Free construction estimating software: what's actually free

Free construction estimating software comes in three forms: free plans with hard limits (STACK's allows one active project a month and 50 measurements per project¹), time-limited trials of paid tools (7 to 30 days²³), and general tools that are free because they aren't built for estimating, like spreadsheets and PDF viewers. A spreadsheet template plus a free PDF measuring tool covers small jobs. Once you bid every week, the limits and the hours usually cost more than a subscription.

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.

Free estimating software for contractors: three kinds

Search “free estimating software” and you get the same handful of pages, most of them selling a paid product with a trial button. The word free covers very different deals, and the difference matters when you plan to run real bids through the tool.

Free plans with limits

The software stays free as long as you stay under a cap: projects per month, measurements per project, documents per month or users. You keep your work. When a job is bigger than the cap, you pay or you split the job.

Free trials

Full features for a fixed number of days, then you buy or lose access. Some need a credit card up front and charge you if you forget to cancel. A trial is a test drive, not a way to run a business.

General tools that happen to be free

Spreadsheets, PDF readers with measuring tools, CAD viewers and browser calculators. They cost nothing and never expire, but you supply the method: the layout, the formulas, the price list and the checks.

Free estimating software for construction, compared

Every row comes from the vendor's own pricing or trial page, checked November 3, 2026. Prices change; click through before you decide.

Tool	What's free	The catch	Paid price
STACK	Free forever plan, after 7 days of Pro¹	1 active project per month, up to 300 plan pages and 50 measurements per project; core takeoff tools only¹	Premium $299 and Pro $349 per user per month, billed annually¹
Joist	14-day free trial, no card⁴	The free plan was discontinued. Built for estimates and invoices to homeowners, not plan takeoff	From $10 a month (5 documents a month); Pro $17 for unlimited documents⁴
Invoice2go	30-day free trial³	Credit card required to start; no charge only if you cancel within 30 days³. Estimates and invoices, no takeoff	Several paid tiers; see the vendor page
Estimate Rocket	Free trial offered⁵	No free plan; trial length isn't stated on the pricing page	Launch $139 a month with 3 full users⁵
PlanSwift	14-day free trial, no card, every feature⁶	Ends after 14 days; no auto-charge, but no free tier afterward	Essential $2,000 and Core $3,000 per seat per year⁶
Bluebeam	14-day trial of the Max plan, no card⁷	You need a subscription after the trial; the cheapest plan has no count tool	$260 to $590 per user per year⁸
Kreo	7-day free trial²	Short trial; paid pilots are offered for longer tests	From $100 per user per month, billed annually²
zzTakeoff	14-day free trial⁹	Takeoff tools need the Pro plan; the cheaper Collaborator plan is annotation only	Pro $49.99 per user per month⁹
Togal.AI	No free plan listed¹⁰	“Try Now” leads to a demo booking	Growth $299 per user per month, billed yearly¹⁰
Excel for the web	Free with a Microsoft account¹¹	A blank grid: you build the layout, formulas and price list yourself	Microsoft sells premium plans; the web version is free

“Paid price” is the lowest published price we found, not a quote. Product names are trademarks of their owners.

What's the best free construction estimating software?

There isn't one answer, because the tools above don't do the same job. Split the question in two: where do the quantities come from, and where do they get priced?

If you need quantities from drawings

STACK's free plan is the only one in the table that lets you keep doing digital takeoff on plans after the trial, as long as you fit inside one project a month and 50 measurements per project¹. If that cap is too tight, a free PDF editor with measuring tools gets you lengths and areas without any project limit; the free takeoff software guide walks through that method step by step. Tools that detect symbols automatically are all paid; the AI takeoff software overview explains what you get for the money.

If you need to price and send the estimate

A spreadsheet is the most capable free pricing tool there is. It handles material lists, labor hours, markup and a summary page, and it never expires. Start from our construction estimate template rather than a blank sheet, and read construction estimating with Excel for the formulas.

Free estimating software for residential construction

For a remodel or a single house, the work is mostly a clean scope, a line-item price and a professional document the homeowner can sign. That is what Joist and Invoice2go are built for, and both let you try before paying: 14 days with no card at Joist, 30 days with a card at Invoice2go⁴³. Neither does plan takeoff. If you only quote a few jobs a month, Joist's $10 tier caps you at 5 documents a month⁴, which is close to free but not free.

Commercial construction estimating software free options

Commercial bids mean full plan sets, addenda, many sheets per discipline and tight bid dates. No vendor in the table gives commercial-grade takeoff free beyond a trial, and STACK's free cap is sized for the occasional small bid, which is how STACK itself describes it¹. Use the trials on a bid you already submitted, compare against your own numbers, and then decide which paid tool earns its price. If the bottleneck is tracking invitations and due dates rather than the takeoff itself, look at construction bidding software before an estimating tool. The construction estimating software guide covers the paid options.

Best free construction estimating apps for Android and iPhone

The apps that show up for “free estimating app” are mostly estimate-and-invoice apps for service work. Joist, for example, shows ratings on both the App Store and Google Play on its pricing page and offers the same 14-day trial on mobile and web⁴. Those apps are good for writing a quote in the driveway. They aren't meant for counting a plan set on a phone screen, and nobody should do a commercial takeoff that way.

