A small contractor can spend almost nothing on a spreadsheet plus a $20-a-month AI assistant, about $100 to $300 per user a month on a takeoff tool, or $50 to $350 a month on a suite with estimating built in. AI comes bundled on some plans, adds $10 to $85 per user a month on others, or is metered.
Those ranges blur three things that change a real bill: how many people need a seat, whether the vendor meters its AI separately, and whether the AI tier also carries features you did not ask for. A $75 step between two plans is an upper limit on what AI costs, because the higher tier usually adds other things too. Every price below is the list figure printed on the vendor's own page in October 2026. Several pages show a dollar sign without naming a currency, so confirm it at checkout.
Four price bands for a one-to-four-person contractor
Most buying mistakes come from comparing a $20 plan with a $299 one as if they did the same job. They do not, so sort what you might buy into bands first.
| Band | What you are buying | List price | How it is billed | Where AI shows up |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Spreadsheet, assistant, PDF tool | A spreadsheet you already own, a chat assistant, optionally a PDF measuring tool | $0 to $20 a month for the assistant; Bluebeam Revu $260 to $590 per user, billed annually | Per user | Chat drafts and checks your sheet; Bluebeam's AI drawing review sits on its top tier |
| 2. Takeoff tools | Software that measures plans and counts symbols, with AI doing a first pass | About $100 to $300 per user a month (Kreo, Exayard, Togal, STACK); BuildVision $299 to $599 a month; PlanSwift $2,000 to $3,000 a year | Per seat, per account with a user allowance, or by usage | AI takeoff is the product |
| 3. Suites with estimating built in | Quoting, scheduling, invoicing and job costing in one system | About $50 to $350 a month for a small team (JobTread, Contractor Foreman, Tradify, ServiceM8) | Per user, base plus extra users, or by job volume | AI writing and bill capture, often on a higher tier |
| 4. Outsourced estimating | A person, sometimes with software, does the takeoff for each bid | Per estimate or by retainer; the services I looked at printed few prices | Per project | Varies by service; ask |
Band 4 is the only one priced per project, and it is worth a quote when you bid fewer than a handful of jobs a month. Choosing between an AI estimator and a human one goes through that decision. The three software bands come next, and after them a four-person firm's numbers.
Band 1: a spreadsheet, an AI assistant and a PDF tool
Most small contractors already own the spreadsheet. A Microsoft 365 Business Standard seat is $14 a month and a Google Workspace Business Starter seat is about $7, and either handles an estimate sheet with assemblies, waste factors and markup. The AI layer is a chat assistant. ChatGPT Plus and Claude Pro are each $20 a month, free tiers exist if you only draft occasionally, and Microsoft's Copilot Business adds $21 per user a month on top of a business plan (Copilot Chat itself is included free). I would start with one $20 plan and see what it earns before buying anything else.
The limit is that a chat assistant does not measure drawings. It works on rows you paste in, so its jobs are checking that scope text and estimate lines agree, writing formulas for waste and markup, and drafting scope wording. Using ChatGPT inside Excel covers the mechanics, and checking a construction quote with ChatGPT rather than writing it explains why the checking role is the safer one. Keep the sums in the sheet's own formulas, because assistants can slip on long columns of arithmetic.
Below are 14 rows from a kitchen remodel estimate (description, quantity, unit, unit price, total) and the scope notes the customer signed off.
1) List any scope item with no matching row.
2) List rows whose quantity looks inconsistent with the scope notes.
3) Do not recalculate totals or change any number. Say what you would check and why.
[paste rows and scope notes]Here is an illustrative reply. "No row covers removing and disposing of the old cabinets, which the scope notes mention. The tile row says 118 sq ft, but the notes list the floor and a splashback; ask whether the splashback is inside the 118. The notes say 'move one socket' and there is no electrical line. There is no permit or contingency line." The cabinet removal and the socket are real gaps, the splashback is a fair question, and the permit line may not apply to your job. The assistant also cannot know that your contingency is already inside your markup. Treat the list as questions to answer, not corrections to accept.
