Construction Photo Documentation App: What AI Adds, and Which Plan

CompanyCam suits a small contractor who wants photos, reports and AI in one app. Its AI writes daily logs, progress recaps and walkthrough notes and builds voice checklists, scaled by plan: Core ($63 a month billed annually) gets 10 credits, Crew ($129) 100 credits plus checklists, Scale ($199) unlimited. Raken and Fieldwire attach no AI to their plans.

Treat those figures as a starting point, because CompanyCam's own pages do not agree. The pricing table gives Core 10 AI credits while the FAQ beside it says AI is included in Crew, Scale and Enterprise, and the help centre's plans article, updated in late October 2026, prices Crew lower and Scale higher than the pricing page does. Confirm the price on your checkout screen, then put your effort into the part no plan fixes: how your photos are described, because the AI works from those descriptions.

Follow me on Instagram@sagnikteaches

What each CompanyCam plan includes, in seats and credits

Prices below are from CompanyCam's pricing page, read in October 2026: list prices in USD a month, billed annually. The page has a monthly-billing toggle that says annual billing saves 20%, but it prints no monthly prices. The feature columns come from the plans explained article in its help centre.

Connect on LinkedInSagnik Bhattacharya

Extra users cost $29 a month each on annual billing, and Core stops at two users whatever you pay. Credits are shared across the whole company rather than given to each person, and they refresh every month. The plans article describes Core as excluding Checklists, Text Scanning and the 360 photo viewer; Crew adds all three and up to five templates; Scale adds translations and unlimited templates.

Subscribe on YouTube@sagnikteaches

That article disagrees with the pricing page on price. Updated in late October 2026, it gives Crew as $119 and Scale as $249 a month billed annually, monthly-billing prices of $79, $149 and $299, and $34 for an extra user on monthly billing, and it calls $199 a legacy Scale price for accounts opened before 17 September 2026. The sums in this tutorial use the pricing page, because that is what a new buyer sees; take a screenshot of whichever price your checkout shows.

A quick sum shows how seats change the picture. A five-person firm on Crew pays the base $129 plus two extra users at $29, which is $187 a month on annual billing, or $2,244 a year. The same five people on Scale cost $199 plus $58, so $257 a month, only $70 more than Crew for unlimited AI use.

How far 100 credits go in a busy month

CompanyCam's glossary defines an AI Action as a task you ask its AI to do, and every run counts against the plan's allowance. The four AI document types (Summary, Daily Log, Progress Recap and Walkthrough Note) use one action each. So do the three checklist actions: creating a checklist by talking, converting a file into a checklist, and completing a checklist by voice. The glossary says credits "set how many AI Actions you can run", so I would treat one action as one credit and ask support to confirm during the trial.

A few limits shape how you use them:

• A Walkthrough Note is your voice plus photos, up to 15 minutes, recorded in the mobile app only. It is the one AI document that works offline, and only if you opened the project before losing signal.
• Summary, Daily Log and Progress Recap need a connection and are built from your photo descriptions, comments and tags. Photos with nothing written on them give the AI very little to work with.
• AI checklists, both the voice creation and the voice completion, run in the mobile app only, and every user role can use them.
• Converting a Walkthrough Note into a checklist does not count towards the AI Action allowance, according to the checklist help article. A walkthrough recorded at the start of a stage can therefore become that stage's checklist without spending a second credit.

If walkthrough notes are new to you, the tutorial on photos, voice notes and punch lists in the field shows the routine that surrounds them.

To see what one credit buys, picture a four-minute walkthrough at a bathroom survey, with eight photos and this said aloud: "Bathroom, first floor. Bath comes out, shower tray goes in the same corner. Soil stack boxed in the corner, keep the boxing. Floor feels soft by the toilet, lift two boards. Window has no trickle vent. Customer wants the radiator moved to the left wall." An illustrative write-up groups the photos under short headings: "Scope: remove bath, fit shower tray in the existing corner. Existing: boxed soil stack to remain. Investigate: soft floor near the toilet. Customer request: radiator to the left wall." Two fixes before anyone else reads it. The window comment has gone, because write-ups compress, so add it back. And "investigate" must stay an open question; if it hardens into "rotten floor" in a quote, you have priced a guess.

Here is a month for a four-person extensions firm on Crew, with three live jobs over 21 working days. These are illustrative habits, not CompanyCam's recommendations.

