During your trial you get one Room Check, free. On a paid plan there is no cap and no counter on the screen.
Pick the room you worry about most
For most people that is the bathroom or the bedroom. Those two are where the majority of what a Room Check finds tends to be, so starting there gives you the most useful report.
You can take up to four photographs of that room, from different angles. More angles give the check more to work with, and they all count as the one check.
There is no window and no waiting. The one check does not free up again after a few days, so there is nothing to time and no next check to wait for. Checking a second room is part of a paid plan.
One thing worth knowing
The same allowance covers the grace period after a trial ends unpaid, not only the trial itself. If you already used your check during the trial, it stays used through those days rather than coming back.
If you are a family member: a simulation on your own home
On a free plan, the check first asks where you are: your loved one's home, or your own. Your loved one's home is a real check, saved to the Circle. Your own home is a Private test check: it runs once, on up to 4 photos in total, and it is not saved to your account.
It shows you how a check works. A saved check considers the person as well as the room, which is the part a simulation cannot do.
If a photo does not appear to show a room, the check says so, and that attempt is not taken from your allowance. There is also a daily limit on simulations; if you reach it, the message asks you to try again tomorrow.
On the Free plan
Running a new Room Check is a paid feature. Every report you have already run stays readable, forever, at no cost.
The to-do list built from a report, Home Safety To-Dos, is part of the Essential paid plan. The report itself stays readable on every plan.
That distinction is deliberate. Findings about your own home should not disappear because a subscription lapsed.
The photographs are different
Room Check photos are removed after 90 days on every plan, including paid ones. Upgrading does not extend this.
The report and its findings stay. What you found stays here; the pictures of the inside of your home do not, because the safest place for those is nowhere.