The published 2026 numbers
Let's start with the prices themselves, because that's what you came for. These are published or reported figures collected in mid-2026. They are list rates — actual quotes vary by team size, multi-year commitment, and whatever the sales rep can get away with. Treat this as a map, not a contract.
- PlanSwift — ~$1,749/yr per user. Per-seat, perpetual-feeling but now subscription. Add-ons for the assembly libraries.
- STACK — $2,599 to $3,588/yr depending on tier. Cloud, per-seat, with takeoff plus a quoting layer at the top end.
- Bluebeam Revu — $260 to $440/yr. Cheapest on the list, but this is a markup-and-measure tool, not a structured takeoff engine. The price reflects what it is.
- Togal.AI — ~$299/mo per user (about $3,588/yr). AI auto-measure for areas, sold per seat per month.
- Square Takeoff — ~$800/yr per user. Mid-market, per-seat, straightforward.
- Easy Takeoffs — $399/yr. The value play; manual takeoff at a fraction of the seat cost.
- Kreo — ~$125+/mo (about $1,500/yr and up). AI-assisted, per-seat, tiered by feature depth.
- Beam AI — custom, credit-based. You buy credits; consumption-based pricing means the number moves with usage.
- PILARS — $100 per trade per plan. Priced by the work, not the head.
We keep a living version of this on the takeoff software pricing breakdown, and our own plans are on the pricing page. Now the part that actually decides your budget.
Three pricing models, three different traps
Almost every tool here falls into one of three economic models, and the model matters more than the sticker.
Per-seat (PlanSwift, STACK, Square Takeoff, Togal, Kreo, Easy Takeoffs)
You pay per estimator, per year, forever. This is the dominant model and the most predictable — until you grow. A four-estimator shop on STACK's mid tier is writing a check for roughly $12,000 to $14,000 a year before a single bid goes out. The trap is that seats don't flex with your bid volume. A slow February costs the same as a flat-out September. And the seat you bought for the junior who left in March keeps billing until renewal.
Per-project / consumption (Beam AI, partly Togal)
You pay for what you run. Credit-based pricing looks attractive when you're small because a quiet month is a cheap month. The trap is the opposite of per-seat: a busy quarter can blow past your budget with no ceiling, and you find yourself rationing takeoffs to protect the credit balance — which is exactly the moment you should be bidding more.
Per-trade (PILARS)
You pay per trade you actually take off — $100 per trade per plan — and any estimator on the team can run it. The logic is that a takeoff's value tracks the scope, not the number of people looking at it. A solo estimator covering electrical and plumbing pays for two trades; a ten-person shop covering the same two trades pays the same. The trap to watch here is simpler: make sure the per-trade scope matches how you bundle work, so you're not paying for a trade you touch twice a year.
The year-two costs nobody quotes you
The headline price is the part vendors compete on. The renewal is where the margin lives. A few line items that rarely make the demo:
- Assembly and database add-ons. The base seat often ships with a thin library. The NECA-style labor units, the regional cost databases, the pre-built assemblies — those are frequently a separate SKU. Budget for them or you'll rebuild them by hand.
- Training and onboarding. The manual, drag-to-measure tools have a real learning curve. A week of an estimator's time getting fluent is a four-figure soft cost that never appears on the invoice.
- Annual price walks. Subscription renewals trend up. The $2,599 tier you signed has a way of being $2,899 at renewal, and the upgrade you were promised lives one tier higher.
- The integration tax. If the takeoff doesn't hand off cleanly to your estimating or accounting system, someone re-keys numbers. That re-keying is both a cost and an error source.
Run the two-year number, not the first-year number. A tool that's $400 cheaper up front but locks the assembly library behind a $1,200 add-on isn't cheaper.
When the expensive tool is the right call
This is the honest part, and it's where most "comparison" articles get cowardly. Sometimes the priciest option is correct.
If you're a large GC or a specialty contractor with a dedicated, full-time estimating department running the same drawing styles every week, a mature per-seat platform like STACK or PlanSwift earns its keep. The deep assembly libraries, the established workflows, the vendor's enterprise support line — those have real value when you have the volume to amortize them and the staff to exploit every feature. Paying $3,000 a seat is rational when each seat produces a few million dollars in bids.
Bluebeam, on the cheap end, is also the right tool for a specific job: a markup and coordination shop that needs precise measurement on PDFs and doesn't want a full estimating engine. Buying STACK to do Bluebeam's job is overpaying as surely as buying Bluebeam to run a structured MEP takeoff is underbuying.
The mismatch — and it's common — is the small-to-mid shop paying enterprise per-seat rates for capacity it never uses, while bid volume swings month to month. That's the profile where per-trade or consumption pricing usually wins on the spreadsheet. If you bid across several trades but don't have a body for each one, paying by the trade instead of by the head is generally the cheaper, saner math.
"We were paying for five seats and using three. Switching to a model priced by the work we actually bid, not the chairs we filled, cut the line item roughly in half — same output."
Reported by a regional mechanical contractor, 18-person shop
How to actually decide
Forget the feature matrix for a second and answer three questions. How many trades do you bid in a typical month? How many estimators touch a takeoff? And how lumpy is your bid volume across the year? Per-seat rewards steady, single-trade, full-utilization shops. Per-trade and consumption reward variable, multi-trade, lean teams. Match the model to your shape and the sticker price mostly sorts itself out.
Disclaimer: All prices above are published or reported as of mid-2026 and are subject to change. Verify current rates directly with each vendor before making a purchasing decision.