That leaves four credits, and seven if the three checklists are made by converting the start-of-job walkthroughs rather than talked in. A fourth job adds 21 daily logs, 4 recaps, 2 walkthroughs and 5 checklist actions, so 32 more and a month total of 128, which is 28 over. You have two ways out. Run a Daily Log only on days when the customer needs news, or move up to Scale, which costs $70 more a month than Crew on annual billing ($199 less $129).

Whether that $70 pays for itself is a time sum, not a feature question. Scale buys the 28 actions Crew cannot cover. If each of those replaces ten minutes of typing, that is 280 minutes, about 4.7 hours, worth $140 at an internal cost of $30 an hour, against $70. The sum only holds if you would have written those logs anyway and they go out after a short edit, which is the thing to measure in your trial rather than assume. If your checkout shows the help centre's prices instead, the gap between the plans is wider, so rerun the sum with the price you are actually offered.

Three firms, three different answers

A solo bathroom fitter. One user, jobs that last a week, and quotes that start with a site visit. Core fits, provided its 10 credits are live on your account, since the pricing FAQ says AI starts at Crew. A month of eight surveys and two finished jobs might spend eight credits on survey walkthroughs and two on Progress Recaps for the customers, which is the whole allowance, so a ninth survey goes without AI. The weak point is growth. Core stops at two users, so taking on an apprentice and a labourer means Crew, a jump from $63 to $129 a month, with $29 more for any fourth person.

A four-person extensions firm. Three live jobs, a site manager on the phone all day, and customers who ask for updates. This is Crew territory, as the credit table above shows, with the base plan covering three users and one extra at $29, so $158 a month on annual billing. The firm should plan for the fourth job at the start of the busy season, not discover the ceiling in week three.

A ten-person firm with several crews. At the 32 credits a job worked out above, six live jobs need about 192 credits a month, so Crew's 100 would run out around the eleventh working day. Scale with seven extra users costs $199 plus $203, so $402 a month on annual billing, which works out at $67 per live job per month. Enterprise is aimed at 50 or more users and sold on a custom quote, so for a firm this size Scale is the top of the ladder.

What the cheaper and free options cover

CompanyCam is not the only way to keep dated, searchable photos. Raken is built around daily reports and timecards; Fieldwire is built around plans, tasks and checklists; a phone and a shared folder cost nothing. Neither Raken nor Fieldwire ties an AI feature to a plan on its pricing page (Fieldwire's menu links to a "Field Intelligence" page without saying which plan gets it), so any AI you add comes from a chat assistant on the side.

Raken's Basic plan has been listed at $23 a user a month billed annually with a three-user minimum, so $69 a month for three people, but its pricing page showed no figures when checked in October 2026 and pointed visitors to a demo, so ask for a written quote. Fieldwire's Basic plan carries a limit of five users, three projects and 100 sheets, so it works as a free trial of Fieldwire rather than a free system for a busy firm. Check both pages for current offers and monthly billing before you decide.

Matching the tool to the question you most need answered cuts through the feature lists:

The do-it-yourself route has one trap. OpenAI's image FAQ says images are resized before analysis and that file names and metadata are not read, which means the date, area and trade must sit in your caption or your prompt, not in the file name or the phone's data. Upload limits are generous for a site diary: images up to 20 MB each, with free ChatGPT accounts limited to 3 file uploads a day and paid plans to 80 files every three hours, while Claude takes 20 files per chat and images up to 10 MB each. If you want to see where roofers land on this decision, the CompanyCam alternatives for roofers tutorial goes through photo reports for that trade.

Naming rules that keep the photos findable and the AI honest

CompanyCam's best-practice article is blunt that the AI works from transcripts and photo descriptions, that its document features need descriptions, comments and tags, and that "AI is not perfect and can make mistakes". A plan upgrade cannot fix blank captions. Five rules do more:

1. Project name: job number first, then the job type, such as J2410 Kitchen extension. An address in the title makes a photo hard to share safely.
2. Caption pattern: area, trade, what, stage, for example Rear wall - plumbing - first-fix pipework to utility room - before boarding. Say it aloud on site; speaking takes six seconds.
3. Stage tags: Before, First fix, Second fix, Snag, Complete. Search by tag when a customer disputes what was there at first fix.
4. Issue tags: Defect, Variation, Delay, with the variation number in the caption. These photos are the evidence you will want when a final account is argued.
5. Wide then close: one wide shot to show the location, one close shot with a tape or a hand in frame to show scale.