The step up in this band is a PDF tool with measuring built in. Bluebeam Revu is priced per user and billed annually: Basics $260 (length and area), Core $330 (perimeters, counts, angles and volume) and Complete $440, which adds Quantity Link with Microsoft Excel to send measured quantities into a sheet. AI features appear only on Max, $590 per user billed annually and labelled an introductory price: AI drawing reviews, AI drawing comparisons and an AI integration through MCP. A contractor who measures on screen by hand could run Core or Complete plus a $20 assistant for about $48 to $57 a month in all.
Band 2: takeoff tools, and how each one meters its AI
This is where AI is the reason to buy, and where vendors disagree most about what to charge for. Prices below are as printed. For a wider look at which products suit which trades, see AI estimating software for small builders, six options compared.
| Tool | Price as printed | What you pay for | Trial or guarantee | AI on the pricing page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kreo | Essential $100, Pro $175, Business $250 per user a month, billed annually | Per seat; Pro is for 1 to 4 users, Business for 5 to 20 (five seats included, $15,000 a year) | 7-day free trial | None on Essential; AI takeoff of rooms, walls, doors and windows, AI scale detection, batch AI takeoff and an assistant from Pro |
| Exayard | Starter $99, Professional $249 per user a month | Per seat; Starter allows 50 manual takeoffs a month | None stated | $100 (Starter) or $250 (Professional) of AI credits per user each month, included |
| Togal | Growth $299 per user a month, billed yearly | Per seat; the custom plan is for four or more users | Demo, no trial listed | Unlimited automated takeoffs and chat prompts |
| BuildVision | Pro $299, Max $599 a month | Per account: Pro up to five team members, Max unlimited; AI is metered in tokens | 14-day trial with a card, 7-day money-back | Plan reading, quantity extraction and quote generation, paid in tokens |
| PlanSwift | Essential $2,000, Core $3,000 a year | Per seat; one seat each | 14-day trial, no card | Auto Count, Auto Scale and Auto Bookmark on Essential; Auto Takeoff added on Core |
| STACK | Takeoff & Estimate "as low as" $299 per user a month | Per seat | The page says a free version exists | None listed on the pricing page |
| OneEstimate | $49, $99 or $179 a month | Per account with limits on estimates and materials; $15 per extra user on the middle plan | Not shown | AI line-item estimates and invoice scanning, with AI usage needing extra credits |
Token maths on a metered tool
BuildVision's page says each page of a plan set uses 500 tokens and each detection uses 20, and its own example, a 50-page set with 1,000 detections, comes to about 45,000 tokens. Take a remodeller's smaller set: 12 pages and 250 detections is 6,000 plus 5,000, or 11,000 tokens. The 50,000-token tier covers about four and a half of those sets a month, which is roughly $66 a set if you use it all ($299 divided by 4.5). A contractor bidding eight a month needs about 88,000 tokens, which points at the 100,000-token tier. The page text I read does not say whether the 100,000-token tier costs more than $299, says extra tokens are billed at a "simple usage rate" it does not specify, and notes that generating quotes uses more tokens. Ask for those figures in writing before you rely on the headline $299.
Seat cliffs: what a fifth person does to the bill
Per-seat prices look simple until a band boundary arrives. Kreo's Pro plan is for one to four users at $2,100 per seat a year, so four seats cost $8,400. The next plan, Business, starts at five seats and $15,000 a year. Adding one person therefore adds $6,600 a year, or 79%, and it also adds team features you may not want. The practical answer is to count who really needs a takeoff seat. It is usually the estimator, not the project manager, and Kreo's Essential plan lists unlimited guest viewers for people who only need to look.
Band 3: suites that price the job and run it
A suite covers quotes, scheduling, invoicing and job costing together. The estimating inside it is mostly quote-building from your own rates, with measured takeoff included in some and absent in others. Four charging styles appear in the pricing pages I read.
