Quoting and estimating software for UK contractors

At a glance

• The fixture: 63 measured lines on a first-floor build-over in Stockport, issued on 14 July 2026 and published line by line.
• Published UK prices run from £28.99 a month to £1,299 for a perpetual package.
• Three different jobs hide behind the word quoting, and buying for the wrong one is the commonest mistake.
• We have not run the fixture through each vendor’s software, and this page says so rather than implying a test we did not do.
• Declared bias: we build one of these, and the section that says when not to use it is included.

The job we tested everything against

The quoting system we built and run produced an issued job on 14 July 2026 for Cheadle Construction of Cheadle, Stockport, reference JAY-AA-20260713: a first-floor build-over extension in Heaton Moor, priced across sixty-three measured lines at £98,214.72 including VAT.

Preliminaries and site set-up, £17,374. Bathrooms and en-suites, £15,962. Internal walls and finishes, £11,245. Mechanical and electrical, £6,290. Six further sections, all published, with a client copy and a tradesman copy. Every line traces back to a dimension somebody can check, because a bill of quantities is measured, not estimated.

We publish it for one reason: it is a standard you can hold a quote to. Not our quote, any quote. When you evaluate any of the tools below, ask whether its output would stand up to being read line by line by a client who wanted to argue. That is the only test that matters and it is the one no product page performs. What we cannot show you yet is listed on our evidence page.

Are quoting, estimating and takeoff the same thing?

No, and almost every disappointing software purchase in this category is a tool bought for the wrong one of the three.

How it moves

Three jobs hide behind the word quoting

Takeoff, estimating and quoting are different stages. Most disappointing purchases are a tool bought for the wrong one.

Comes inA drawing from the architect

1. 01

   Takeoff: measurement

   Turns the drawing into quantities. The pain it removes: a scale rule and a highlighter.

   After 01Board 184 m², skirting 96 m, 11 doors
2. 02

   Estimating: costing

   Applies your rates for labour, materials and plant, then preliminaries, overheads and margin.

   After 02Your rates applied, margin set by section
3. 03

   Quoting: the document

   What the customer opens, reads and decides on, with a client copy and a trade copy.

   Leaves asClient copy, every line readable

Goes outA price a client can read line by line and still accept

Takeoff is measurement. It turns a drawing into quantities: square metres of plasterboard, linear metres of skirting, numbers of doors. If your pain is sitting with a scale rule and a highlighter, this is your problem.

Estimating is costing. It turns quantities into money using rates for labour, materials and plant, applies preliminaries and overheads, and adds margin. If your pain is that you are confident about the quantities and nervous about the price, this is your problem.

Quoting is the document. It is what the customer opens, reads and decides on. If your pain is that you win less work than your pricing deserves, or that clients query the same three lines every time, this is your problem, and no amount of better estimating fixes it.

Buy for the one you have. A takeoff tool will not make your quotes more persuasive, and a beautiful quoting template will not tell you whether the price is right.

What does a UK contractor need it to do?

Six things, in the order they bite for a contracts manager at a firm turning over a few million a year.

Hold your rates, not somebody’s national average. The rate library is the difference between usable in week one and abandoned in month three.

Vary margin sensibly. By section, by trade, or by client. A single percentage across the job is how contractors lose money on preliminaries.

Show the working, and hide it when required. A client copy and a trade copy are different documents built from the same numbers.

Survive a change. When the client moves a wall, the quote should reprice rather than be retyped.

Leave an audit trail. Which version went out, when, and what changed. Most disputes are version disputes.

Hand off to whatever runs the job. A quote that has to be re-entered into the scheduler has only moved the typing.

What can this comparison establish?

This is where we differ from the other comparisons on this subject, so it is worth being blunt.

We have not run our fixture job through each vendor’s software. We do not hold licences for all of them, and pretending otherwise would be exactly the kind of claim this page exists to argue against. What we did do is read each vendor’s own published pricing page today and record what it says, with a link, so the prices below are checkable rather than remembered.

So this page can establish three things: what each tool costs in the UK today, what each vendor claims it does, and what standard the output should be held to. It cannot tell you which tool is most accurate, because nobody has published a fair test of that, including us. If a comparison article tells you one of these is the most accurate, ask what it was measured against.

The practical consequence is that the test in the final sections is the one that decides it, and only you can run it.

What do these tools cost in the UK?

Published list prices, read today. Tiers move, so check the vendor’s page before you rely on any of these.

Tool	Published UK price	Pricing shape
Price a Job	Estimating from £35.95 a month; project management from £28.99; building regulations from £38.97	Monthly, by module
Buildxact	Foundation £119 a month, or £89 billed annually at £1,060; Pro £209 or £160 at £1,917; Master £349 or £262 at £3,141	Monthly or annual, unlimited users, add-ons priced separately
Planyard	Estimating £40, Essential £82, Professional £123, Ultimate £164 per project manager per month; supporting staff £33	Per project manager, licence adjusts with volume
HBXL EstimatorXpress	From £1,299; Design and Estimate Kit from £2,098; upgrades and support from £18.99 a month	Package purchase with optional support plan
Buildern	From $225 a month for two seats, $360 for four; additional users $81 to $90; AI seats $50	Per seat, priced in US dollars

Two observations worth more than the table. First, the range here is narrow in absolute terms: the difference between the cheapest and the dearest monthly option is roughly the cost of half a day of a contracts manager’s time, so choosing on price alone is optimising the wrong variable. Second, one of these is priced in dollars on a page a UK contractor is likely to land on, which means your real cost moves with the exchange rate.

