There isn't one best tool; it depends on the work. For drawing-based tenders, Trimble Accubid Anywhere now adds AI symbol detection to a full electrical estimating system, while Kreo, STACK and Togal.AI offer AI takeoff for $175-$299 a month. For domestic and service work priced per job, job software with AI drafting is the better buy.
Most small electrical firms do some of both, which is why "best" lists mislead. A takeoff tool that counts 400 downlights across a fit-out in minutes does nothing for a homeowner who wants three extra sockets and an outdoor light. The right question is which kind of estimating eats your hours, and whether you already have a pricing method (labour units, a spreadsheet, a price book) that the AI output needs to feed.
Two kinds of electrical estimating, two kinds of software
Drawing-based estimating is for new build, fit-out and refurbishment tenders. You receive PDFs, count every fitting and measure every containment and cable run, apply labour units and materials, then price. The slow part is the count. AI helps by recognising symbols across sheets and measuring runs.
Job-based quoting is for service, maintenance and domestic work. You visit, describe the job, pick items from a price book and send a quote. The slow part is writing it up and following it up. AI helps by drafting descriptions and line items from notes.
If less than about a quarter of your revenue comes from tendered drawings, start with job-based tools and skip takeoff software for now. If it's more than half, takeoff is where the hours are.
The 2026 shortlist and what each tool's AI actually does
| Tool | Type | What the AI does | Price (list, USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trimble Accubid Anywhere | Full electrical estimating and takeoff | Symbol detection and counting, automatic scale and page naming, auto-routing for conduit lengths, an AI Smart Assistant for questions about your estimates | Quote only |
| McCormick Systems | Electrical estimating and takeoff | Existing auto-count of repeat symbols; AI-assisted symbol detection listed as a 2026 project in its AI statement | Quote only |
| Countfire | Electrical takeoff and estimating | Select a symbol once and it counts it across every uploaded drawing; learns how you build estimates | On request; 14-day free trial |
| STACK | Multi-trade takeoff and estimating | AI takeoffs, symbol search and recognition, automatic plan naming, STACK IQ chat | Free plan; Premium $249/month billed annually; Pro $299/month billed annually |
| Kreo | Multi-trade takeoff | Auto Count, Auto Measure, AI scale detection, Caddie AI assistant (on Pro) | Pro $175/month; non-AI plans from $35 |
| Togal.AI | Multi-trade takeoff | Automated takeoffs, symbol and image search, chat prompts | Growth $299/month per user, billed yearly |
| Beam AI | Done-for-you takeoff service | AI extraction with human quality checks, delivered in 24-72 hours | Annual licence, quote only |
| Tradify, ServiceM8, Jobber | Job management for service work | Drafting job descriptions, line items and messages | Tradify Plus $61/user; ServiceM8 from free; Jobber from $49/month |
Prices checked on vendor pages in September 2026. The STACK pricing page and Kreo pricing page show plan contents in full; the others need a sales conversation.
What a year costs for one estimator
Takeoff tools are usually billed per user and often annually, so compare the yearly figure rather than the monthly one. For a firm with one estimator, using the published prices above:
| Tool and plan | Year one, one user | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Kreo Pro | $2,100 at $175 a month | Check whether annual billing is cheaper and whether the price is per user |
| STACK Premium | $2,988 | Billed annually |
| STACK Pro | $3,588 | Adds Excel integration |
| Togal.AI Growth | $3,588 | Billed yearly, per user |
| Accubid Anywhere, McCormick, Countfire, Beam AI | Quote | Ask for the year-one total including setup and training |
Set that against estimator time. At a loaded cost of $45 an hour, a tool that saves 5 hours on each of 12 tenders a month saves 60 hours, or about $2,700 a month. Even the most expensive published plan pays back within two months on those numbers; on two tenders a month, it takes most of the year. Your tender volume is the figure that decides it.
Notes on each option for a small firm
Trimble Accubid Anywhere
The choice if you want an electrical estimating system with labour and material databases, not just a counting tool. Trimble announced its AI takeoff capabilities on 30 June 2026 as available across its MEP estimating products: symbols recognised, labelled and counted, scale and page names set across whole plan sets, and linear footage calculated for conduit. Its release quotes customer time savings; treat those as a reason to test, not a forecast for your firm. Expect a quote-based subscription and a real learning curve.
McCormick Systems
Established electrical estimating with an auto-count feature. Its published AI statement lists AI-assisted detection of common electrical symbols (outlets, fixtures, switches) as a 2026 project, so ask whether it has shipped in the version you'd buy rather than assuming it has.
Countfire
Built for electrical and mechanical contractors. You pick one example of a symbol, name it, and it finds that symbol across every drawing in the project. Pricing is on request, and the 14-day trial is long enough to test it properly on a past job.
