A professional home energy audit runs about $300 and takes half a day. The auditor shows up with a blower door and an infrared camera, checking for air leaks, insulation gaps, and equipment problems. The report is genuinely useful.
But here is what I learned after going through that process: roughly 80% of what the auditor found, I could have caught on my own with a flashlight and an hour of focused attention. The attic insulation was thin in the corners. Two windows had visible daylight around the weatherstripping. The furnace filter was three months overdue. The water heater was set to 140 degrees when 120 would have been fine. None of that needed special equipment to spot.
The professional audit earned its fee on the remaining 20%, the blower door test that measured exactly how leaky the house was and the thermal camera that found a missing insulation bay behind the guest room wall. Those findings mattered, but the biggest savings came from the obvious stuff I could have fixed months earlier with a simple walkthrough.
That is what this tool does. It covers the same categories a professional auditor checks, one system at a time. Mark what you have already addressed, and it will score your home, estimate your savings potential, and tell you which three items to fix first. You need about 45 minutes and a willingness to look in the attic.
If you finish and still want the professional audit, go for it. Most people find that working through these items first saves them more than the audit would have cost.