The payoff shows when the AI writes the daily update. Take 14 photos from one day. CompanyCam's help says its documents are built from descriptions and that photos without them leave you an empty template to fill, so blank captions put you back to typing. A chat assistant that looks at the images can describe what is visible, and the result is thin:

Photos show work in progress at the property, including a wall, some pipework and several boards.

With the five rules applied, the same day produces something you could send to the customer after a quick read, provided the captions mention tomorrow's boarding and the tap decision still open:

First-fix pipework to the new utility room was completed on the rear wall, with the waste run checked before boarding. Plasterboard was delivered and stacked in the garage. Boarding starts tomorrow once the electrician has signed off the first-fix cables. Open item: the customer's choice of tap position is still to be confirmed.

Everything in that update comes from a caption, which is why you read it against the photos before it goes out. CompanyCam's own guidance says to review and correct AI output, and the one real risk is a confident sentence that no caption supports, such as a test being "passed" when nobody photographed the test.

Here is how that slip looks in practice. A site manager captions a delivery as "Screed - ordered for Thursday" and a later photo as "Screed - bay 2 laid". The AI writes "Screed was laid", dropping the bay number because summaries compress. The customer reads it as the whole floor, books the floor fitter for Monday, and the fitter arrives to bare concrete in bay 1. The fix costs nothing: the draft should have said "bay 2 only", and reading it against the photos would have caught the missing detail.

If you use no photo app and rely on a chat assistant, give the assistant strict instructions. This prompt is a starting point; paste your own captions in:

You are writing a customer-safe daily update for a small building firm.
Use ONLY the captions below. Do not add facts, names, dates or test results
that are not in a caption. If a caption is unclear, list it under "Questions for me".

Job: J2410 Kitchen extension. Date: [date].
Captions:
1. Rear wall - plumbing - first-fix pipework to utility room - before boarding
2. Rear wall - plumbing - waste run checked with spirit level
3. Garage - materials - plasterboard delivered and stacked
4. Utility room - electrics - first-fix cables run, awaiting sign-off

Write: (a) four plain-English sentences for the customer, (b) a bullet list of
work completed, (c) a bullet list of anything outstanding, (d) questions for me.

Notice what the prompt forbids. The "awaiting sign-off" caption stops the AI from saying the electrics are finished, and the instruction to ask instead of guess gives you a short list of things to fix before sending. For a longer record of how voice notes become daily reports on site, the daily report from voice notes tutorial goes step by step.

A seven-day trial on one live job

Most apps offer a free trial; CompanyCam's pricing page says "Start your free trial. Cancel anytime." without stating how long it lasts, so ask before you start the clock. Pick one job that is already under way, ideally with a site manager who is slightly sceptical, and run these ten checks. A pass means the result needs no more than a minute of correction.

Put four questions to the vendor in writing during the trial, so you hold the answers rather than a memory of a call:

• What happens to a Walkthrough Note or Daily Log request when the monthly credits are used up, and can more be bought mid-month?
• Which plan applies if the pricing table and the FAQ disagree about AI on the plan I am buying?
• Can I export every photo, description, tag and report in a usable format, and who does it if I cancel?
• Are the share links to customers public to anyone holding the link, and can I switch one off?

Score each row pass or fail on the day and keep the list. If a plan fails the credit meter by a wide margin, the answer is not to buy it and ration it; the answer is the next plan up, or a cheaper app and a chat assistant for the AI parts. For the handover end of the job, where the same photos become part of the final paperwork, see the construction handover pack checklist.

Month one: four numbers that show the plan is the right size

A trial proves the app works; the first full month shows whether the plan fits. At the end of month one, pull four numbers from the account and your own records, and set them beside what you assumed when you chose. The figures below are an illustration for the four-person firm on Crew.

Read it from the bottom up. If customers call less and updates take a few minutes, the plan is paying its way even with credits left over. If captions are thin, no upgrade helps, and the cheapest fix is a fortnight's push on the naming rules, with the site manager opening ten random photos every Friday and sending back any without an area, a trade and a stage.

Photos of other people's homes: set the ground rules first

A photo app holds a record of the inside of customers' houses, so agree what happens to it before the first picture. Tell the customer at quote stage that dated photos are taken for the job record and that you will not photograph papers, screens or people. Keep faces out of frame, and shoot a wide view only when it shows the work.