For takeoff on the go, browser-based tools are the practical option. STACK says its platform is 100% cloud-based and reachable from any device with an internet connection¹, so the free plan works from a tablet or an Android device's browser within the same limits. Bluebeam's paid plans include web and mobile measuring⁸, which the trial covers for 14 days. Our Bluebeam comparison breaks down which Revu plan includes the count tool.

A free construction cost estimator

Sometimes you don't need software at all, just the arithmetic done right. Our free construction cost estimator runs in your browser with no account: put in materials, labor, overhead and profit, and it carries them to a bid price, so you can see how each line moves the number.

It is only as good as what you type in. The material and labor totals still come from a quantity takeoff of the drawings and from current supplier prices; the calculator makes sure the overhead and profit on top of them are applied the same way every time. The other browser calculators for estimators cover voltage drop, conduit fill and load sizing on the electrical side.

Construction estimating software free download or online?

Most current estimating products run in the browser, so “free download” searches tend to land on trials of desktop software or on general tools you install. The free tools worth downloading are the ones that stay free:

PDF-XChange Editor: the free version includes distance, perimeter and area measurement annotations¹². Some other features are licensed; in the free version they still run but add a watermark to the output¹³.
Adobe Acrobat Reader: has distance, perimeter and area tools, but Adobe notes they're available to Reader users only if the PDF creator enabled measuring¹⁴, so they may be missing on the plans you receive.
LibreCAD: a free, open source 2D CAD application for Windows, Mac and Linux¹⁵, useful when an architect sends DXF files.
Autodesk Viewer: a free online viewer for design files¹⁶, nothing to install.

Download installers only from the vendor's own site. “Free download” versions of paid estimating software on third-party sites are either old, unlicensed or worse.

A free estimating setup that holds up

If the budget is zero, this combination gets a small contractor from drawings to a signed estimate without paying for software:

Read the drawings and specs and write down the scope and the exclusions before you measure anything.
Open the plan PDF in a free editor with measuring tools, set the scale on a known dimension and check it against a second one.
Count and measure by item, writing quantities into a takeoff sheet as you go, one row per item per sheet.
Price in a spreadsheet: material from your supplier's current quote, labor in hours times your loaded rate, then waste. Check the overhead and profit with the construction cost estimator.
Keep a dated copy of every version you send, so the estimate you priced matches the drawings you priced from.
Send a clean summary with scope, exclusions and the price; keep the detailed sheet internal.

When free costs more than it saves

Free tools move the cost from a subscription to your hours. The median cost estimator at an electrical contractor earned $44.67 an hour in May 2025¹⁷, and our estimator pay breakdown shows how that varies by metro area and percentile. As an illustration only: if a manual count in a PDF viewer adds four hours to each bid compared with a takeoff tool, and you bid four jobs a month, that is 16 hours, or about $715 a month in wages before benefits. Run the same arithmetic with your own numbers. If the result is a few dollars, free is the right answer. If it's hundreds, the free route is the expensive one.

The other hidden cost is error. A free setup has no check that your count matches a schedule, no revision compare and no audit trail unless you build one. That's fine on a bathroom remodel and risky on a building.

Where AmpCount fits (and why it isn't free)

AmpCount is electrical takeoff software for commercial electrical contractors. It reads the legend on a vector PDF set, counts every device and fixture on every sheet, holds uncertain marks for review and checks fixtures against the schedule. It costs $149 a month, or $1,490 a year, for a team of up to 3, with a full refund within 14 days, and it has no free plan or trial. If you're an electrical estimator, the free electrical estimating software page covers the free options specific to your trade.

Questions

Is there any construction estimating software that is free forever?

Yes, with limits. STACK lists a $0 “free forever” plan that keeps one active project per month, up to 300 plan pages and 50 measurements per project after a 7-day taste of its Pro tier¹. Spreadsheets and the free PDF tools below are also free indefinitely, but they aren't estimating software: you build the estimate yourself.

Does Joist still have a free version?

No. Joist's own FAQ says its free plan is no longer available; new users get a 14-day free trial, and the cheapest paid plan is $10 a month with up to 5 documents a month⁴.

Is a free trial the same as free software?

No. A trial is a deadline. PlanSwift and Bluebeam give 14 days, Kreo 7 days and Invoice2go 30 days⁶⁷²³. Use a trial to test the tool on a bid you already finished, so you can compare its numbers with yours.

Is AmpCount free?

No. AmpCount is a paid tool for electrical contractors: $149 a month, or $1,490 a year, for a team of up to 3, with a full refund within 14 days. There is no free plan, trial or demo. What we do give away are the templates and browser calculators linked on this page.

Can I estimate commercial work with free software?

Small tenant improvements, yes. A free plan capped at one project a month or 50 measurements per project¹ runs out fast on a commercial set with dozens of sheets, and spreadsheets don't read drawings. Most shops that bid commercial work weekly end up paying for a takeoff tool and keep the spreadsheet for pricing.

Keep reading

Sources

Product names are trademarks of their owners. AmpCount is not affiliated with any vendor on this page.