The Buildertrend alternative for commercial bid work.
Buildertrend and Pursuit share the phrase construction CRM and almost nothing else. Buildertrend is a residential construction management platform: its CRM converts homeowners into signed contracts, then the platform runs the job with scheduling, job costing, change orders, and a client portal. Pricing is custom-quoted per company, historically in the hundreds of dollars per month, with no free trial. Pursuit is a bid-centric CRM for commercial estimators: invited bids, plan sets, vendor RFQs, follow-ups, and hit rates, at a published $47 to $79 per user per month with a free account to start.
Pursuit vs Buildertrend
| Dimension | Pursuit | Buildertrend |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $47 or $79 per user / mo, published | Custom quote per company; historically ~$399 to $1,099 / mo (third-party reporting) |
| Free to start | Yes, free account | No free trial, demo only (their FAQ says so directly) |
| Built for | Commercial estimators pursuing bids | Residential builders and remodelers running jobs |
| Core buyer relationship | GCs and owners who invite your bids | Homeowners buying a project |
| Bid pursuit workflow | Bid board, bid dates, RFQs, win/loss | Lead pipeline and proposals; no invited-bid workflow |
| AI on your documents | Ask plans and specs, cited answers | Platform AI search; no document Q&A found |
| Project management | No | Yes: scheduling, job costing, change orders, invoicing |
| Client portal | No | Yes, homeowner-facing, a core strength |
| Reviews | New product (beta) | 4.5/5 on Capterra (2,486 reviews) |
| In market since | Vertigraph since 1991; Pursuit launched 2026 | 2006 |
The case for Pursuit
Buildertrend is not a bad product. Twenty years in, 2,486 Capterra reviews at 4.5 stars, and a legitimate claim to powering a large share of American home building. The estimators who land on Pursuit instead are not fleeing Buildertrend; they are discovering it was never built for their job.
Buildertrend's CRM points at a homeowner. Lead capture from your website, proposals, selections, a client portal that keeps the family informed while their kitchen is torn open. Commercial bid work runs the other way: a GC invites you to bid, a plan set lands with five days on the clock, you chase vendor pricing, submit a number, and follow up. Buildertrend has no invited-bid concept, no bid calendar, and no hit-rate-by-GC reporting; those are the first three things Pursuit shows you.
The pricing model tells the same story. Buildertrend is a whole-company subscription, custom-quoted, historically several hundred dollars a month and up, with no free trial; their own FAQ says the commitment is the point. That makes sense when the platform runs your whole operation. Pursuit prices per user because an estimating desk should not have to buy an operations platform to get a bid board.
And when the bid documents matter, Pursuit reads them. Ask the plans and specs a question and the answer comes back with the page cited; scope and soils extraction and contract risk review come with the Intelligence plan. Buildertrend stores plans; it does not answer from them.
Every dimension, side by side
Getting started
| Feature | Pursuit | Buildertrend |
|---|---|---|
| Published pricing | Yes | No, quote based on builder type and volume |
| Free trial | Free account, no credit card | None offered |
| Per-user entry price | Yes, from $47 per user | No, whole-company subscription |
Bid pursuit
| Feature | Pursuit | Buildertrend |
|---|---|---|
| Track invited bids with bid dates | Yes | No invited-bid concept; leads and proposals instead |
| Vendor RFQ send and receive | Yes | Bid requests to subs exist, but as a GC buying tool on a sold job |
| Win/loss hit rate by customer | Yes | Lead confidence and projected sale dates; no hit-rate-by-account reporting found |
| Shared bid calendar | Yes | Job schedules, not bid calendars |
Documents & AI
| Feature | Pursuit | Buildertrend |
|---|---|---|
| Plan and spec storage | Yes, on the bid, 50 GB per user | Yes, plans and specifications on the job |
| Ask questions of the documents | Yes, cited answers (Intelligence plan) | No |
| Contract review and risk flags | Yes (Intelligence plan) | No |
Sales & marketing
| Feature | Pursuit | Buildertrend |
|---|---|---|
| Proposals with e-signature | Quotes and e-signature requests | Yes, templated proposals, on-site signing |
| Email marketing campaigns | No | Yes |
| Website lead capture | No | Yes |
| Feature | Pursuit | Buildertrend |
|---|---|---|
| Outlook and Gmail threads on the project | Yes | Not a marketed CRM feature |
Operations
| Feature | Pursuit | Buildertrend |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduling, job costing, change orders, invoicing | No | Yes, the heart of the platform |
| Homeowner client portal | No | Yes |
| QuickBooks and Xero sync | No | Yes |
Estimating
| Feature | Pursuit | Buildertrend |
|---|---|---|
| Takeoff | BidScreen Cloud on the same platform | Built-in takeoff and estimates; third parties call it light for commercial CSI-format work |
When Buildertrend is actually the right choice
If you build or remodel homes, Buildertrend is probably the right call and Pursuit is probably wrong.
