How to Score a Roof Using AI Satellite Imagery with Roofbird

AI satellite imagery has changed what a roofer can know about a roof before he ever stands in front of it. Roofbird is built for contractors who want that knowledge pointed at one job: finding the houses worth knocking today. Here is how the scoring actually works, and what it means at the door.

The Need for AI in Roofing

Traditional roof inspections require physical presence, are labor-intensive, and lean on subjective judgment. That is fine when you are already on the roof. It is useless when you are trying to decide which forty houses in a subdivision deserve a Saturday.

The real problem is not measurement. It is triage. Most roofs on a street are not ready. A few are. Knowing which is which before you spend a morning walking is the whole game, and that is what scoring from imagery is for.

How AI Satellite Imagery Works

Roofbird reads the top-down overhead tile AND a ground-level Street View of the façade together into one combined assessment. The street-level read catches things a top-down tile cannot: granule loss, algae streaking, curling shingles, patched sections, rusted flashing. It also compares the roof against its immediate neighbours from a wider centred view, because a roof only means something next to the roofs either side of it. If both neighbours have visibly been re-roofed and this one has not, that gets flagged.

Each roof is placed against the roofs either side of it: replace-now, worn, midlife, or already done. Alongside that sits a plain-English verdict in a roofer's words and the specific reasons behind it, plus the capture DATE of the imagery it was judged from, the roof's size in squares, how many planes it has and how steep it is. If you want the methodology behind the age read, it is broken down in how roof age estimation from aerial imagery works, and the wider picture of what each imagery source can and cannot see is in satellite vs drone vs street view for roof prospecting.

One thing that matters more than any score: Roofbird says which roofs it has actually SEEN from the road and which it cannot judge. A contractor in Missoula drove nine doors off a list and found eight of them already re-roofed, because his neighbourhood had been ranked from a July 2016 aerial while a 2025 street-level shot of the same houses sat unread. The roofs had not changed. The picture had. Street-level imagery is newer than the aerial on roughly 85% of roofs, by about five years. So every shortlist is now checked against the newer picture before you see it, anything already done is moved down and said out loud, and the houses that genuinely cannot be judged, behind tree canopy or set too far back from the road, are labelled as exactly that rather than mixed in with the confident ones.

Two Scores, Because "Needs a Roof" and "Will Buy Now" Are Different Questions

Every lead carries two numbers. NEED is how badly the roof needs replacing: condition and roof age only. NOW is whether anything is forcing a decision on THIS house right now. Visible active damage like a tarp, missing shingles or exposed decking. Hail damage on this specific roof. A purchase in the last 18 months. Patching already attempted. Neighbours who have re-roofed. Alongside it is a one-line "why now" in plain words.

Neighbourhood hail deliberately does NOT raise the NOW score. Every home in the scan shares it, so it cannot separate one door from the next. It belongs in the pitch, not the ranking. That is the opposite of how storm-chasing lists work, and it is why the ranking is worth trusting: most homes in a settled neighbourhood honestly have no trigger, and Roofbird says so rather than inventing urgency to look busy.

Where a hail event is on record, Roofbird also shows roughly how long the homeowner has left to file an insurance claim, based on the typical notice deadline in that state. That is a countdown, not a prediction, and it is an estimate of the usual state deadline. Verify with the carrier before you say it at a door.

It Tells You Which Blocks Are Worth Your Morning Before You Draw Anything

Search the area you work, a town, a suburb, a ZIP or a street, and Roofbird reads the neighbourhoods in view and ranks them, so the first scan is not a guess. For each block it reports the housing era, what share of roofs read as weathered, how many homes are actually there counted from building footprints rather than estimated from area, whether hail has hit in the last 12 months, and how walkable the block is. Scattered acreage on long driveways is called out as bad canvassing even under a perfect storm, because a morning is measured in doors per hour. Click a suggestion and it draws the area for you; you can still drag the corners or draw your own polygon from scratch.

It only suggests blocks worth the trip. When nothing in view clears the bar it says so plainly rather than offering three neighbourhoods you should skip. That is the honest version of "where should I knock today," and it is a thing no lead marketplace can do at all, because they do not know your territory. If canvassing is how you work, this is the part to look at first: AI canvassing.

Comparing AI Tools for Roof Scoring

Most satellite roof tools are built for measurement, and they are good at it. Roofbird is not a measurement tool and should not be judged as one. It is a prospecting and scoring tool, and the comparison that matters is structural, not a price table.

• Measurement-first tools: built to produce a dimensioned report for a job you already have. They assume the customer is yours. They do not rank a neighbourhood or tell you which doors to knock.
• Pay-per-lead marketplaces: Angi, HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack and the like sell the same shared lead to several contractors. The bill takes the shape of a per-lead charge, and the vendor quotes it on a call rather than publishing a rate card. You are renting access to a homeowner who is also being called by your competitors.
• Roofbird: reads every roof in your service area from imagery and public records, ranks it against its neighbours, and hands you the homeowner's DNC-scrubbed contact details. Nothing is shared, because nothing is resold. The bill is credits, and the credit prices are published.

If you want the fuller side-by-side on scoring tools, there is a comparison of software that scores roof condition from satellite imagery only and a tested roundup of satellite roof inspection tools.