STACK, Kreo and Togal.AI
Multi-trade takeoff tools with published prices, which makes them easier to trial and budget. STACK's AI features sit on Premium and Pro; Pro adds its Excel integration, useful if your pricing lives in a spreadsheet. Kreo's AI tools are on Pro only; its cheaper plans are measurement without AI. Togal.AI is the most expensive per user of the three. None carries an electrical labour database, so you'll price in your own system.
Beam AI
You upload plans and receive counted quantities after human checks. It suits a firm that bids in bursts and doesn't want to learn software, at the cost of a day or three's wait and an annual licence.
Job software for service work
For domestic and maintenance jobs, the AI you want drafts descriptions and billing items from your notes. ServiceM8's AI Smart Helpers are on every plan including its free one; Tradify's SmartTools are on its Plus plan. See everyday AI uses for electricians for that side of the business.
Testing a takeoff tool on one of your old jobs
Demos use drawings chosen to look good. The only test that matters is a job you've already counted. Pick a finished tender with clean final quantities and run it through each trial.
Here's what a result sheet might look like for an illustrative two-floor office fit-out, comparing one AI takeoff against the estimator's final, site-checked count:
| Item | Final count | AI count | Difference | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recessed downlights | 146 | 148 | +2 | Counted the two symbols in the legend |
| Double sockets | 84 | 84 | 0 | |
| Floor boxes | 22 | 18 | -4 | Four overlapped by furniture outlines |
| Emergency lights | 31 | 24 | -7 | Second symbol variant on floor 2 not trained |
| Data outlets | 96 | 96 | 0 |
Read it like this: two items perfect, one small over-count that's easy to spot, and two under-counts that would have cost money. The emergency light miss is typical: the designer used two symbol styles, and the tool only learned one. The fix is to teach it both, then check any safety-critical item by hand. Time the whole exercise too. If the AI run plus checking takes 3 hours against 9 hours by hand, the tool is earning its fee even with the corrections. For how the counting works underneath, see how electricians use AI to count fittings from drawings.
A tender week, before and after AI takeoff
Here's how one fit-out tender moves through the illustrative firm's week, before and after a takeoff tool, with the estimator's hours on each step.
| Step | Before (hours) | After (hours) | What changed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Download and sort drawings, set scales | 1.0 | 0.25 | Automatic page naming and scale detection |
| Count fittings and devices | 4.0 | 1.5 | AI counts, estimator checks variants and safety items |
| Measure containment and cable runs | 2.5 | 1.5 | Run measurement helps; routes still judged by hand |
| Read the specification | 1.0 | 0.5 | Chat assistant maps inclusions and exclusions first |
| Price, labour units, margin | 1.5 | 1.5 | No change: this is judgement |
| Total | 10.0 | 5.25 |
The pricing line doesn't move, and it shouldn't. What the firm gets is roughly half a tender's worth of hours back each time, which they can spend bidding more work or checking the bids they send more carefully. If your trial shows the counting line shrinking but the checking line growing to match, the drawings you receive may be too messy for the tool.
Reading the specification with a chat assistant
Takeoff tools count; they don't read the specification. A chat assistant on a business plan can, which catches scope traps before you price. A prompt to adapt:
Attached is the electrical section of a tender specification.
List, with the clause number for each:
1. Items explicitly included in our scope.
2. Items marked "by others" or excluded.
3. Named products or approved manufacturers we must use.
4. Testing, certification and documentation requirements.
5. Anything ambiguous we should raise as a tender query.
Quote the exact wording for items 2 and 5. Don't summarise those in your own words.An illustrative extract of the reply:
By others (clause 4.12): "Fire alarm system including cabling by specialist contractor." Tender query (clause 6.3): "Containment to be sized to suit" with no fill ratio given. Named products (clause 5.2): luminaires from the approved schedule, "or equal approved".
What you'd check: that the clause numbers are real (open the PDF at 4.12 and 6.3) and that nothing was left out of "by others". Assistants occasionally merge two clauses or miss one in a long document, so treat this as a map to read from, not a replacement for reading. It still saves an hour on a 60-page specification.
Service work: a domestic quote before and after AI drafting
For the 40% of this firm's work that's domestic and service, the AI that matters is in the job software. An electrician's site note and the resulting quote description, as an illustration:
- Site note: "2 x outdoor double sockets on rear wall, weatherproof, new radial from board, spare way ok, 6 garden spike lights on switched fused spur inside back door, cable in armoured to lights, customer digging trench herself."
- AI-drafted description (illustrative): "Install two weatherproof double sockets on the rear wall of the house, supplied by a new dedicated circuit from your consumer unit, which has a spare way available. Install six garden spike lights controlled from a new switch inside the back door, with armoured cable run to the lights. Trench to be dug and backfilled by the customer before our visit. Includes testing and certification of the new work."
