Bid your trade. RFQ the slice you do not self-perform.

This page is for trade contractors who also bid — framing, drywall, roofing, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and the other scopes on the fourteen-chip list — not for a general contractor who buys those trades. You receive someone else’s plan set. You are pricing your discipline, and sometimes a piece you will buy (a hanger, an insulator, a controls sub).

You need your trade’s materials list, citations to check on a job walk, prices for what you purchase, and RFQs for the slice you subcontract. Guest links let other shops quote without an account or access to your unit prices.

Solo at $200 / five takeoffs fits a trade shop that bids a few packages a month. Crew at $399 / fifteen is featured (Most Popular: Full Bid Loop) when you are bidding steadily and coordinating a couple of other trades. Shop at $699 / forty is a high-volume estimating desk inside a trade company. RFQs are on every plan, including Solo. Failed runs do not count.

The problem

The GC emailed a thick PDF and needs your number Friday. You only want Framing, or only Electrical, but you still have to find your sheets in the set, count them, price the commodity items, and decide whether hangers or trim-out are you or a sub. If you highlight a PDF and type a spreadsheet, you will miss a detail sheet. If you forward the whole set to a second trade with a priced column, you also forward your markup.

Takeoff tools that only count still leave you to source material, split SELF versus SUB, and collect the one quote you need. You also cannot tell a second-tier sub to log into your software. No login on the quote link is the difference between an answer and silence.

What you get

Upload the GC’s PDF. Turn on the trade chips you actually bid — Framing, Drywall, Electrical, Plumbing, HVAC, Roofing, or whichever of the fourteen match the invitation. Set the ZIP. Run takeoff. Processing time varies with plan size and complexity. Close the tab; we email you when the list is ready.

Review your trade’s rows with citation chips and confidence labels. Edit quantities off the detail sheets. Price SELF materials as FOUND or BUDGETARY, or type your supplier’s number. Mark a second trade SUB and send that shop a guest RFQ: quantities and units only, their sheets plus cover and site plan (or the full set when sheets cannot be sorted by trade), your letterhead, no login, due date required. Apply the returned quote without stacking it on your own material. Export CSV or Word and send the GC your number.

See how it works for the full loop. Run your first bid on a real invitation. First-takeoff guarantee: feedback@takeoffspeed.io. Sunday-Off after 30 days. Cancel anytime. We do not run your company. We help you get the bid out.

1. Upload the plans.
2. Review the takeoff and supporting evidence.
3. Price self-performed materials.
4. Send RFQs for subcontracted scope.
5. Bring the returned quotes into the bid.
6. Check coverage and avoid double-counting.
7. Assemble and send the proposal.

In the product

What this supports

Trade focus starts on the upload screen: fourteen scopes, Sitework through Finishes, as chips you can leave off. The takeoff still groups by trade, so a drywall shop is not forced to live inside a GC-shaped dashboard. Page-level citations on high-confidence items, HIGH / MED / LOW evidence labels, Needs your eyes for math-mismatch, no-evidence, and unconfirmed-item. Line edits on item, quantity, unit, spec.

Material Source researches selected lines at the job ZIP. FOUND versus BUDGETARY stays labeled. Unpriced is NO PRICE — ADD, not zero. SELF labor is suggested hours and rate; SUB waits on a quote. Guest RFQ lets you buy a slice of work without becoming a GC: quantities only, token page, up to fifteen recipients. Apply replace-covered-items or labor-only with both totals shown. Your letterhead heads the request; TakeoffSpeed is a footer. Vendor CSV import up to 2,000 rows. Browser-based. PDF only, ten files; 150 MB upload, 200 MB server. The current page allowance is shown before upload. Solo $200 / 5, Crew $399 / 15 (featured), Shop $699 / 40. RFQs on every plan. Failed runs do not count. CSV and Word export.

Sample output

There is one public sample, not a library of trade-specific jobs. /sample-bid is an anonymised tenant fit-out in ZIP 34420 with an estimated total of $196,682.14 pinned by tests. For a trade reader, look at how one discipline is handled: a plumbing quote applied in replace mode, covered plumbing lines pulled out of materials, and a coverage exception left in materials when a line is not in the quote.

The table is grouped by trade, so you can open Plumbing or Electrical the same way you would skim only your invitation. Plan-page citations on this fixture’s takeoff lines are empty by admission of that page; live takeoffs include available page references for review. Additional contingency 10% and markup 15% sit on the rail because that is the golden run. We will not invent a framing-only sample until one exists.

What this does not do

This is not general-contractor software wearing a trade label. It does not schedule your crew, run payroll, or manage change orders on the GC’s job. We do not run your company. We help you get the bid out.

It does not sit in the estimator’s chair — even if that estimator is you after hours. A human reviews every line. We do not claim complete counts, city-wide supplier coverage, or that using this product awards more packages.

Filtering trades does not guarantee the model ignores every other sheet; you still review. If you need only electrical and the set is unsorted, the sub you RFQ may receive the full PDF, and the product says so instead of pretending a clean trade package always exists.

Your first subscription: one free takeoff in a 14-day trial. A credit card is required. Cancel before trial end to avoid billing. First-takeoff and Sunday-Off refunds are manual at feedback@takeoffspeed.io. Cancel anytime. FOUND retail is not your supply-house quote. Labor is an allowance.

Questions

Run your first bid

Keep going

• AI Construction Takeoff and Bidding Software
• How the Plan-to-Bid Loop Works
• Pricing
• Sample Bid
• Takeoff and Bidding Software for General Contractors
• Estimating Software for Small Contractors
• Takeoff Software for Construction Estimators
• Remodeling Takeoff and Bid Software
• Framing Takeoff Software for PDF Plans