Is Sub Hero free? What the free account, Standard, Pro, and the 14-day trial each include

Partly. A Sub Hero account is free and needs no card. It connects to your Frontline login and shows you the open jobs for it inside the app, but it sends no alerts. Alerts, filters and one-click booking are on Standard, at $6.99 a month. Pro, at $9.99 a month, adds auto-accept, with five automatic acceptances included each month. The 14-day free trial is on Pro only, one per Frontline login, and there is no trial on Standard. Frontline's own app is free and stays free whether or not you use anything else. Here is what each level includes, how the trial works, and the questions this post can't settle.

What the free account does

The FAQ puts it in one line: "Creating an account is free and requires no credit card." You make the account, connect your Frontline login, and the app shows you the open jobs for that login. That is the whole of it. A free account sends no alerts of any kind, not by push, not by email, and not the notice when a booked job leaves your schedule.

What it is for is checking that the connection works and seeing the board through Sub Hero before you pay for anything. If you are still deciding whether to hand any service your Frontline login at all, ours included, the questions worth asking first are in an earlier post. A free account is not a watcher. Nothing reaches your phone until you pick a plan.

The other free option: Frontline's own app

Before paying anyone, it is worth knowing what Frontline gives you at no cost. The Frontline Education app is listed as free on the App Store, from Frontline Technologies Group LLC. Frontline's own page for substitutes says they can "Get a notification of available jobs right to their mobile device" and "Accept available jobs and view job details within the app." If you mostly want to see what is open and accept from your phone, that costs nothing.

Where a paid service comes in is precision and timing: being told about the jobs that match what you want, within seconds of a match, and on Sub Hero's Pro plan having them accepted for you. Our survey of the alert options goes through what each one does, including where Frontline's app is the better fit.

Standard, $6.99 a month: alerts, filters and one-click booking

Standard is the plan for a substitute who wants to be told, then decide. The FAQ lists what it includes: "instant job alerts by email and push notification, one-click booking, and precision job filters." In practice that means:

• Alerts. An email and a push notification within seconds of a job matching your filters. You can have either channel or both.
• Filters. School, district, position, day, time and job length, so the alerts are for jobs you would actually take.
• One-click booking. A button on the alert that accepts the job in Frontline, so you are not opening another app and finding it again.
• A notice when a booked job disappears. Since September 18, 2026, both paid plans tell you, usually within minutes, when a job on your Frontline schedule is no longer there. That post has the wording and its limits.

What Standard does not do: it never books anything. Every job is yours to accept or ignore, and a job someone else accepted first is gone, alert or no alert. Standard has no free trial. It is month to month, and per the FAQ you can "Cancel any time from the billing section inside the app. Your plan stays active through the period you already paid for."

Pro, $9.99 a month: everything in Standard, plus auto-accept

Pro is Standard with one addition. The FAQ describes it as "everything in Standard, plus auto-accept filters and up to 5 automatic job acceptances per month." Auto-accept is a second set of rules, narrower than your alert filters, for the jobs you would take without looking: particular schools, positions, days of the week, start times, job lengths. When a job matches one of those rules, Sub Hero accepts it in Frontline for you.

Three things about how it behaves. It is off until you turn it on. Per the FAQ it "only ever acts on filters you set," and it only considers jobs that already pass your notification filters. And five acceptances a month are included in the price.

What Pro does not do matters more here, because it acts for you. It can't see the non-work days you set in Frontline, so an auto-accept rule for Tuesdays does not know about the Tuesday you marked off. Keep the rules narrow and change them when your week changes. It can't win a job someone else booked first. And it does nothing outside Frontline: no texts, no calls, nothing on any other board.

What the extra $3 buys

The difference between the plans is $3 a month and one feature. If you like to see each job before you commit, or your availability changes week to week, Standard covers the part that matters, which is not having to watch the board all day. If there is a short list of jobs you would always take, one school near home, any afternoon half day, then Pro means those can be booked while you are in a classroom with your phone put away. Everything else is the same on both plans: the alerts, the filters, the booking button, the booked-job notice.

The 14-day trial: Pro only, one per Frontline login

The trial is on Pro, not Standard. The FAQ: "Pro includes a 14-day free trial, one per Frontline login. You can switch to Standard during the trial and keep the days you have left." So there is one way to try Sub Hero's alerts and one way to try auto-accept, and it is the same way. Start the Pro trial, and if after a few days you know you do not want auto-accept, switch to Standard and the remaining days carry over.

One per Frontline login means exactly that. The trial is tied to the Frontline login you connect, so a second Sub Hero account on the same Frontline login does not start a second trial.

If you searched "how can I try it": make the free account, which asks for no card, connect your Frontline login, and start the Pro trial from inside the app. Set your filters first, so the 14 days show you alerts for jobs you would actually take rather than everything on the board.

Switching, canceling and leaving

All of it happens inside the app. During the trial, the move to Standard keeps your remaining days. Canceling is in the billing section, and a canceled plan runs to the end of the period you already paid for. And the FAQ is explicit that leaving means leaving: "you can delete your account and stored credentials entirely whenever you like."

What this post can't tell you

• What the trial asks for up front, and what happens on day 15. The FAQ says the free account needs no card. It does not say whether starting the Pro trial does, or what the app does when the 14 days run out, so read the billing screen before you confirm the trial rather than taking this post's word for it.
• What the app offers after the fifth auto-accept in a month. Five are included. This post covers what is included and nothing past it.
• Whether Pro pays for itself for you. That depends on how many of the jobs you take are ones you would take unseen, and no published figure of ours answers that.
• Anything about your district. The plans work the same wherever your Frontline login is, and nothing here says which boards post more or fill faster.

Where Sub Hero fits

Sub Hero is independent and not affiliated with Frontline Education. A free account shows you the open jobs for your Frontline login and nothing more. Standard, at $6.99 a month, sends an email and push notification within seconds of a job matching your filters and lets you book from the alert. Pro, at $9.99 a month, adds auto-accept with five acceptances included a month, and carries the only trial, 14 days, one per Frontline login. None of the plans can see your Frontline non-work days, none can get you a job someone else booked first, and none does anything outside Frontline.

Learn more: app.getsubhero.com

Plans start at $6.99/month. Works with Frontline Absence Management.