- Base plus users. JobTread is $199 a month with one internal user included, then $20 for each of users 2 to 10 on monthly billing, $15 for users 11 to 20, and so on down; annual billing saves 20%. All features are included, estimating and takeoff are on its feature list, field crew who only log notes and photos can be added free, and customer and vendor portal users are unlimited. There is no free trial, but monthly plans carry a 30-day money-back guarantee. Its AI tools get a banner but no separate price.
- Tiered by user band. Contractor Foreman's annual-billing prices are Basic $49 (one user), Standard $105 (up to three), Plus $166 (up to eight), Pro $221 (up to fifteen) and Unlimited $332; on monthly billing Standard is $139, Plus $199, Pro $279 and Unlimited $399. It offers a 30-day free trial, and the page says Basic and Standard do not include material pricing. It lists an AI Estimator marked as a preview.
- Per user. Tradify is $47 (Lite), $51 (Pro) and $61 (Plus) per user a month, with a 14-day trial. Its AI tools, SmartRead for bills and SmartWrite, are on Plus only.
- By job volume. ServiceM8 charges $0 (one user, 30 jobs a month), $29 (50 jobs), $79 (150), $149 (500) and $349 (1,500 and above), with unlimited users on the paid plans. Its page lists AI quote and invoice drafting on every plan and a separate Office Agent Pro add-on at $39 a month.
Joist's estimate-and-invoice app sits at the cheap end: its Basics, Pro and Elite plans run from about $10 to $32 a month with built-in AI tools listed from Basics, a fourth plan called Run is $100, and an AI receptionist is a separate $49-a-month add-on. Jobber, a job-management app aimed at service trades, starts at $49 a month list for one user on Core, with introductory offers that change often.
For a four-person firm in which everybody needs a login, the monthly bills work out like this: JobTread $259 ($199 plus three at $20), or about $207 on annual billing; Contractor Foreman Plus $199 monthly or $166 on annual billing, because it allows up to eight users; Tradify Plus $244 (four at $61); ServiceM8 Growing $79, because users are not charged. Suites replace several tools, so judge them against what you pay now for scheduling, invoicing and job costing as well as estimating.
What AI adds to the bill, plan by plan
Put the steps side by side and AI appears at several price points: nothing extra on some plans, roughly $10 to $15 per user a month on suites and PDF tools, and $75 to $85 per user on takeoff tools, where it is the main reason to pay. The two usage-metered products step up by more, because the bigger plan also buys volume.
| Product | Plan without the AI step | Plan with it | Extra per user per month | What else the step bundles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kreo | Essential $100 | Pro $175 | $75 (75% more) | One-click measurements, auto symbol counting, assistant, a 1 to 4 user limit |
| PlanSwift | Essential $2,000 a year | Core $3,000 a year | About $83 | Essential already has AI counting and scaling; Core adds Auto Takeoff and the Takeoff BOOST suite |
| Tradify | Pro $51 (Lite $47) | Plus $61 | $10 ($14 from Lite) | Purchase orders, bulk invoicing and reporting |
| Bluebeam Revu | Complete $440 a year | Max $590 a year | About $12.50 | The page lists its AI features on Max only; the price is introductory |
| Exayard | Starter $99 | Professional $249 | $150 | Unlimited manual takeoffs, custom templates, automation integrations, priority support |
| BuildVision | Pro $299 (account) | Max $599 (account) | $300 per account | Unlimited team members, the SuperThink model, a branded portal, an account manager |
Read each row as a ceiling. Kreo's $75 is the nearest thing to an AI price in the table, and even that includes measurement conveniences that are not strictly AI. Exayard's $150 and BuildVision's $300 are larger still, but each also buys more AI credits or tokens and more team features, so they overstate what the AI alone costs. The cheaper steps buy writing help or bill scanning, which save minutes, not hours. The expensive ones buy a first-pass takeoff, which is the part that can move estimating time.
