Ask five contractors what their estimating software costs and you will get five different numbers, none of them wrong. One pays per user. One pays per estimate. One pays a flat monthly fee that quietly covers five seats. One cannot tell you at all, because the vendor only quotes on a call. The sticker prices below were read off each company’s own pricing page on November 10, 2026, and the point of this piece is not the headline number. It is what the headline number leaves out.
The short answer
- Handoff is the cheapest real AI estimating tool: $119 a month billed annually on Flex (normally $149 month to month), and it builds a takeoff-backed estimate from an uploaded plan set or a site walk.
- Togal.AI is the commercial takeoff specialist: $299 a month per user billed yearly, unlimited automated takeoffs, and it is priced per seat, so a three-person estimating team pays $897.
- Jobber is the cheapest way to run the whole small crew: Core at $29 a month billed annually ($49 month to month), with quoting, scheduling, invoicing, and an optional AI receptionist at $29 for 30 conversations.
- Housecall Pro is the middle path for service trades: Basic at $59 a month billed annually ($79 month to month), Essentials at $299 annual, and MAX by quote.
- ServiceTitan publishes no subscription price at all. Its one public number is the AI Voice Agent at $2.75 per call, pay as you go.
Why contractor software pricing is so hard to compare
Every tool on this list sells a different unit. Handoff sells a monthly subscription with AI credits attached. Togal sells seats. Jobber and Housecall Pro sell tiers with a set number of users and then charge per extra user. ServiceTitan sells a demo call and a contract. Comparing the numbers side by side without converting them to cost per estimator or cost per job is how contractors end up paying twice what they budgeted.
There is a second distortion: annual billing. Jobber’s Core plan is $29 a month billed annually and $49 month to month, a 41 percent difference for the same software. Housecall Pro’s Basic is $59 annually and $79 monthly. Handoff’s Flex is $119 on annual billing against $149 monthly, and the vendor states annual billing saves 20 percent across all three plans. If cash flow allows one prepayment a year, the annual rate is the real price and the monthly rate is a convenience fee.
Handoff: the estimating-first option
Handoff is the tool that most directly replaces the thing contractors actually hate, which is spending an evening turning a plan set into a bid. It has three plans: Flex at $149 a month, Pro at $299, and Scale at $899, with annual billing saving 20 percent (so Flex lands at $119 monthly equivalent). Flex is self-serve with a 7 day free trial; Pro and Scale are set up with a product specialist.
The feature that matters at the entry price is AI Takeoffs, which accepts residential plans up to 7,000 square feet and produces a takeoff-backed estimate in under two hours. Add AI Site Walkthroughs, where photos and notes from the walkthrough become the estimate, and AI Voice Transcription for talking the job through on site, and the Flex tier covers the workflow a two or three person remodeling outfit actually runs. Pro and above bring unlimited AI interactions instead of a credit allowance.
Check Handoff pricing (7-day free trial)
The catch is scope. Handoff is residential-leaning: 7,000 square feet is a large house, not a commercial build. Its financial features are genuinely useful, with credit card fees pushed to the client and QuickBooks Online syncing both ways, but a contractor bidding $4 million of commercial work needs takeoff depth that Flex does not claim to have.
Togal.AI: pay per estimator, not per company
Togal prices at $299 a month per user, billed yearly, on its Growth plan, and that single number is both the appeal and the trap. What you get for it is unlimited automated takeoffs, unlimited chat prompts, unlimited image and symbol searches, and collaboration with people inside and outside your account who do not need their own licence. For a commercial estimator who lives in drawings all day, unlimited automated takeoff at $299 is competitive against the labor it replaces.
For a two-person team, the math doubles to $598 a month, or $7,176 a year, before you have paid for anything else. Togal’s Business tier, for teams of four or more, is custom priced and adds onboarding, a dedicated support rep, a classification library template, quantity discounts, SSO, and security compliance. If you are a specialty subcontractor whose entire competitive advantage is fast, accurate takeoff, the per-seat structure is fair. If estimating is one of six jobs the office manager does, it is not.
One practical note drawn from Togal’s own customer quotes: estimators report small projects finishing in 30 minutes to an hour and larger ones in two to three hours including spec review. That is the productivity claim to test in a trial, not the feature list.
Jobber: the whole crew for the price of a phone bill
Jobber Core starts at $29 a month billed annually, or $49 month to month, for one user, and covers quoting, online booking, scheduling, invoicing, and online payments. That is not AI estimating in the takeoff sense, and Jobber does not pretend otherwise. What it does have is an AI layer at the job level: quote and invoice follow-up automation, automated client reminders, and the Receptionist add-on.
Pricing above Core is where contractors get surprised. Plus includes five users at $399 a month billed annually, but the same plan is $499 month to month or $439 on a one year commitment, and every additional user costs $29 a month. A six person crew on Plus annual is $411 a month before add-ons. Jobber Receptionist, the AI answering product, is $29 a month for 30 conversations and $0.79 for each one after that, and it is included with unlimited use on Plus, which is the detail that makes Plus pencil out for anyone missing more than about thirty calls a month.
