AI takeoff software: what each tool actually automates

AI takeoff software uses trained models to do part of a quantity takeoff for you: finding every match of a symbol you select, detecting items such as rooms, walls, doors or fixtures without a sample, measuring areas, or answering questions about the plans and specs. What gets automated varies a lot between products, and every vendor still has the estimator review the result. Published prices run from $2,000 a year for PlanSwift Essential with Auto Count¹ to $25,000 a year for Beam AI's done-for-you takeoffs².

By Agustín Policano, founder of AmpCount, which makes electrical takeoff software. Facts about other products and statistics link to their source, checked November 3, 2026.

What “AI” means in AI construction takeoff software

“AI takeoff” is used for at least five different things. Before comparing prices, find out which of them a product does, because the review work afterwards is very different for each. If you're still choosing between point-and-click tools and automated ones, the construction takeoff software comparison covers both.

Count from one sample

You box one symbol; the software finds the matches across the sheets and you accept or reject them. Fast to set up, but it needs one selection and one review per item type. PlanSwift Auto Count, STACK symbol search, Countfire's Smart Select and Togal.AI's image search work this way¹³⁴⁵.

Full detection

A model trained on drawings finds items on its own, without a sample: rooms, walls, doors and windows in Kreo⁶, devices and fixtures in Drawer AI⁷, trade items in Bobyard and Beam AI⁸². Less setup, more to review, and results depend on how close your plans are to what the model was trained on.

Area segmentation

The model outlines spaces and surfaces so areas and perimeters are measured in one click. This is where vendors publish their strongest numbers, such as Togal.AI's “98% accuracy on floor plans”⁹ and Kreo's Auto Measure landing “within 94% of the real geometry” on busy plans¹⁰.

Scope from documents

A language model answers questions about specs and notes, names sheets, or sets scale. It doesn't measure anything but saves the reading time around the takeoff: Togal.CHAT, STACK IQ and Kreo's Caddie are examples⁹³⁶.

Done for you

The vendor runs the takeoff (AI plus its own reviewers) and sends you the result. Beam AI sells “Bid-ready takeoffs, QA-checked & Done For You”². You trade control for time, and you still check what comes back.

Best AI construction takeoff software: 12 tools compared

What each vendor says its AI does, and its published price, checked November 3, 2026
Tool	Kind of AI	What it automates	Price
Togal.AI	Detection, sample search, plan chat	Automated takeoffs, image and symbol searches, Togal.CHAT questions about the plans	$299 per user a month, billed yearly⁵⁹
Kreo	Detection, area segmentation, agent	Pro: one-click areas and lines, auto symbol counting, AI takeoff of rooms, walls, doors and windows, batch AI across sheets, Caddie agent	$175 per user a month, billed annually (Pro)⁶
Beam AI	Detection, or done for you	Self-serve AI takeoff for HVAC, plumbing and steel; QA-checked takeoffs delivered for all trades	From $8,000 a year per trade, or $25,000 a year done for you²
Bobyard	Detection	Trade-specific models make the first pass; each detection carries a confidence score for review	Depends on products and add-ons⁸
Drawer AI	Detection and routing (electrical)	Counts fixtures and routes conduits; PDFs to Revit	Quote⁷¹¹
Countfire	Sample search	Select a symbol once and it counts every match; Smart Select names and organizes each item	Not published⁴
ConstructConnect Takeoff	Detection	Auto Takeoff detects and measures items; Auto Name and Auto Scale on both plans	$2,450 per seat a year for Auto Takeoff (Professional)¹²
PlanSwift (Takeoff BOOST)	Sample search, first-pass detection	Auto Count, Auto Scale, Auto Bookmark; Core adds Auto Takeoff for areas, lengths and counts	$2,000 a year (Essential) or $3,000 (Core), one seat¹
On-Screen Takeoff	Takeoff BOOST suite	ConstructConnect's AI takeoff suite, built into OST	Not published; 14-day trial¹³
STACK	Symbol recognition, plan chat	Symbol search and recognition, AI takeoffs, STACK IQ and GPT-powered chat	$299 per user a month, billed annually (Premium)³
Procore Estimating	Area detection, auto count	AI detects floor plan areas and auto-counts repeated symbols	Annual fee by annual construction volume¹⁴¹⁵
AmpCount	AI reads text; geometry counts (electrical)	AI reads sheet titles, legend names and the fixture schedule; every device and fixture is counted by geometry from the legend	$149 a month or $1,490 a year for a team of up to 3

A few honest notes on the strongest offers. Togal.AI's one published plan lists unlimited automated takeoffs, unlimited chat prompts and unlimited image and symbol searches⁵. Kreo sells a non-AI Essential plan at $100 a user a month, so you can see what the AI is worth to you before paying $175 for Pro⁶. Bobyard says plainly that the AI does the first pass and “your estimator reviews each detection, using the confidence score on it, before it is locked into the estimate”⁸. Drawer AI goes past counting into conduit routing for electrical work⁷. Beam AI's self-serve license is limited to HVAC, plumbing and steel², so mechanical subs should weigh it against the trade tools in the HVAC estimating software guide and the plumbing estimating guide.

PlanSwift AI and the Takeoff BOOST suite

People searching for “PlanSwift AI” are looking for Takeoff BOOST, ConstructConnect's AI takeoff suite, which it builds into On-Screen Takeoff, PlanSwift and ConstructConnect Takeoff¹³. In PlanSwift, the Essential plan ($2,000 a year) includes Auto Count, Auto Scale and Auto Bookmark, and Core ($3,000) adds Auto Takeoff, “the AI tool that builds a first-pass takeoff for areas, lengths, and counts in minutes.” Existing customers can add Takeoff BOOST by upgrading their plan¹. In the browser product, ConstructConnect Takeoff, Auto Takeoff is on the Professional plan only¹².