A remodeller's monthly bill and the hours that justify it
Say a four-person remodelling contractor in which the owner prices all the bids: eight a month, at about 3.5 hours each for takeoff and pricing, which is 28 hours a month. Put the owner's hour at $50, meaning what it would earn on site or in the office otherwise; swap in your own figure. A tool pays for itself if the time it saves is worth more than its monthly price, so the hours it must save equal the price divided by $50.
| Setup | Monthly cost at list | Hours it must save | Share of the 28 hours | Money committed up front |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spreadsheet plus one $20 assistant | $20 | 0.4 | 1% | One month |
| Bluebeam Core plus the assistant | $47.50 | 0.95 | 3% | $330 for a year, plus one month |
| Kreo Essential, one seat | $100 | 2.0 | 7% | $1,200 for a year |
| Kreo Pro, one seat | $175 | 3.5 | 12.5% | $2,100 for a year |
| JobTread, two internal users, monthly billing | $219 | 4.4 | 16% | One month, with a 30-day money-back guarantee |
| Togal Growth, one seat | $299 | 6.0 | 21% | $3,588 for a year |
JobTread covers scheduling, invoicing and job costing as well, so its 4.4 hours is a poor test; the saving to look for is across the whole office. For the five estimating-only rows, the useful reading is the share of the 28 hours. A tool that has to cut 21% of the estimating time, with a year's fee payable up front, deserves a harder trial than one that has to cut 3%.
Volume matters as much as price. The same flat monthly fee spread over more bids gets cheap quickly, and over a few bids it does not:
| Monthly fee | 3 bids a month | 8 bids a month | 20 bids a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| $100 | $33 a bid | $13 a bid | $5 a bid |
| $175 | $58 a bid | $22 a bid | $9 a bid |
| $299 | $100 a bid | $37 a bid | $15 a bid |
At three bids a month, a $299 seat costs $100 a bid, and a per-job outsourced estimate quoted below that is the better deal. At twenty bids, the same seat costs $15 a bid and the question becomes whether it is accurate, not whether it is cheap. If you want to test the accuracy side with your own jobs, testing a remodelling AI estimator against your own past jobs sets out how.
Estimating costs that sit off the price list
- Pricing data. AI measures drawings; it does not know what a sheet of plasterboard costs you. Unit costs still come from your supplier quotes or a cost database, and Contractor Foreman's page says its Basic and Standard plans do not include material pricing.
- Setup evenings. Assemblies, templates and your own rates take time to load before the first bid. Budget a few evenings, and do it during the trial window, not after.
- Cards on trials. BuildVision requires a card for its 14-day trial and charges on day 15 unless you cancel, though its FAQ also tells you to cancel before day 14, so treat day 13 as the deadline. Contractor Foreman's FAQ says monthly plans are charged straight away and annual plans at the end of the trial. Put the cancel date in your calendar on day one.
- Annual commitments. Kreo, Togal and Bluebeam bill annually. Among the pages I read, refund terms were printed by BuildVision (7 days), JobTread's monthly plan (30 days) and Contractor Foreman (100 days on its annual Plus, Pro and Unlimited plans, 30 days on the monthly versions).
- Usage overages. BuildVision's extra tokens and OneEstimate's extra AI credits are separate meters, and ServiceM8's top plan lists extra jobs at 20 cents each.
- Getting your data out. Check what leaves with you. Kreo's Essential plan lists Excel import and export, which means your estimates are not trapped in a format only the vendor reads.
A two-job trial that shows what the AI is worth
Trials run from 7 days (Kreo) to 14 (PlanSwift, Tradify, ServiceM8, BuildVision, Joist) and 30 (Contractor Foreman), so have two plan sets ready before you start the clock. Choose two finished jobs whose final quantities you trust, one tidy and one messy. Run both through the tool, time the work including your checking, and compare line by line. The table below uses invented numbers to show the layout; it is not a test of any product.
| Check on a kitchen-and-bath set | Your final figure | AI first pass | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Floor area | 412 sq ft | 405 sq ft | -1.7% |
| Doors | 9 | 9 | 0 |
| Windows | 6 | 7 | +1 (a sliding door counted as a window) |
| Partition wall length | 186 ft | 171 ft | -8% (walls under a scale note missed) |
| Time | 3.5 hours by hand | 1.4 hours first pass plus 1.5 hours checking | 0.6 hours saved |
Here the tool saves 0.6 hours a bid, so at eight bids a month it saves 4.8 hours, worth $240 at $50 an hour. That clears the 3.5 hours Kreo Pro needs and falls short of the 6.0 hours a $299 tool needs. The wall-length miss and the sliding door are the useful findings. Both are the kind of error a reviewer catches in a normal check, which is the condition for keeping a tool: it must beat the break-even hours, and its misses must be ones you would have caught anyway. For a fuller method, trialling three takeoff tools on one real plan set runs the same idea across several products.
