Chris M. / 13 October 2026 / Reviewed 13 October 2026

AI Estimating and Take-off in the UK: The Options Compared

Six names come up when a UK contractor looks for AI help with estimating and take-off and wants something it can actually compare, and they split into two kinds. Four are software, licensed by the user or by the month: Civils.ai, Countfire, Kreo and Togal.AI, each of which uses AI to measure or count from drawings. Two are consultancies on the commercial side of construction, AI Metric and Vantus AI, which change the work around the measurement rather than sell a seat.

For a team whose problem is getting quantities off drawings faster, software is usually the cheaper first step, and the right product depends mostly on your trade. A consultancy earns its fee when the problem sits either side of the take-off: reading the tender, structuring the bill, pricing from your own rates, and being able to show where every number came from when someone challenges it.

AI Metric publishes this guide and is one of the six, so read it knowing that. Every claim about the other five comes from their own websites, read on 13 October 2026. Each entry says who it suits, and where another option suits you better this page says so.

The six options side by side

The firms are listed alphabetically, ours included, and the order is not a ranking. Our own entry is sourced to our estimating and take-off service and our published first project price.

What the AI actually does in a take-off

The four products automate different parts of measuring, and the differences matter more than the marketing suggests.

Kreo and Togal.AI work across whole drawings. Kreo describes an Auto Measure tool that detects and measures rooms, walls, doors, windows and custom areas, and an Auto Count that searches every page of a drawing for matching elements ⁵. Its plan descriptions put those AI-powered tools in the Pro plan, and describe the cheaper Lite and Plus plans, at £25 and £50 per user per month, as working without them ⁶. Togal.AI says its tool detects, measures and compares from drawings with up to 98% accuracy ⁷. That figure is the vendor's own, and no independent test of it on UK drawings was found while preparing this guide.

Countfire is narrower on purpose. It sells estimating software to electrical and mechanical contractors, counts symbols across every drawing in a project, and describes a new feature, Smart Select, as AI trained on real take-off data that names and organises items as it counts ⁴. That is the job an M&E estimator otherwise does with a highlighter, and it is the clearest example on this list of AI pointed at one well-defined task.

Civils.ai takes a different route. The estimator types the scope in plain English and the tool measures from PDF drawings across groundworks, landscaping, utilities and concrete, with results that can be edited and downloaded as a spreadsheet and an annotated PDF ².

None of this produces a priced bill on its own. RICS publishes the rules for detailed measurement of building works as NRM 2 ¹⁰. If your bills are structured to NRM 2, a tool that groups quantities as rooms, walls and doors still has to be mapped to work sections before anything is priced, so the first question about any product is not how fast it measures but what shape its export arrives in. Kreo, for instance, says results can be exported as reports, bills of quantities or cost estimates ⁵. Where automated take-off tends to go wrong, from a mis-set scale to a revision that quietly invalidates old measurements, is covered in the future of construction take-offs.

How to check any of them before you buy

If your quantity surveyors are RICS members, or the firm is RICS regulated, this is not only a commercial decision. The RICS professional standard on the responsible use of AI in surveying practice has been effective since 9 March 2026, and it applies to AI outputs that have a material impact on the delivery of a surveying service ¹¹. Whether a given take-off meets that test depends on how its output is used, and a member or firm that decides it does must record that decision and the reasoning behind it ¹¹.

Before buying such a system from a third party, a RICS regulated firm must carry out detailed due diligence: ask the supplier for information in writing, record and assess what comes back, and keep a record of how far the system has been tested in practice for fitness for purpose ¹¹. The written requests must cover, as a minimum, the accuracy, relevance and diversity of the data used to train the system including any known gaps, compliance with data and confidentiality law, the permissions obtained where data about individuals was used, the supplier's liability, the system's environmental impact and who was involved in developing it ¹¹.

After buying, the standard requires a written decision about the reliability of each such output, prepared by or under the supervision of an appropriately qualified, named surveyor. Where outputs are automated or produced in volume it accepts that scrutinising every one is generally neither necessary nor proportionate, but requires randomised dip samples at regular intervals ¹¹. The rest of the standard, and what it means for a first trial, is set out in how to run a safe 30-day construction AI pilot.

Whether or not the standard binds you, five questions sort these options quickly:

The most useful test is a trial on your own drawings. Kreo offers a seven-day free trial ⁶ and Countfire offers a trial from its site ⁴; ask the others whether they will run one. Take three past jobs whose quantities you already trust, run the same drawings through, and compare quantity by quantity. A vendor's accuracy figure describes its drawings; yours describes your own, and the record of that comparison can serve as the record of practical testing the RICS standard requires a regulated firm to keep ¹¹.

Where a consultancy earns its fee, and where it does not

If the only problem is measuring speed, buy software and skip the consultancy. Measuring speed is what these tools are built for, and a first project with us starts at the same price as a year of one Kreo Pro seat.

A consultancy is worth paying when the hours are lost somewhere else: reading tender packs and pulling out the clauses that carry cost or risk, turning measured quantities into an NRM 2 bill priced from your own rate library, joining the tools you already own into one process, or setting up the governance the RICS standard asks for.

Two consultancies on this list work on the commercial side. Vantus AI says it was founded by quantity surveyors and commercial professionals who have delivered major projects across the UK and the Middle East, works on cost reporting and contract administration, and is tool-agnostic and vendor-independent ⁹. AI Metric works on tender pack review, NRM 2 bills priced from your own rates and the commercial record that follows, builds its own take-off tool, and starts with one workflow measured before and after rather than a programme.

If you already own CostX or Bluebeam

Many UK estimating teams already pay for a measuring tool, and the established ones are adding automation of their own. Bluebeam's Max plan lists AI drawing reviews, AI drawing comparisons and AI multi-view stitching among its features ¹². RIB describes an Auto-Revisioning feature in CostX that detects and highlights the changes between versions of a drawing ¹³. Those are review and revision features rather than automatic measurement, but before adding another subscription it is worth checking whether the tool you already license covers the step that actually costs your team time.

Where this comparison stops working

Prices and features were read on 13 October 2026 and change often, and two of the four products price in US dollars, so check before relying on any figure here.

No independent test of these tools on UK drawings was found, and the accuracy figure quoted above is the vendor's own. Firms without a public website or a published offer are not included, because nothing here is taken on anyone's word.

AI Metric is one of the six, and the same disclosure applies to our wider comparison of UK construction AI consultancies, which covers firms that do not publish estimating work.

What to do on Monday

Look at your last three tenders and write down where the estimating hours actually went: measuring, reading, pricing or checking. If it was measuring, trial the one product whose best fit matches your trade, on three past jobs with trusted quantities, and keep the record. If it was everything else, talk to a consultancy, and ask the question every option on this page should be able to answer: how does a reviewer check each number?