Where Jobber wins is total cost of ownership for a small residential service business. A plumber paying $29 for Jobber plus a $20 phone system is running the entire office for less than one Togal seat, and the AI features that matter to that plumber are reminders and follow-ups, not symbol detection on a plan set.
Housecall Pro: the tier jump is the story
Housecall Pro Basic is $59 a month billed annually, $79 month to month, one user included, with online booking, invoicing, and payments. Essentials is $299 a month on annual billing ($329 monthly) with eight users included and $35 a month per additional user, and it adds the sales proposal tool, recurring service plans, and job costing. MAX is quoted by sales and aimed at multi-location operations.
The gap between $59 and $299 is the single biggest pricing cliff in this category, and it is a features cliff, not a volume cliff. A contractor who needs job costing and visual proposals has to jump the whole way. Housecall Pro also sells CSR AI separately, with no published price on its AI Team page, so the AI answering cost has to be quoted on a call, the same opacity ServiceTitan is known for. Budget for the tier you will need in twelve months, not the one that fits this month.
ServiceTitan: no price, one published number
ServiceTitan’s pricing page does not list a subscription price. It asks for a demo, and there is no published reason why. The company does publish one number: its AI Voice Agent at $2.75 per call, pay as you go with no minimum. For a shop taking 400 inbound calls a month that is $1,100 in AI answering alone, on top of an unpublished platform fee.
That is not an argument against ServiceTitan, which is built for larger HVAC, plumbing, and electrical operations where the dispatch and inventory depth justifies the contract. It is an argument against evaluating it the way you evaluate the tools above. Ask for the total annual number including users and modules, in writing, before the second call.
The pricing table
| Tool | Entry price | Unit | AI estimating included | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Handoff Flex | $119/mo annual, $149 monthly | Per account, AI credits | Yes: takeoffs, site walkthroughs, voice | Residential remodelers, small GCs |
| Togal.AI Growth | $299/mo | Per user, billed yearly | Yes: unlimited automated takeoff | Commercial estimators, specialty trades |
| Jobber Core | $29/mo annual, $49 monthly | Per company, 1 user | No takeoff; AI follow-ups and receptionist | Small service crews |
| Housecall Pro Basic | $59/mo annual, $79 monthly | Per company, 1 user | No; CSR AI sold separately, unpriced | Service trades needing booking and payments |
| ServiceTitan | Not published | Contract, quoted | AI Voice Agent at $2.75 per call | Multi-crew HVAC, plumbing, electrical |
What a year actually costs
- Handoff Flex on annual billing: $1,428 a year, or $1,788 monthly. The cheapest path to machine-assisted takeoff on residential plans.
- Togal.AI for one estimator: $3,588 a year. Two estimators: $7,176. Three: $10,764.
- Jobber Core annual: $348 a year. Plus with five users on annual: $4,788, plus $348 per extra seat per year.
- Housecall Pro Basic annual: $708. Essentials: $3,588 with eight users, then $420 a year per extra user.
- ServiceTitan: unknown until quoted. Add $2.75 per AI-handled call, so $1,100 a month at 400 calls.
How to choose without overbuying
Start from the bottleneck, not the feature list. If bids go out late because nobody has time to do takeoff, the answer is Handoff or Togal depending on whether your plans are houses or commercial sets. If bids go out fine but jobs run late because the schedule lives in a notebook, the answer is Jobber or Housecall Pro and the AI estimating features are irrelevant to your problem.
If the problem is the phone, buy the phone solution and nothing else. A $29 Jobber Receptionist plan or a standalone AI receptionist at a similar price solves a missed-call problem for a fraction of a field service suite, and the field service suite will not fix it faster.
Then run the arithmetic on seats. Per-user pricing punishes teams; per-company pricing punishes growth past the included headcount. Jobber charges $29 a month for every user beyond the first on Core and includes five on Plus. Togal charges $299 per user, full stop. Housecall Pro includes eight on Essentials and charges $35 a month per extra. A four person estimating department lands in a completely different place on each of those three structures using the same headline features.
Things to check before you sign
- Ask what happens at renewal. Annual discounts are real, but so is the jump when a promo year ends. Budget the regular rate.
- Count the conversations, not the calls. Jobber’s receptionist meters conversations, ServiceTitan meters calls, and standalone answering services meter minutes or unique callers. These are not interchangeable.
- Test the plan size limit. Handoff’s takeoff feature names 7,000 square feet for residential plans. Confirm your largest typical job fits before committing a year.
- Get the total in writing. For ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro MAX, the published page is a starting point, not a quote. Ask for annual total including users, modules, and AI usage.
- Check the accounting handoff. Handoff syncs to QuickBooks Online in both directions and Jobber integrates with QuickBooks Online. If your bookkeeper lives in Xero, confirm the connection before you commit.
Pricing reviewed November 10, 2026, against each vendor’s own pricing and help pages, and cross-checked against an independent price tracker last updated November 6, 2026. Contractor software repackages tiers and add-ons more often than almost any category, so verify the number on the page before checkout. Some links here are affiliate links, which cost you nothing and do not affect which tools are included.