What you'd check: the AI added "includes testing and certification", which is right for this job but must match what you actually issue; and "trench to be dug by the customer" needs a depth and route agreed in writing, or you'll arrive to a trench you can't use. ServiceM8's AI Smart Helpers and Tradify's SmartWrite both draft descriptions like this from notes, so a firm like this one gets service-side drafting from its job software and doesn't need a takeoff tool for it.
A worked choice for a nine-person electrical contractor
An illustrative firm: nine people, one estimator plus the owner, roughly 60% of revenue from commercial fit-out tenders and 40% from service contracts. They bid about 12 tenders a month, each taking the estimator around 10 hours, most of it counting. Pricing lives in a well-kept spreadsheet with their own labour units.
- Accubid Anywhere: most complete, but it would replace a spreadsheet they trust, and the price is by quote. Worth a demo, not the first trial.
- STACK Pro ($299/month billed annually): AI takeoff plus Excel integration, so counts can feed their existing spreadsheet.
- Kreo Pro ($175/month): cheaper AI takeoff; quantities exported to Excel for pricing.
- Countfire: electrical-specific counting; get the quote and use the 14-day trial.
They trial Kreo and Countfire side by side on the same past fit-out, then STACK if neither fits. The deciding numbers: counting time per tender after checking, the number of misses on safety-critical items, and how cleanly counts drop into the spreadsheet. If a tool cuts a 10-hour tender to 5 hours, that's 60 estimator hours a month, enough to bid more work or give the owner their evenings back, and far more than any subscription on the list. For the pricing side of the same problem, whether AI can price a job accurately sets out what still needs a person.
Where AI takeoff miscounts electrical symbols
- Legend and key symbols counted as fittings. Exclude the legend area or subtract it.
- Symbol variants for the same item (two emergency light styles, maintained and non-maintained drawn differently). Teach every variant.
- Similar symbols for different items, such as single and double sockets that differ by one line. Check a sample of each by hand.
- Overlaps with furniture, grid lines or text. Floor boxes under desks are a common miss.
- Duplicated areas on enlarged detail sheets, counted twice. Tell the tool which sheets to skip.
- Scanned or low-resolution drawings, which raise both misses and false hits. Ask the designer for vector PDFs.
- Scale errors on runs, when a sheet is set at the wrong scale. Check one known dimension per sheet.
Whichever tool you choose, keep one rule: every safety-critical count (emergency lighting, fire-related devices, isolation) gets a manual check before the tender goes out. The AI's job is to get you most of the way there in a fraction of the time, not to sign off the bid.
Electrical estimating questions
Can AI takeoff replace an estimator?
No. It removes the slowest part of the job, counting symbols and measuring runs, but someone still has to read the specification, decide labour units, spot what the drawings don't show, apply risk and margin, and check the counts. Small firms usually find it lets one estimator bid more jobs, or lets the owner stop estimating at midnight.
Do AI takeoff tools work on scanned or hand-marked drawings?
Less well. They work best on clean vector PDFs straight from the designer. Scanned drawings, photographed sheets and drawings covered in hand markups produce more missed and false counts. If most of your work arrives that way, test a tool on your worst drawings, not your best, before paying.
Is a free trial long enough to judge a takeoff tool?
It is if you prepare. Pick one finished job with a known final count, load the drawings on day one, and compare the tool's counts line by line with yours. A seven- or fourteen-day trial is enough for that. Without a known answer to compare against, you'll only learn whether the software is pleasant to use.
Further reads
- Can AI Produce Accurate Estimates for a Small Building Firm? — How accurate AI estimates get, seen from the building side.
- AI Estimating Software for Small Builders: Six Options Compared — The same comparison for general builders, if you also do build work.
- How to Run an AI Software Demo So You See the Real Product — Keep a sales demo on your drawings, not theirs.
- How to Run a Two-Week AI Tool Trial Before You Commit — A structured trial so the decision rests on numbers.
- How to Compare Supplier Quotes Side by Side With AI — Compare wholesaler quotes for the materials in your estimate.
- AI Vendor Lock-In: How to Keep Your Data and Prompts Portable — Keep your labour units and past estimates portable.
- Jobber, Housecall Pro, and ServiceTitan AI Features Compared — What each platform's AI actually does for calls, quotes, invoices and reviews, what's included or extra, and a ten-task trial script to test them yourself.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: Trimble news release on AI takeoff for MEP estimating (30 June 2026); McCormick Systems AI statement; Countfire product pages; STACK, Kreo and Togal pricing pages; Beam AI electrical page; Tradify and ServiceM8 pricing; all checked September 2026.