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Construction software stack cost calculator

Estimate what your construction software actually costs per year: licences across every category, integration, and the reconciliation time that never appears on an invoice.

1. Your business

People who need a login

Office and site staff. Used only for the per-seat categories.

2. What you run, and what it costs

Untick anything you don't use. Where a category has published rates we've filled in a starting figure, overwrite it with your actual invoice for a real answer.

Project & construction management platformThe core platform: RFIs, drawings, approvals, programme.No published ratePriced on your annual construction volume

Not counted until you enter a figure.

No vendor in this category publishes a rate. Pricing is quoted against your annual construction volume, which means it rises when you have a good year, for no extra functionality. This is usually the largest line in the stack. Enter your actual invoice.

Document control / common data environmentTransmittals, revisions, the single source of drawings.No published ratePer million dollars of project value, or per named user

Not counted until you enter a figure.

Enterprise document control is commonly licensed per million dollars of project value, one major vendor's own published contract document uses exactly that metric. The rate itself is never published. Enter what you pay.

Procurement & subcontractor tenderingGetting the tender pack out and the quotes back.Published ratesFlat annual fee by company tier, ex GST

Using a published-rate estimate.

Safety, HSEQ & site accessInductions, SWMS, permits, turnstiles.No published rateFlat fee scaled to construction revenue and active sites

Not counted until you enter a figure.

Also priced against your annual construction revenue rather than usage, and also unpublished. Subcontractor access is often free, so the head contractor carries the whole cost.

Progress claims & paymentsSubcontractor claims in, head contract claims out.No published rateFixed annual fee by claim volume for the head contractor

Not counted until you enter a figure.

The subcontractor side of this category has a published per-claim rate card. The head contractor side does not. It is a fixed annual fee negotiated against how many claims you assess.

Cost management & job costingBudgets, commitments, cost to complete.Published ratesFlat monthly per company for SMB tooling, ex GST

Using a published-rate estimate.

The published range covers small-to-mid tooling. A full commercial construction ERP is an order of magnitude more and is never published. If that is what you run, enter your actual figure.

Field & mobile appsSite diaries, inspections, photos, defects.Published ratesPer user per year: most vendors quote in USD

Using a published-rate estimate.

Reporting & business intelligenceThe dashboards someone rebuilds every month.Published ratesPer user per year, ex GST

Using a published-rate estimate.

3. The costs that aren't on an invoice

Integration & middleware, per year

Connectors, custom builds, the contractor who maintains them.

Hours a week reconciling between systems

Re-keying, chasing which number is right, rebuilding the same report.

Loaded hourly cost of that person

$85–$100 is a defensible range for a contract administrator: published salary average, plus 12% super and on-costs, over about 1,650 productive hours.

Annual price increase (%)

Independent index data puts software price inflation well above CPI.

What your stack costs

$103,380

per year across 8 systems · $1,723 per person

Licences and subscriptions$78,540

Integration and middleware$0

Time spent reconciling$24,840

$24,840 a year is people, not software. That is roughly 36 working days annually spent moving numbers between systems that should already agree. It never appears on a licence invoice, which is exactly why it survives budget reviews.

4 categories are not counted yet because no vendor publishes a rate and you haven't entered one. These are typically the largest lines in the stack, so the figure above understates your real spend, probably by a lot.

Three-year cost at 12% annual increases: $348,845.

Nothing improves over those three years. You pay more for the same stack.

Opens in Word or Google Docs. Carries the unpriced categories forward as a visible gap rather than dropping them.

The two biggest lines are the two nobody prices publicly

Look at which categories above are marked no published rate. They are the platform and document control. Usually the largest items in the stack. Neither is priced on how much you use it. Both are priced against your annual construction volume or your project value.

That is not a criticism of any particular vendor; it is how the category works, and one major document control vendor's own public contract document lists "1M of Project Value" as its licence metric. But it has a consequence worth being clear-eyed about: win more work and your software bill goes up, for no additional functionality. Your technology cost is indexed to your success rather than to your usage.

Add the compounding annual increases, and the reconciliation time that never shows on an invoice, and the real number is usually well above what the finance team has budgeted.

See what one platform would cost instead

One platform, one data model, one price, and no reconciliation, because there is nothing to reconcile. We'll show you the numbers against your actual stack.

Rate research as at 27 August 2026

Published-rate estimates are drawn from vendors' own public AUD rate cards and are indicative starting points, not quotes. Categories marked as having no published rate are genuinely unpublished across the market. We ask rather than estimate. Figures exclude GST unless the source stated otherwise, and some vendors price in US dollars. Your own invoices will always give a better answer than any default here.

The number is bigger than the licences

Most builders can tell you what their project management platform costs. Far fewer can tell you what the whole stack costs, because the stack was never bought as a stack. It accumulated: a safety app here, a claims tool there, a document control system the client insisted on, and a reporting layer to make sense of the rest.

The licence total is only part of it. Integration work is real money, and the time spent moving numbers between systems that should already agree is the largest hidden line for most businesses. It is invisible on every invoice, which is exactly why it survives every budget review.

This calculator adds those in, and expresses the result per user and over three years, because a monthly figure per seat is designed to feel small.

Why we name no vendors and quote no offers

Most construction software pricing you will find online is fabricated. Comparison sites publish confident per-user figures for products that have never had public pricing, because the page ranks and nobody checks.

We researched what is actually published in Australian dollars and used only that. Where a category has no published rate, the calculator says so and asks you for your figure rather than filling the gap.

No vendor is named and no vendor’s quote is reproduced. Published ranges are researched list rates, which are a starting point for a negotiation rather than a price anybody pays.

The two biggest lines are the two nobody prices publicly

The categories that most consistently have no published rate are the core platform and document control. They are also typically the largest items in the stack.

Neither is usually priced on how much you use it. Both tend to be priced against annual construction volume or project value, one major document control vendor’s own public contract document lists project value as its licence metric.

That has a consequence worth being clear about. Win more work and the software bill goes up, for no additional functionality. Your technology cost is indexed to your success rather than to your usage, and it compounds with the annual increases every renewal brings.

What to do with the figure

The useful comparison is not this number against a cheaper version of the same shape. It is this number against what the same capability costs when it is not spread across six vendors, six contracts, six renewal cycles and six sets of user accounts.

The reconciliation time is where the argument is usually won or lost internally. If the calculator says a meaningful number of working days a year go into moving data between systems, that is a headcount cost sitting in the operations budget rather than the software budget, and it is worth surfacing before the next renewal.

Export the summary for finance. The audience for this figure is usually someone who was not in the room when the stack was assembled.

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