I'm a procurement lead, and I've handled tool and tester orders for eight years. I've personally made (and documented) nine significant purchasing mistakes, totaling roughly $22,000 in wasted budget. This article is about one of those mistakes—the time I ordered 40 Fluke 115s before realizing the team needed the Fluke 117.
In 2017, my team needed 40 handheld multimeters for a facility maintenance contract. I went with the model that had the lower unit price, which was the Fluke 115. On paper, it met the requirements: True-RMS, CAT III 600V, continuity and resistance. The order shipped, the techs opened the boxes, and by the end of the first week, two of them had nearly touched live busbars because they expected a non-contact voltage detector. The 115 doesn't have one. The Fluke 117 does.
The mistake wasn't that the 115 is a bad meter. It's that I didn't compare the right dimensions. That order cost us about $3,200 in meters, then another $1,500 or so in replacements and added accessories. Actually, I shouldn't quote the total from memory—the point is that a single skipped spec review burned more budget than the unit price difference between the two models would have covered.
The Comparison Framework
When someone asks me for "a Fluke multimeter," this is the framework I use. When you're buying a bulk tester package for a crew, the decision isn't about which meter wins a YouTube review. It's about which one lowers your team's error rate, matches your site's safety requirements, and doesn't create a second wave of accessory purchases.
Three things matter: what the team touches daily, what safety rating the site requires, and what accessories you'll have to buy anyway. In that order.
Here's how the Fluke 117 and Fluke 115 compare across those dimensions.
Dimension 1 – Job Site Capabilities
The Fluke 117 is positioned as an electrician's meter. It has AutoVolt, which automatically selects AC or DC voltage, and it includes a built-in VoltAlert non-contact voltage detector. That's the feature that tells you a wire is live before you touch it. The 115 doesn't have either. It's a straightforward True-RMS meter with manual range selection, plus capacitance and frequency on the dual display.
Look, I'm not saying the 115 is a bad tool. I'm saying it's a bad idea to order it without checking how your techs actually work. If your team spends half the day troubleshooting energized panels, the 117's VoltAlert is a no-brainer. It turns a safety step into something they do every time without thinking. The 115 forces them to break out a separate voltage probe or trust a test sequence.
But here's the part I got wrong in 2017: if your team does mostly de-energized work, preventive maintenance, motor testing, or electronics repair, the 115's simpler layout means fewer mistakes, not more. Newer technicians tend to trust AutoVolt a little too much. I once watched a technician wave the 117 near a cable tray, get a beep, and assume the whole tray was hot. It wasn't. The feature is helpful, but it still requires context.
Dimension conclusion: For live electrical troubleshooting, the 117 is the better choice. For general maintenance and electronics, the 115 is sufficient—and sometimes easier for training.
Dimension 2 – Safety Ratings and Sensor Compatibility
According to Fluke's published specs (fluke.com, accessed February 2025), both the 117 and 115 are rated CAT III 600V and CAT II 1000V. That means both are safe for typical industrial and commercial work up to those limits. The safety rating is not a point of separation here.
What does separate them is the sensor question. Before you order any meter, I now pull the sensor specification guide for the probes, clamps, and temperature accessories we plan to use. The guide lists the required input ranges, mV output for current clamps, and thermocouple support. Both the 117 and 115 handle standard banana-jack accessories and accept most Fluke current clamps, but the details matter. For example, a current clamp with a 1 mV/A output needs a meter with a low enough mV AC range. The 115 goes down to 400.0 mV; the 117 down to 600.0 mV. In most cases both work, but you have to check.
Here's something vendors won't tell you: the quoted unit price for a multimeter usually doesn't include the protective holster or case, even when the product photo shows one. Confirm the SKU. The "case" you see is often just the included holster, and if you need a hard case for field storage, that's a separate line item.
I learned this the hard way in September 2022. We ordered 30 units of the 117, and I assumed the soft holster counted as a "case." The techs immediately complained that the holsters didn't close tightly enough for kit bags. We ended up buying a third-party hard case for each one. I want to say the hard cases were around $35 each, but don't quote me on that—it's from memory. The point is it was unplanned—$1,050 plus a week of annoyed technicians.