What the research says about AI on drawings

0.95

top accuracy of multimodal models on text extraction questions about drawings in AECV-Bench.¹⁶

0.40 to 0.55

typical accuracy of the same models when counting doors and windows on 120 floor plans.¹⁶

82.5%

mean average precision of a YOLOv8 detector trained on 45 scanned electrical layout plans with 34 symbol classes.¹⁷

The pattern across studies is consistent: general chat models read drawings well and count symbols badly, and models trained for one symbol set do much better but still miss some. The AECV-Bench authors conclude current systems “function well as document assistants but lack robust drawing literacy”¹⁶, and the BlueprintSymVL study finds that current vision-language models “are best integrated into human-in-the-loop workflows”¹⁸. None of these papers tests a commercial takeoff product, so they don't rank the tools above. They do explain why every vendor keeps a review step, and why the type of AI matters more than the label.

Where AI takeoff tends to work

Clean vector PDFs exported from CAD, with consistent symbols.
Areas and perimeters of clearly bounded rooms and surfaces.
Repeated items drawn the same way across many sheets.
Naming sheets, setting scale and finding pages in big sets.
Answering questions about notes and specs while you take off.

Where it needs the most review

Scanned or photographed sheets, and hand markups.
Dense areas where symbols overlap text, hatching or other symbols.
Symbols that differ by a letter or a small mark.
Items in notes, schedules or details rather than on the plan.
Anything the model wasn't trained on: a new trade, a new drafting style.

AI construction estimating software: beyond the takeoff

AI construction estimating usually means AI around the estimate rather than AI that sets your prices. Sage describes Sage Ai as giving estimators “faster insight, greater confidence, and fewer surprises on bid day”¹⁹. Clear Estimates lists unlimited AI estimates on its Standard plan and AI-powered image and plan uploads on Pro²⁰. zzTakeoff uses AI to name pages automatically²¹. Pricing, labor and markup still come from your cost database and your judgment; an AI estimate is a starting draft, the same way an AI takeoff is a first pass. For the full estimating picture, see the construction estimating software guide.

Is there free AI takeoff software?

Not as a permanent plan among the tools above, but several let you test their AI before paying. PlanSwift offers 14 days of the full Core plan “including all AI tools,” with no credit card¹. Kreo offers a 7-day trial on each plan⁶. On-Screen Takeoff has a 14-day trial¹³. STACK's no-cost plan starts with 7 days of Pro, then keeps core takeoff tools on one active project a month; symbol recognition and AI takeoffs are listed as Premium features³. Searches for “AI estimating software free” turn up the same pattern: a trial, then a paid plan. The free takeoff software guide covers tools that really are free, without AI. AmpCount has no trial; it's $149 a month, or $1,490 a year, with a full refund within 14 days.

How to evaluate AI takeoff software on your own plans

The only accuracy figure that matters is the one you measure on a job you've already counted. Use the trial for a structured test:

Pick a finished bid where you trust your own takeoff, ideally one with a typical mix of clean and messy sheets.
Run the AI takeoff and time everything: upload, setup, the AI run, and your review.
Compare quantities item by item, not just totals. Misses and false hits can cancel out in a total.
Count corrections: items you had to add, delete or reclassify.
Repeat on a second, different job. One clean set proves little.
Check what happens with scanned sheets, rotated symbols and typical rooms.

Net time saved = your manual hours − (setup + AI run + review + corrections)

Run the formula on a month of work, not one job. A tool that saves four hours on a large set but adds an hour of setup on every small one may come out even for a shop that mostly bids small jobs, and well ahead for one that bids hospitals. Divide the yearly price by the hours saved to get a cost per hour, and compare it with what an estimator hour costs you. The estimator salary guide works that hourly cost out from wage data and benefits, if you don't have your own number.

If the review is long because you can't trust any number without checking it, the tool hasn't saved much. Look for a clear way to see every mark behind a count, and for uncertain results that are flagged instead of quietly added to the total.

Questions to ask an AI takeoff vendor

Which of the five kinds of AI does it use for my trade: sample search, detection, segmentation, document reading, or done for you?
On whose plans was your accuracy figure measured, and how is a miss counted?
Can I click any quantity and see every mark behind it on the sheet?
What happens to detections the model isn't sure about?
Does it work on scanned sheets, or only vector PDFs and CAD?
Are my plans used to train your models?
Is AI usage capped or billed separately from the seat?

AI takeoff for electrical work

Electrical takeoff is dominated by counting many small symbols that look alike, which is the hardest case for general models. The AI electrical takeoff guide goes into that in detail, and the commercial electrical estimating guide covers the larger jobs where the same fixtures repeat floor after floor. AmpCount splits the work on purpose: AI reads the text on each sheet (titles, legend names, fixture schedule rows), and the counting is done by geometry against the legend symbols, so every number traces to marks on the plan. Uncertain marks stay out of the count until an estimator confirms them. It works on vector PDFs only and doesn't price or measure conduit. More in the electrical takeoff software guide.

Count the devices, check the numbers

AmpCount reads the legend on a vector PDF set, counts every electrical device and fixture on every sheet, keeps uncertain marks out of the count until you confirm them, and checks fixtures against the schedule. $149 a month or $1,490 a year for a team of up to 3, cancel anytime, full refund within 14 days.

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