the shop on one board. Received, in progress, completed, delivered, with parts holds flagged on the card. Know what’s moving and what’s stuck without walking the floor.
Track parts per job. Mark installed or billable. Low stock alerts so you’re never mid-build with a supplier who’s three days out.
Log technician hours by job. See labor cost vs revenue on every build. Know what each job actually cost. Not what you thought it cost.
Invite your techs by email and set what each one can see and do. Assign jobs, track who’s on what, and find the bottleneck without calling a meeting.
Build a professional estimate straight from the job. Adjust parts and labor on the fly, then turn it into an invoice in one click. On Shop Pro, every estimate and invoice carries your logo and colors, and every invoice can carry a link your customer taps to pay by card.
Full customer history. Every build, every vehicle, every invoice. Repeat customers get a one-click lookup, so you know the car before they finish parking.
Your whole week in one view. Jobs, deadlines, delivery dates. Kills the whiteboard.
Log shop expenses by category: rent, tools, insurance, supplies. Track what recurs. See what you spend alongside what you earn.
Share a link. Customers check their own build status, milestones, and ETA. Stops the 11pm texts.
A public page for any build. Send the customer a link to follow progress, or show off the finished car.
Made for the shop,
not the desk.
The whole shop in your hand while you’re under the car. No laptop, no paperwork run back to the office.
Runs on the phone in your pocket. Log parts and hours from under the car, not from the office.
Installs straight from your browser. No app store, no download approvals, no IT setup.
See what your shop
is actually making.
Shop Pro turns your job data into real answers. No spreadsheets. No end-of-month surprises.
Know who’s generating and who needs support. Make staffing decisions based on numbers, not gut.
Profit after parts and labor on every single build. Know which jobs to chase and which to reprice.
Spot supplier price creep before it eats your margin. You’ll see it coming instead of finding out at tax time.
Included in Shop Pro · $149/mo · No credit card to start
Simple pricing.
No surprises.
No per-seat fees. No setup costs. No annual contracts. Month to month. Cancel anytime.
- Up to 3 vehicles
- Build log: mods, services, and photos on every entry
- Parts catalog with order status and wishlist
- Public showcase page with a shareable link
- QR code for car shows
- No credit card required
No trial. No card. Free forever.
- Unlimited jobs and customers
- Up to 5 technicians
- Time tracking per job and per tech
- Parts inventory with order tracking
- Customer records with full vehicle history
- Invoicing with PDF export
- Email support
No credit card required. 14-day free trial.
- Everything in Starter, plus:
- Unlimited technicians
- Pay Online: customers pay the invoice by card from a link, straight into your own Stripe account. Third Gear Shop takes no cut.
- Cash discount: print up to 3% off on the invoice for customers who pay by Zelle or cash
- Branded invoices and estimates: your logo, your colors
- Window Sticker: a printed spec sheet for the finished build (flip and inventory builds)
- Customer job status portal: they check their own build status
- Advanced reporting: revenue by tech, margin per job, full P&L
- Expense tracking by category
- Build Showcase: a shareable public page for completed and delivered builds
No credit card required. 14-day free trial.
What happens after 14 days? You'll be prompted to pick a plan. Your data stays safe, nothing gets deleted. No credit card needed to start. Cancel anytime, no contracts.
You've probably seen
the other options.
Here's why shops like yours end up here.
Why not just use Tekmetric?
Tekmetric is solid for general repair shops running oil changes and tire rotations with service advisors at the counter. If that’s your shop, use it. But if you’re tracking a suspension build across three weeks with custom parts from four suppliers and two techs touching the same car, that’s not what Tekmetric was built for. Their whole system is optimized around repair orders and flat-rate labor times. Third Gear Shop is optimized around builds.
Shopmonkey looks slick, so what’s the difference?
It does look slick. Shopmonkey is designed for shops that want to look professional to customers. Third Gear Shop is designed for a tech who needs to log parts fast with dirty hands. Shopmonkey is also priced for volume shops doing $800 average repair orders, not boutique performance shops with 2 to 4 techs doing high-ticket builds.
What about AutoLeap?
AutoLeap targets indie shops, and they do it well. But like the others, it’s built around the repair order model: quick in, quick out. If your average job lives in the shop for two days, AutoLeap is fine. If your average build lives in the shop for two months, you need something that tracks it that way. Third Gear Shop was built for the long build.
Is cheaper software actually worse?
We don’t charge you for features you’ll never use. Third Gear Shop does one thing: run an independent shop, and do it well. $79/mo for a 1 to 5 tech shop. $149/mo for everything else. That’s it.
Does it work for builds, not just repairs?
This is the question. Every other shop tool is built around the repair order: vehicle comes in, tech fixes it, vehicle leaves. That’s fine for a brake job. It falls apart when you’re tracking an SR20 swap across 40 parts orders, 6 months, and 3 techs. Third Gear Shop tracks the whole build: parts per job, labor per tech, margin per build, customer portal so they can check status without texting you at 11pm. Built for the work that actually happens in a performance shop.
Who built Third Gear?
I'm John. I've spent years around drift and performance shops and the last decade building software professionally. I built Third Gear Shop because I kept watching shop owners I know lose money to tools that weren't made for them. Everything on the market is built for dealerships, priced for dealerships, and designed by people who've never chased a parts supplier on Friday afternoon with a customer texting every hour. I built it by sitting in real shops, watching how the day actually runs. The gaps in every existing tool became obvious fast. Third Gear is built around how shops actually work, not around how a product team assumed they do. The tools that were supposed to solve this problem made it worse. I built one that doesn't.
From the Shop Floor
“Third Gear allows me to share a build’s progress with my customers in a comprehensive way. In person I can quickly know prices and expenses of a build without the need to dig through receipts, as well as share progress remotely so my customers always know how their money is being spent on their car.”
Practical advice for shop owners
Operations, revenue, and the tools that help your shop run better.
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If any of these five things are happening in your shop, you're already paying the cost of running without software. You just can't see it on a line item.
How to Stop Losing Billable Hours on the Shop Floor
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Are you one hire away from needing an office?
Five questions, sixty seconds. Score it yourself and know before you post the job listing.
- What have I spent on this build, answered in under 60 seconds.
- Your open job count right now, without walking the floor.
- Whether you have actually priced out a part-time hire.
- How often the same customer info gets retyped.
- Whether anyone else could find last month’s invoices.
Two-page PDF. Downloads straight away, no email and no account. Score it on paper, nobody sees your answers.
Your shop deserves
better software.
Set up in 15 minutes. No IT. No onboarding call. Just open a job and go.
14 days free. No credit card. Cancel anytime.