CompanyCam's pricing FAQ says photos stay in the account for as long as you remain a customer, and that if you cancel you can export your photos before your access ends. That is reassuring for the job, and a reminder that cancelling is a decision about where years of evidence live. Run the export check from the trial table again before you ever cancel, because a project you cannot open later is a dispute you cannot answer.

Questions to settle before you pick a plan

What happens when CompanyCam AI credits run out?

Neither the pricing page nor the help centre's plans article says. The plans article only says credits are shared across the company and refresh monthly, and the checklist help article says the allowance varies by plan and to contact the team. Ask support in writing during your trial whether you can buy more mid-month, because the answer decides whether Crew is safe for a busy month.

Does CompanyCam's AI work without a phone signal?

Partly. Its help centre says only the Walkthrough Note works offline, and only if you opened the project before losing signal; the recording uploads when you reconnect. Summaries, Daily Logs and Progress Recaps need a connection. Test it in a basement or on a rural site before you rely on it.

Can I use ChatGPT or Claude instead of a photo app?

For turning captions into a daily update, yes, and it costs nothing extra if you hold a ChatGPT or Claude plan. What you lose is the storage, tagging, search and customer-sharing a photo app provides, and the chat assistant cannot read dates or locations from file data, so every caption must say where and when.

Is the Core plan enough for a two-person firm?

Core allows one or two users and cannot be expanded, and its help-centre description leaves out checklists. That suits a pair who mainly want dated photo records and a handful of AI summaries a month. The moment a third person needs a login, you move to Crew, a step from $63 to $129 a month on annual billing, so budget for it.

Further reads

• Five AI Apps for Construction Site Work: Photos, Logs, Checks — Five AI apps for site work, beyond photo storage.
• Best Free AI Tools for Construction: Where Each Free Tier Stops — Where free tiers run out, useful before paying anyone.
• Best AI App for a Construction Company: Logging Near Misses — Logging near misses on the same phones.
• AI Automation for Construction Companies: Daily Logs to Invoices — Turning daily logs into invoices and updates.
• Best AI Software for Construction Companies: Audit What You Own First — Audit the software you already own first.
• AI Apps for Contractors: A Phone-Only Setup for One-Truck Firms — Which AI apps a one-truck contractor can run from a phone on site, in what order, what each costs, and how to check every step is working.
• AI Solutions for Construction Companies: One Platform or Point Tools? — One construction platform or several point tools? Four tests (jobs, integrations, data ownership, upkeep) and two stacks priced from vendor pages.
• Best AI App for General Contractors: Site and Office Tools Compared — Site and office AI tools priced per month for a six-person firm, each with a worked example, plus four stacks from $189 a month.
• EV Charger Installer App or Software: AI and Features Beyond Quotes — A neutral checklist for EV charger installers: survey forms, certificates, handover packs, scheduling, what a general job app can do and where AI helps.
• Home Builders AI: Tools and Cost for Weekly Buyer Progress Updates — The tools and monthly cost behind weekly AI-written buyer updates for a small home builder, from a $20 assistant to a full portal, with the routine and checks.
• JobTread Pricing for a Five-Person Builder: What You Pay and What AI Adds — Five paid users cost $279 a month, or $223 a month on annual billing. This adds the AI, payment fees and extras a five-person builder should budget for.
• JobTread vs Buildertrend for a Small Builder: Price, AI and Fit — JobTread publishes $199 plus $20 per extra user; Buildertrend sells by quote. Compare price, AI and fit with a scorecard and a two-hour test.
• Which AI Tools Should a General Contractor Buy? What to Skip — A buy-first order, a skip list with triggers, and a hours-it-must-save test for a general contractor, priced for a six-person remodelling firm.
• Window Measurement App: Measure and Quote on the Doorstep With AI Help — Windowmaker Measure, PrefMeasure, DoorWin, Aufmaß App and others compared, with a phone-against-laser test and a survey sign-off for installers.
• AI Marketing Tools for Small Businesses: A Shopfitter's Case Study Pages — A step-by-step method for shopfitters: project paperwork and photos in, a checked one-page case study out, with client sign-off before it goes live.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: CompanyCam pricing page and help-centre articles (plans explained, updated late October 2026; glossary; creating a checklist; using AI features for documents and for checklists; best practices for AI tools); Raken and Fieldwire pricing pages; OpenAI and Anthropic file-upload documentation. Checked October 2026.