Estimating software pricing: what owners ask before buying
Is there free estimating software with AI?
Partly. ServiceM8's free plan covers one user and 30 jobs a month and lists AI quote and invoice drafting plus a writing helper limited to 10 AI assists a day. A spreadsheet you already own plus the free tier of a chat assistant costs nothing. The dedicated AI takeoff tools I checked offer trials or demos, not free plans; STACK has a free version of its takeoff product, but its pricing page lists no AI.
Do estimating tools charge per project?
Among the products priced on this page, none do. They charge per seat, per account with a user allowance, by job volume, or by an AI usage meter such as tokens or credits. Per-project pricing shows up with outsourced estimating services, and those I looked at printed few prices, so ask for a quote on a real plan set.
Can AI takeoff replace checking the plans by hand?
Not yet, and the vendors' own wording is modest. PlanSwift describes its Auto Takeoff as building a first-pass takeoff. Treat every AI result as a draft: compare counts and areas against a hand check on your first few jobs, and keep doing a quick review on every bid.
Is monthly or annual billing better for a first purchase?
Monthly, where it is offered, because you can leave without losing a year's fee. Kreo, Togal and Bluebeam bill annually. JobTread's monthly plan carries a 30-day money-back guarantee, and BuildVision lists a 7-day one. Whatever you pick, put the trial's last day in your calendar, since BuildVision takes a card up front and bills on day 15.
Further reads
- Painting Estimating Software: Which Ones Use AI and What They Cost — The same price-and-AI question for painting contractors.
- Asphalt Paving Estimating Software: What AI Adds and What It Costs — What AI adds, and costs, in one specialist trade.
- Which AI Tools Should a General Contractor Buy? What to Skip — Which AI tools a general contractor should buy or skip.
- AI Drywall Estimating Software: Plan or Photo Takeoff for a Small Crew? — Plan or photo takeoff, for a small drywall crew.
- AI Software for Contractors: An Office Stack for a Five-Person Firm — Prices the wider office stack for a five-person contracting firm.
- AI Electrical Quoting Software: Build Three-Option Upgrade Packages — How to build three comparable packages for a panel or consumer unit upgrade: what quoting software and AI draft for you, and the checks before a quote is sent.
- AI Estimating Software for Flooring: Test Accuracy on Your Own Plans — What flooring takeoff tools measure from PDFs and photos, how waste and pattern allowances work, and a five-plan test to run before you trust the numbers.
- 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 for Quantity Surveyors: Five Tool Types Compared by Job — Takeoff software, spreadsheet AI, chat assistants, contract review and site capture, scored per quantity surveying job with prices and checks.
- Glazier Software: Quoting and Scheduling Tools With AI Features — Three glass-specific tools compared on measure, quote, order and fit, with published prices, vendor AI claims to test and a one-week trial checklist.
- 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.
- AI Tools for Construction Estimating: Bid Checks After the Takeoff — Takeoff tools make quantities; checking the bid is a different job. A comparison with list prices and a five-gate bid check on a worked example.
- Best Free AI Tools for Construction: Where Each Free Tier Stops — Free AI tools a small construction firm can use today, with the exact limit on each: job cards, calls, scans, seats and chats, plus a three-month cost example.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: vendor pricing pages read in October 2026 (Kreo, Exayard, Togal, BuildVision, PlanSwift, STACK, Bluebeam, OneEstimate, JobTread, Contractor Foreman, Tradify, ServiceM8, Joist, Jobber) and the assistants' own plan pages.