Why Choose Roofbird for Roof Scoring

Because the score is repeatable at a door. A number nobody can explain to a homeowner was never the point. Every Roofbird lead shows roof material, condition, estimated roof age read off the shingles rather than the building's year built, the wear signs behind the verdict, both images, an estimated squares and job-value range, and a ready-to-say door pitch.

The full property record shows on every lead for free, as soon as it is scanned: owner name, whether they live there or it is an absentee or rental owner, estimated market value and confidence, year built, last sale date and price, beds and baths, living square footage, lot size, stories, garage, annual property tax, and mortgage lender. Roofbird also estimates the owner's equity, how much of the home they actually own, because equity is what decides whether someone CAN say yes. When the deed record cannot support an estimate it says so instead of guessing.

Only the phone and email sit behind a one-click unlock. Every number is DNC-scrubbed and labelled: "clear" means it was checked against the federal Do Not Call registry and is safe for a manual sales call, "DNC" means do not call it, and "verify" means the scrub could not confirm either way, so treat it as unknown. Manual dialling only, no texts and no auto-dialler. The detail on how that screening works is at skip tracing and DNC screening.

How Roofbird Fits Into Your Week

Work the list like a CRM, not a PDF. Card view or a side-by-side table with sticky headers, frozen actions, zoomable imagery and inline unlock. Filter on everything Roofbird knows: owner-occupied versus absentee, has a live trigger, active damage visible, insurance claim window still open, property record present, minimum need score, minimum roof age, minimum owner equity, and contact state including "callable," meaning at least one number confirmed off the DNC registry. Add your own tags. Export, or print door-hanger PDFs for the route.

There is no quota and no per-lead fee. Roofs already replaced, the wrong material for the shop, or not homes at all are read, labelled as exactly that, and kept out of the way. Knowing which quarter of a street is dead is worth as much as knowing which quarter is hot. A building anyone has already assessed is never re-assessed from scratch and never re-charged, so coverage is shared and re-scanning an area surfaces genuinely new homes instead of the same roofs again.

If your leads already live in a CRM, you can score the leads already in your CRM rather than starting from a blank map.

Getting Started with Roofbird

1. Sign up: ten credits, free, no credit card, no expiry.
2. Ask a question: type a sentence like "find me the worst roofs in 75216" or "houses where most of the neighbours have already re-roofed." Searching roofs that have already been read is free, instant and unlimited.
3. Scan your area: scanning new ground costs nothing at any size, and you get ranked blocks back before you draw a polygon.
4. Open the ones worth opening: reading a roof properly, both photographs from above and from the road plus the property record in one go, costs 1 credit per 8 roofs. The owner's name, phone and email cost 1 credit per 2 roofs. Opening a house completely costs 1 credit.

Opening a house completely means the roof read in full with the imagery date, the street address, the owner's name and mailing address, whether they live there, DNC-flagged phone numbers, an email where one exists, and the whole property record. A failed lookup is refunded. A "nobody listed" answer is charged once and never again for that address.

After the trial there are no subscriptions and no monthly plans. You buy one-off credit packs when you need them: Starter $49 for 49 credits, Crew $99 for 125, Hunter $199 for 300, Pro $399 for 800. Bought credits never expire and nothing renews. Every pack gets the whole product; a bigger pack only costs less per credit. The full breakdown is on the pricing page.

FAQ

Q: How accurate is Roofbird's roof scoring? A: It is bounded by what the imagery can see, and Roofbird says which is which. Where the street camera could see the roofs, what contractors found on the ground matched 4 of 4; where it could not, 0 of 5. Houses that cannot be judged, behind canopy or set too far back, are labelled as exactly that rather than mixed in with the confident ones. Where the aerial and the street photo disagree, the newer one wins and both dates are shown.

Q: What is the difference between the NEED and NOW scores? A: NEED is how badly the roof needs replacing, based on condition and roof age alone. NOW is whether anything is forcing a decision on that specific house: visible active damage, hail damage on this roof, a recent purchase, patching already attempted, or neighbours who have re-roofed. Neighbourhood hail does not raise NOW, because every home in the scan shares it and it cannot separate one door from the next.

Q: What types of roofs can Roofbird assess? A: Various roof types including asphalt shingles, metal, and tile. Roofs of the wrong material for your shop are read, labelled, and kept out of the way rather than padded into your list.

Q: How does Roofbird compare to pay-per-lead marketplaces? A: Those marketplaces sell the same shared lead to several contractors. Roofbird reads the roofs in your service area from imagery and public records and gives you exclusive leads no competitor has, plus the homeowner's DNC-scrubbed contact details. There is no per-lead fee and no subscription. The structural comparison is at Roofbird compared with buying shared leads.

Q: What does it cost? A: One meter: credits. Looking is free, acting costs. The trial is 10 credits, free, no credit card, no expiry. After that you buy one-off packs: Starter $49 for 49 credits, Crew $99 for 125, Hunter $199 for 300, Pro $399 for 800. Credits never expire and nothing renews. See what a credit buys.

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Roofbird's scoring is a game-changer for contractors who want to stop guessing which doors to knock. This week, explore the free US hail map to identify recent storm impacts in your area, then use Roofbird to rank the blocks and prioritize the leads that actually clear the bar.