Dimension conclusion: Both meters are safety-rated for the same environments. The real differentiator is whether the bundle you're quoted actually includes the case you need. If you're ordering a bulk tester package, get the case in the same SKU, not as an afterthought.
Dimension 3 – The "Fluke Multimeter Case" Trap
Let me be specific about the case situation, because "fluke multimeter case" is one of the most common search terms in this space. The Fluke 117 and 115 both ship with a protective holster. The holster is good for drops, but it's not a hard case. For B2B buyers, the question is: do your techs carry the meter on a belt, or do they throw it in a tool bag? If it's the latter, a hard case or a separate test-lead pouch matters more than the meter's spec sheet.
In my experience, the smarter move is to order a bundle that includes the meter, the case, and the test leads together. It costs more upfront, but it saves the procurement cycle of matching parts later. Plus, from an efficiency standpoint, a standardized kit means every tech starts the day with the same tools. No one is missing a case because someone else borrowed it. No one is using a third-party case that covers the screen just right.
That standardization is the reason I now maintain a pre-order checklist. We've caught 47 potential errors with it in the past 18 months, and most of them were accessory mismatches, not meter spec problems.
Dimension conclusion: Buy the case at the same time as the meter. It's not a luxury accessory; it's part of the total cost of ownership.
Dimension 4 – Total Cost, Not Unit Price
Here's where the bulk tester math gets interesting. As of late 2024—or rather, Q4 2024, I had to look it up—the typical street price gap between the Fluke 115 and 117 was around $70–90, based on major distributor quotes. On a 50-unit order, that's $3,500 to $4,500 of difference. It's easy to say "just buy the 117" when you're reading a review. It's harder to justify when you're looking at a purchase order.
But the cheaper unit price isn't automatically the lower total cost. Consider what happens if a technician with the 115 has to walk back to the van for a separate voltage detector because the meter can't do non-contact detection. Let's say that costs 10 minutes per incident, and a typical tech does it twice a week. That's 20 minutes per person per week. For a team of 10, that's over 170 hours a year of lost time. Suddenly, a $90 per-unit difference is less than the productivity loss in one payroll cycle.
Then again, if your team never needs non-contact detection, spending the extra $90 per meter is pure waste. That's why this comparison isn't about which meter is "better." It's about which one is better for your situation. The bottom line: don't compare unit prices. Compare the total cost of the work being done.
Dimension conclusion: The 117 justifies its higher price when your team works around live circuits. The 115 is the better value when the extra features would stay unused.
So Which One Should You Order?
Here's my practical advice, based on the mistakes I've made:
- Order the Fluke 117 if: your team troubleshoots live electrical systems, works in commercial or industrial plants where non-contact voltage detection is a safety step, or you need AutoVolt to reduce visual reading errors.
- Order the Fluke 115 if: your team works mostly on de-energized circuits, performs electronics or motor testing, or if your budget needs to cover more units and you can train technicians on proper voltage verification.
- Consider a mixed fleet: give the 117 to the senior electricians and the 115 to general maintenance techs. That's not a compromise—it's an efficiency play. You pay for the advanced feature where it affects safety and speed, and you save where it doesn't.
Before you sign any purchase order, do this: pull the sensor specification guide for every accessory your team already owns. Check the meter's input range against the clamp's output. Confirm the case SKU. And ask your technicians what they actually do in a normal week. The answer will tell you which model is right.
Bottom Line
The Fluke 117 and Fluke 115 are both solid, professional-grade meters. The difference is not quality—it's fit. In a bulk tester order, fit is everything. I learned that after a $3,200 mistake in 2017, and I've spent the years since building checklists to make sure I don't repeat it.
So, if you're on the fence: stop reading spec comparisons and look at your work orders. If live troubleshooting is on the list, get the 117. If not, the 115 will do the job. Either way, buy the case at the same time. Your technicians—and your budget—will thank you.
Rebecca Sloan
Rebecca Sloan is a power distribution and protection analyst specializing in circuit breakers, switchgear, contactors, fuses, surge protective devices, and coordination. She applies IEC 60947-2 breaker requirements, IEC 60269 fuse characteristics, and IEC 61643-11 tests while examining rated voltage, breaking capacity, time-current curves, selectivity, and prospective short-circuit current. She helps engineers and buyers compare protective devices against documented fault levels, installation conditions, maintenance access, and continuity priorities.