What does none of them do?

Two things, and the second is the one that wins work.

None of the comparison articles in this category shows you a tool’s actual output on a real job. They describe features from marketing pages. That is why we published ours.

And none of the products, as far as their own pages show, treats the customer’s document as the product. The output is usually a PDF of the estimate: correct, dense, and organised the way an estimator thinks rather than the way a client reads. A client comparing three quotes on a Sunday evening is not auditing your arithmetic. They are deciding who seems most in control. A calm page with the working available underneath it, rather than spread across it, is a commercial advantage that no feature list captures.

That is not an argument for building something. It is an argument for judging any tool, bought or built, on the document it produces.

Declared bias: we build one of these

We built a quoting system and we run it, so treat everything above with that in mind. Three specific things follow from it.

We have a reason to over-value the custom answer, which is why the next section argues the other way and means it. We know the products above less well than their own users do, which is why this page reports their published prices rather than judging their accuracy. And we benefit if you commission a build, which is why the fee for our AI Constraint Audit is fixed, published and not credited against a build, so a recommendation to buy a product costs us the same as one to build.

When should you buy off the shelf instead?

Most of the time, and specifically in these cases.

When your pricing is conventional and your pain is speed. The products above solve that for a few tens of pounds a month, which no build competes with.

When you produce fewer than a handful of quotes a month. The arithmetic does not support a build, and probably does not support the dearest tier of a product either.

When you do not yet know what you need. A subscription you can stop is a cheap way to find out, and it will teach you more about your requirements than any specification exercise.

When nobody internally would own a bespoke system. A product has a support line. A build has you.

The broader version of this question, including a three-year sum on published list prices, is in the custom software or off-the-shelf guide.

When is a bespoke quoting system the right call?

Three conditions, and you want at least two of them.

The way you price is distinctive. Not “we are careful”, but a method, a rate structure or a measurement discipline that clients choose you for. Freezing that into software protects it; freezing a generic process into software just costs money.

The document is the product. If what the client receives is the thing that wins or loses the job, and no product produces it the way you need, that is a bounded, real reason to build.

It has to stay in step with something else. A quote that must reflect live material prices, a scheduler, or a job costing system, without anyone retyping.

Even then, build the smallest useful version. What we take on, and the terms, is on quoting and estimating software.

What this does not apply to

This page is written for UK contractors and construction firms of roughly £1m to £50m turnover: a contracts manager or an estimator producing real quotes for real clients every week.

It does not apply to sole traders pricing a handful of jobs a year, where a spreadsheet and a good template are enough. It does not cover quantity surveying practice, professional measurement standards or contract administration, which are disciplines rather than software categories. It does not cover large contractors with existing enterprise estimating systems. And the prices are list prices for the tiers shown on the day, excluding VAT where the vendor showed them that way, with no negotiated discounts.

When we are the wrong choice

If one of the products above fits, buy it. We will say so on the free fit call and it will cost you nothing.

If you want a tool this month, a build is the wrong shape. Products win on speed and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

If your quoting process is not written down anywhere, a build would set concrete around a habit. Fix the process first.

If you are hoping software will make an uncompetitive price win work, no system does that, and anyone promising it is selling you something else.

If you would rather find out first where your pricing and sales process loses time and margin, the AI Constraint Audit is £2,000 over 14 days, and the relevant department shows how we build in that area.

Sources

Read on 21 September 2026.

• Our evidence page. The fixture: Cheadle Construction, Cheadle, Stockport, reference JAY-AA-20260713, 14 July 2026, first-floor build-over extension in Heaton Moor, 63 measured lines including VAT, with section subtotals published.
• Price a Job. Estimating from £35.95 a month, project management from £28.99, building regulations from £38.97, engineering from £23.60.
• Buildxact UK pricing. Foundation £119 a month or £89 billed annually at £1,060; Pro £209 or £160 at £1,917; Master £349 or £262 at £3,141; add-ons priced separately.
• Planyard pricing. Estimating £40, Essential £82, Professional £123, Ultimate £164 per project manager per month; supporting staff £33.
• HBXL pricing. EstimatorXpress from £1,299; Design and Estimate Kit from £2,098; PlansXpress from £899; upgrades and support from £18.99 a month.
• Buildern pricing. From $225 a month for two seats and $360 for four, additional users $81 to $90, AI seats $50, quoted in US dollars.

Related reading

• Custom software or off-the-shelf: how to decide
• How much does custom software cost in the UK?
• Audit the process before you automate it