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A Buildxact alternative for remodels that never had a drawing
Buildxact is a real estimating product and its takeoff is quick once you have a plan on screen. That is the catch. A kitchen in a 1962 ranch has no plan, and no drawing means somebody is going to the house with a tape. This page is about that gap, and about what Buildxact does better than us.
Two scans free. No card.
Nine results and one of them is awake
Page one for this phrase is Capterra, SelectHub, SoftwareSuggest, AlternativeTo and rfp.wiki, plus listicles from Buildern, Projul, ingenious.build and hubservice. Projul and Buildern are the only ones with any depth behind them.
Every one of them answers the same way. Here are eight to twelve other construction platforms, sorted by price, with a feature grid. Nothing on that page asks what a remodeler is actually stuck on.
So here is the question none of them put. Before any of this software can do anything, where do the measurements come from, and who had to drive to get them.
What Buildxact is, said fairly
Buildxact calls itself all in one residential construction management software for small to mid sized builders, remodelers and contractors. Estimating, digital takeoff, ordering, scheduling and job management. Takeoffs convert into branded bids and invoices, and their material ordering connects out to dealers, with Home Depot named in third party reviews.
Their AI assistant is called Blu. It reads uploaded plans and generates estimate assemblies, reviews estimates for common oversights, and they claim takeoffs roughly 50 percent faster. Their published United States pricing is 199 a month for Foundation, 399 for Pro, 599 for Master, cheaper annually, with a 14 day trial.
That is a bigger product than ours in most directions. If you want purchase ordering, scheduling and job management in one place, we do not compete and you should buy theirs.
The takeoff assumes a drawing exists
Their takeoff is built around digital plans. Their own words: digital plans let you scale your paper or PDF blueprints online, then you point and click to adjust areas on the plan. Blu reads an uploaded plan and pulls materials, quantities and labor off the blueprint itself.
That is genuinely fast work on a new build, where a drawing exists because somebody was paid to make one. Now count your remodels. A bathroom gut, a wall coming out, a kitchen in a house from 1962. There is no PDF to upload, and there never was one.
When there is no drawing, the plan based takeoff has nothing to chew on. The measuring falls back to a person standing in the room with a tape or a laser, which is exactly the hour you were trying to get rid of. The software did not create that problem, but it does not solve it either.
Whose phone walks the room
To be fair to them, Buildxact does have a phone capture path. They list a Rendr integration that creates digital floor plans by scanning rooms with a mobile phone. So the drawing problem has an answer in their world.
Read it closely though. Somebody has to be in the room holding that phone, and that somebody is you or one of your people. The drive still happens. The morning is still gone. You have swapped a tape measure for a better tape measure.
Ours is the homeowner phone, and that is the whole difference. You send her a link. She opens it in the browser already on her phone with nothing to install. On a recent iPhone Pro the LiDAR sensor measures the room. On any other phone she photographs it and types the room sizes in. A vision model reads the photos, a model writes the scope brief, and the quantities get priced against your own cost book, line by line, with every quantity traceable back to where it came from.
Nothing here measures from a photograph. If her phone has no depth sensor, the sizes are the ones she typed and the page labels them that way, so you always know which numbers you are holding.
Where the two actually differ
| Buildxact | ScanToScope | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting point for quantities | A plan you upload and scale on screen | A room captured on the homeowner phone, no plan needed |
| Who goes to the house first | You or your crew, with a tape or their Rendr phone scan | Nobody. You decide about the drive after you have the scope |
| Where prices come from | Their assemblies and live dealer pricing | Your own cost book, the prices you actually pay |
| What the AI does | Blu reads the uploaded plan and builds assemblies from it | A vision model reads her photos. A model writes the scope. The price is arithmetic |
| Scope of the product | Estimating, takeoff, ordering, scheduling, job management | The measure and quote step only |
| Published entry price | 199 dollars a month, per their own site | Two scans free, then 79 a month for Solo |
Read off buildxact.com and third party reviews on 28 October 2026. Their pricing page is the one to trust if these figures have moved.
What we do not do
Material takeoff at their depth
Their takeoff counts materials off a plan and we do not match that. We give you room quantities and a scope brief priced against your book. If your estimating lives or dies on a detailed material list for every stud and sheet, buy Buildxact.
Supplier price feeds
They connect takeoff quantities to live dealer pricing and order straight from the estimate. We have no supplier feed at all. Our number comes from your cost book, which is the point, but it means you keep your own material prices current.
Job management
Scheduling, purchase orders, running the job after you win it. None of that is us. We do the measure and the quote and then connect out to your CRM through Zapier. Everything downstream stays wherever it already lives.
Questions a remodeler asks here
Can Buildxact do a takeoff with no plans at all?
Their plan based takeoff needs a plan. For jobs without one they point at the Rendr phone scanning integration, which produces a floor plan from a room walkthrough. It works, but somebody is in the room doing the walkthrough, so it does not get you out of the drive.
So is this a replacement for Buildxact?
For most shops, no. They do estimating, ordering, scheduling and job management. We do the step before the estimate, which is getting the room measured and scoped without driving out. If you need the job management, keep theirs.
Do I get a measured drawing out of this?
No. We are not a drawing tool and we do not produce as built plans. You get room dimensions, photographs, a written scope brief and a priced quote off your book. If you need a drawing for a permit or a cabinet order, that is still a different job.
Whose prices are in the quote?
Yours. You load your cost book and the quote is arithmetic against it. We ship no national average database and no dealer feed. The number is your lines times the quantities, and you can see where each quantity came from.
What happens when the homeowner has an Android?
No mainstream Android has the depth sensor, so there is no scan. She photographs the room and types the room sizes, and you get her numbers labelled as hers rather than as a measurement. It is enough to tell you whether the job is worth a morning.
What does it cost?
Two scans free with no card. Solo is 79 a month for one user and 20 scans. Crew is 149 for five users and 60 scans. Shop is 349 for unlimited users and 200 scans. Extra scans are 4 dollars each and nothing locks when you run out. A job one of your own people captures on site is not metered on any plan.
Try it on two leads
Two scans free and no card. Pick the next two leads with no drawings and no appointment yet, send the link, and see what comes back before you commit a morning.