Buildertrend earns its keep after the sale: scheduling, daily logs, change orders, selections, job costing, invoicing, payments, and a client portal your homeowners actually like. Pursuit does none of that; it ends where the award begins.
Its sales tools fit consumer work: website lead capture, email marketing, templated proposals signed at the kitchen table. If your pipeline is homeowners rather than GCs, that is the correct shape for it.
And one subscription covering unlimited users can beat per-user pricing for a big team that genuinely uses the whole platform. If that is you, the comparison you should be reading is Buildertrend against other construction management suites, not against a bid-pursuit CRM.
Switching from Buildertrend to Pursuit
How to migrate
- First decide whether this is a migration at all. If you run residential jobs on Buildertrend and also chase commercial bid work, the common pattern is both: Buildertrend for delivery, Pursuit for pursuit.
- Create a free Pursuit account and add the commercial bids you are currently pricing, with bid dates.
- Connect Outlook or Gmail so GC and vendor threads log to the right bid.
- Upload plan sets and specs per bid; on the Intelligence plan, sanity-check the document Q&A on a bid you know cold.
- Send your next vendor RFQs from Pursuit so quotes stack up on the bid instead of the inbox.
- Record outcomes with reasons on bid day. Hit rate by customer accumulates from the first result.
- If you are leaving Buildertrend entirely, export your customer and lead lists from it before the subscription lapses.
Frequently asked
Is Buildertrend good for commercial subcontractors?
Buildertrend markets to residential home builders, remodelers, specialty trades, and light commercial GCs doing restaurant, office, and retail buildouts. It has no workflow for receiving and pursuing invited bids, which is the center of commercial subcontracting. Third-party reviews also describe its estimating as too light for CSI-format commercial work. For running residential jobs it is excellent; for commercial bid pursuit it is the wrong shape.
How much does Buildertrend cost compared to Pursuit?
Buildertrend stopped publishing prices; quotes are based on builder type and annual construction volume. Third-party reporting from 2026 puts historical tiers around $399 to $1,099 per month per company, with onboarding fees, and there is no free trial. Pursuit publishes its prices: $47 or $79 per user per month, about 17% less on annual billing, free account to start.
Does Pursuit do scheduling, job costing, or invoicing like Buildertrend?
No. Pursuit deliberately stops at the award. It tracks customers, bids, documents, RFQs, correspondence, and outcomes. Scheduling crews, job costing, change orders, and invoicing are construction management, and if you need those for residential work, Buildertrend genuinely does them well.
Can I use Buildertrend and Pursuit together?
Yes, and teams with a foot in both worlds do: Buildertrend runs the sold residential jobs, Pursuit runs the commercial bid pipeline. There is no integration between them today, but they touch different phases of the work, so nothing collides.
Which is better for tracking bid win rates?
Pursuit records win and loss with dates and reasons on every bid and reports hit rate by customer, project type, and region, so you can see which GCs award you work and which just collect your number. Buildertrend tracks lead confidence and projected sale dates for a consumer sales funnel; we found no hit-rate-by-account reporting in its public materials.
Try Pursuit free.
No credit card, no setup call. Create an account, put one real bid on the board, and see if it fits the way you bid.