Pricing
What a steel bid package costs, and what moves the price.
One price per bid package — not per hour, not per sheet, and not a subscription. Your first package is free, and you keep it whether or not you use us again.
The three tiers
Priced by the job, quoted before we start.
Starter
A full steel package on a smaller job.
$299–399
per bid package
+35% rush (24h)
Standard
Mid-size work — multifamily, commercial, a single building carrying full Division 5.
$549–899
per bid package
+35% rush (24h)
Complex
Master developments, large construction, major public works.
$1,200–2,500
per bid package
+35% rush (24h)
Every tier gets the same six deliverables. The tier changes what the job takes to build, not what you receive. Self-serve plans coming soon.
What moves the price isn't sheet count
It's how much of the job we have to figure out.
Two jobs can carry the same tonnage and the same number of structural sheets and be nothing alike to estimate. One has a complete set: the details are drawn, the schedules agree with the plans, the stair and rail scope is clearly somebody's. The other has a stair section that contradicts the riser schedule, an embed called out on the framing plan but detailed nowhere, and a handrail shown on the architectural sheets that the structural drawings never mention. The second job is the expensive one, and it is not the bigger one.
So the honest answer is that we price on how unique the job is, how many open questions it carries, and how much of the scope is genuinely ambiguous — not on a formula. What pushes a package up a tier is usually one of these:
- Drawings that don't agree with each other. Plan versus schedule, structural versus architectural, detail versus section. Every conflict is a decision somebody has to make before the number is real.
- Details that aren't there. A connection, an embed, a stair tread — called out and never drawn. That becomes an RFI, and the RFI has to be written well enough to get answered.
- Scope that could sit with you or with somebody else. Embeds set by the concrete sub. Rail furnished by you and installed by the GC. Stairs split between structural and misc metals. This is where money is lost, and sorting it out is most of the work.
- Multiple buildings, phases, or bid packages — where the same detail repeats with small differences and each one has to be checked rather than assumed.
- Addenda churn. A set that has already been revised three times during the bid period takes longer than a clean one, because every revision has to be reconciled against what was already counted.
The jobs that generate the most RFIs take the most work, and they are also the jobs where an estimating service earns its fee. Every question answered during the bid period is a question you are not eating after award, when the answer costs real money and the GC has your signature. A takeoff that quietly assumed its way past four ambiguities is cheaper to produce and far more expensive to own.
You'll have the price before we start
Because the tiers are judgment and not arithmetic, you are never exposed to an open-ended number. Send the plan set and we'll come back with the tier and what put it there — the specific conflicts, the missing details, the scope splits we can see. If it lands higher than you expected, you'll know why, and you can tell us to narrow the scope or walk away. Nothing starts until you say go.
And on your first package that conversation is academic, because the first one is free.
Why we cost more than a $200 takeoff
You can buy a steel takeoff online for around $200. Those services are real and the arithmetic is often fine. But what arrives is a quantity list, and a quantity list is not a bid.
You still have to price it against your own material and labor rates. You still have to write the scope letter — the inclusions and, more importantly, the exclusions that keep you from carrying somebody else's steel. You still have to build the proposal on your letterhead, decide what to ask the GC before the bid closes, and set up the schedule of values you'll bill against for the next eight months. That is most of an estimator's afternoon, and it is the part where bids are won and lost.
A $200 takeoff
- A quantity list, usually one spreadsheet
- Priced at generic rates, or not priced at all
- No scope letter, no exclusions
- No proposal on your letterhead
- No RFIs written for the bid period
- No pay-app setup
- You still do the afternoon of work
A TopOut package
- Takeoff workbook, every row naming its sheet
- Priced at your material and labor rates
- Scope of work with the exclusions spelled out
- Branded proposal, your logo, ready to send
- Marked-up plan sheets you can hand to a GC
- RFI list written to actually get answered
- Pay-app templates and schedule of values
Six documents instead of one, reviewed by an estimator who bids this work, and every quantity traceable to the sheet it was measured on. If what you need is a quantity list, buy the quantity list — we'd rather tell you that than take the job. If what you need is a bid you can send this week, that's what the price buys.
Rush work
Standard turnaround is 48 hours. A 24-hour rush is +35% on whatever the package would otherwise cost. There's no rush tier and no separate rate card — it's the same package, built faster, by moving it to the front of the queue.
If your bid date is tighter than 24 hours, call rather than email. Sometimes we can help and sometimes we can't, and you should find that out in two minutes instead of waiting on a reply.
What the price does not include
Said plainly, because finding this out late is worse than reading it now. A TopOut package does not include:
- Shop drawings or erection drawings
- Engineering, connection design, or sealed calculations
- A professional engineer's stamp of any kind
- Material procurement, mill orders, or buyout
- Erection labor, cranes, rigging, or field supervision
- Welding inspection or special inspection
- Pricing for scopes that aren't shown on the drawings you send us
Some of those we may add later. None of them are hiding in the fee today.
What you own
Everything we send is yours, in the original editable formats — Excel, Word and PDF, carrying your logo and your rates. There is no portal to log into, no per-seat licence, no export fee, and nothing stops working if you never send us another job. Change any number you disagree with; it's your bid and your name on it.
We don't publish your plans, we don't bid against you, and we delete your set on request.
Send one plan set and find out what it would cost.
The first package is free, and you keep it either way. Email the set with the job name and the bid date, or call and talk it through with an estimator first.