01 MATRIX 02 COVERAGE 03 SCORE 04 QUESTIONS 05 SOURCES

Comparison sheet · August 2026

What eight takeoff tools are documented to read

AI Takeoff Software Comparison Sheet

Eight tools checked against the six drawing types in an industrial bid package. Every cell comes from vendor documentation, dated, with the questions to put to each vendor at the end.

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Takeoff tools checked against the same six drawing types

Drawing types in a typical industrial bid package

2 of 8

Documented to read a P&ID and a piping isometric

Sources: vendor documentation and vendor support material, checked 12 August 2026 · No hands-on testing of third-party products

AT A GLANCE

The numbers that matter

6 of 8

Publish no documented coverage of P&IDs, the sheet an industrial package opens with

Vendor documentation

7 of 8

Publish nothing on general arrangement drawings, automatically or at all

Vendor documentation

2 of 8

Do not document whether a quantity traces back to the drawing it came from

Vendor documentation

95 vs 10

Fit score spread across the eight on a typical industrial process package

Our calculation

Two layers, never blended in one number. Cited cells come from what each vendor publishes, on the date shown. The one dark card is our own calculation from the matrix, using the score key in chapter 03. Any cell public documentation does not answer reads not documented, which is a question to put to the vendor rather than a no.

What each tool is documented to read

Eight products, sold into the same search results, built for markedly different work. Five of them read architectural floor plans automatically and were designed around commercial building scope. One is a PDF workspace where the estimator counts by hand. Two are documented on process drawings, and one of those two is a managed service rather than software.

The distinction that matters on an industrial desk is not automated against manual. It is which sheets the model has actually been trained on, and vendors answer that question in their documentation more precisely than they answer it in a demo.

EXHIBIT 1

Documented drawing coverage across the tools we track

Vendor documentation as published on 12 August 2026, not hands-on testing

Read a row across to see which tools handle that drawing type. Read a column down to see what one tool covers. The tinted column is our own product.

Eight AI takeoff tools compared across six drawing types and five attributes. Values are Yes, Partial, Manual only, No, or Not documented, as defined in the key below the table.
Drawing type or attribute	Bluebeam Revu	STACK	Kreo	Togal.AI	Bobyard	Beam AI	Pathnovo	The Takeoff AI
Drawing types
Architectural floor plans	Manual only	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Structural drawings	Manual only	Yes	Yes	Not documented	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
P&IDs	Manual only	No	Not documented	No	Not documented	Not documented	Yes	Yes
Piping isometrics	Manual only	No	Not documented	No	Not documented	Not documented	Yes	Yes
General arrangement drawings	Manual only	Not documented	Not documented	Not documented	Not documented	Not documented	Not documented	Yes
Scanned and hand-marked sets	Partial	Not documented	Not documented	Partial	Not documented	Not documented	Yes	Yes
How it works
Works without a 3D model	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Count traces back to the drawing	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Not documented	Not documented	Yes
Delivery model	Software	Software	Software	Software	Software	Software and service	Managed service	Software
Built for industrial process work	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Output unit	Any marked quantity	Area, counts	Area, counts	Area, wall LF, counts	Area, counts	Trade quantities	Line and component counts, weld schedules	Line, valve, fitting, equipment, tonnage

Yes read automatically, per vendor documentationPartial read with limits the vendor statesManual only the estimator counts it, the tool does notNo the vendor states it is out of scopeNot documented public sources do not answer it, ask the vendor

Fig. 1 · Source: vendor documentation and vendor support material, checked 12 August 2026 · The tinted column is the publisher’s own product · Pricing is excluded, since published pricing in this category changes faster than this sheet can

Coverage stops at the process drawing

Sort the same eight tools by drawing type and the market’s shape appears immediately. Structural and architectural sheets are well served. P&IDs and isometrics drop to two of eight, and general arrangement drawings to one.

This is not a failure of the products. Commercial building work is the larger market and the easier drawing, so it was built first. It is, though, the reason an estimator pricing a turnaround package can evaluate most of this category and come away with nothing that reads his sheets.

EXHIBIT 2

The drawings the market reads, and the ones it does not

Number of the 8 tools documented to read each drawing type automatically

Structural

6 of 8

Architectural floor plans

5 of 8

P&IDs

2 of 8

Piping isometrics

2 of 8

Scanned and hand-marked

2 of 8

General arrangement

1 of 8

Fig. 2 · Source: vendor documentation, checked 12 August 2026 · Counts exclude partial coverage and manual markup

Worth asking

Bluebeam Revu appears in this sheet as manual only on every drawing row, which is not a criticism of a tool that never claimed to automate a count. It is the baseline the rest of the category is measured against, and on the industrial rows it remains the answer most desks are still using.

Score the eight against your own package

A feature count ranks tools against each other. This ranks them against your work. Enter the share of your bid package each drawing type represents, and every tool is scored on documented coverage weighted by your own mix. The values below describe a typical industrial process package, so overwrite them.

EXHIBIT 3 · INTERACTIVE

Fit for your package, 0 to 100

Coverage converted using the score key, weighted by your drawing mix

YOUR DRAWING MIX

Enter each drawing type as a percentage of your typical bid package. The six should add up to 100.

