Estimators spend a large share of every bid clicking around drawings to count doors, trace walls and measure areas. It is slow, it is tedious, and it is exactly the kind of work AI vendors have gone after. If you run a contracting business, you have probably had three demos this year. Here is how the main options actually differ.
Dedicated AI takeoff tools
Products such as Togal.AI, Kreo and Beam AI read a drawing set and do the first pass of measuring and counting for you. They tend to specialize. Togal is strongest at detecting rooms and spaces on architectural floor plans, Beam AI is aimed at sitework, utilities and earthwork, and Kreo leans toward quantities from BIM models and PDFs. Several now let you ask questions about the plan set in plain language and compare revisions side by side, which helps with addenda.
They earn their keep on repetitive, clean drawings, where a first pass that used to take hours arrives in minutes and the estimator's job becomes checking it. Vendors advertise high accuracy, and those figures come from their own tests on good drawings. Run your own messy plans through a trial before you believe any number.
PDF markup tools with measurement
Bluebeam Revu remains the standard in a lot of commercial offices. It is PDF software with strong measurement and markup tools, and it is manual-first. It is slower than an AI takeoff tool, but the estimator is in control of every line, and the rest of the project team probably already uses it. Many firms will end up running an AI tool for the first pass and a markup tool for review.
General-purpose assistants
Chat assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini can read a PDF drawing set, but they are not measuring tools and should not be trusted with quantities. Where they help is around the takeoff: summarizing a spec book, listing scope gaps between drawings and specs, drafting RFIs and checking a bid's exclusions against the documents. That work is often where the expensive mistakes hide.
The caveat that doesn't go away
An AI tool that misses a wall type or double-counts a floor fails quietly, and the error goes out inside a number with your name on it. Keep a person accountable for every quantity, spot-check AI takeoffs against a manual count on a sample of sheets, and track your bid-versus-actual results for the first few months.
Where to start
Pick the trade and drawing type you bid most often, then trial one dedicated tool on three past jobs where you already know the right answer. The comparison with your own historical numbers will tell you more than any demo.