Architectural floor plans

Structural drawings

P&IDs

Piping isometrics

General arrangement drawings

Scanned and hand-marked sets

WEIGHTS TOTAL100%

1The Takeoff AI95

2Pathnovo85

3Bluebeam Revu28

4STACK25

4Kreo25

4Bobyard25

4Beam AI25

8Togal.AI10

Yes 1.0Partial 0.5Manual only 0.25No 0Not documented 0

A tool that reads every sheet in your package scores 100. The score measures documented drawing coverage only. It says nothing about price, support or interface, and it is deliberately blind to features you may care about.

Fig. 3 · Source: our calculation from Exhibit 1 · Score key as published above · Not documented scores zero, which is the conservative reading rather than the correct one

Questions to put to each vendor

Eight questions that work on any takeoff product, including ours. Take them into the call and write the answers down, because the difference between two vendors is usually in how precisely they answer question four.

EXHIBIT 4 · WORKSHEET

The vendor call worksheet

The printed sheet carries ruled space for their answers - download it and take it into the call

Show me one line item in the output and take me to the spot on the drawing it came from.

The first question a general contractor asks about a quantity he doubts is where it came from. Traceability is either built in or bolted on, and you can tell in seconds which one you are looking at.

Here is a marked-up revision from a live job. What happens to it?

Demos run on clean vector drawings. Bid packages arrive as scans with a superintendent's handwriting on them, so a trial on the vendor's sample set tells you very little.

What is the turnaround on a correction, and who does it?

A demo shows you a good day. The correction loop is every other day, and it matters most in the last week before a bid is due.

Which of my drawing types has your model actually been trained on?

Automated is a word, not a scope. Ask them to name the drawing types rather than the trades.

Do you need a 3D model, and what happens on a brownfield job where none exists?

Model-dependent tools cannot operate on legacy plant work, which is most turnaround scope.

What does your output look like in Excel, and does it carry sizes and specification breaks?

A count without a size against it is not a takeoff you can price.

Who is accountable if a quantity is wrong, and is that in the contract?

One vendor in this comparison signs a contractual accuracy service level agreement. Most do not. Know which you are buying.

Can I run the trial on my own package rather than yours?

Run it on the ugliest package you bid this year. If the answer is no, that is the answer.

Fig. 4 · Source: theTakeoff.ai · Questions derived from the coverage gaps in Exhibit 1

Where every cell came from

Every entry is vendor documentation or a vendor announcement. Where a vendor publishes nothing on a drawing type, the matrix records not documented rather than inferring a no.

EXHIBIT 5

Sources and what each one establishes

All checked 12 August 2026

The source behind every cell in the matrix, one row per tool.
Tool	Source	What it establishes
Bluebeam Revu	Bluebeam product documentation	Manual on-screen takeoff, symbol matching, OCR on scanned sets, quantities as sheet markups.
STACK	STACK product site and plan pages	Cloud takeoff and estimating, free tier, commercial building trade coverage.
Kreo	kreo.net product and AI takeoff pages	Auto measure, one-click area, auto count, Caddie agent, 2D drawings and CAD input.
Togal.AI	help.togal.ai automated takeoff documentation	Architectural floor plans and reflected ceiling plans only. Gross and net area, wall linear footage, counts of doors, plumbing fixtures, appliances, furniture. PDF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF accepted.
Bobyard	Bobyard 2.0 launch announcement, 8 April 2026	$35M Series A December 2025 led by 8VC. Up to 70% of quantity and material takeoff automated, 65% average reduction in takeoff time. AI Workbench with confidence levels per output.
Beam AI (Attentive.ai)	ibeam.ai announcements and product pages	$30.5M Series B November 2025 led by Insight Partners, about $48M total. 1,100+ customers. Ten-minute takeoffs live for HVAC and mechanical. Up to 90% takeoff time savings with human-reviewed QA.
Pathnovo	pathnovo.com solutions, benchmarks and about pages	Managed service. Piping MTO from scanned, PDF and hand-drawn isometrics, no 3D model. 48-hour first delivery, 99.5% field-level accuracy service level agreement with a remedy clause. Founded 2024.
The Takeoff AI	thetakeoff.ai product pages, publisher's own product	P&IDs, general arrangements, piping isometrics and structural drawings including scanned and PDF-only sets. Click-to-source traceability. ASME B31.3 and B16.5 grounded. No electrical packages.

Fig. 5 · Source: as listed · Vendor claims are reproduced as published and attributed, and have not been independently tested

Run it on the ugliest package you bid this year.

A demo on a vendor’s sample set tells you very little. Bring a P&ID or an isometric from a live job, scanned and marked up if that is what you have, and watch a quantity trace back to the line it came from. Thirty minutes, with an estimator on the call.

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ABOUT

ContraVault AI builds The Takeoff AI (thetakeoff.ai), an estimation engine for industrial contractors. It reads P&IDs, general arrangements and piping isometrics, produces quantities across piping, structural, insulation and equipment, and traces every quantity back to the drawing it came from, so the estimator keeps scope, pricing and final accountability. This sheet is published so an estimator can evaluate the category against their own drawing mix rather than against a feature list.