Search for free electrical estimating software and you get four different offers wearing the same word. Free forever with a cap. A free trial download. A free demo. And a free download on a site that should not have the installer at all.
Only one of those leaves you with software you can keep. The more useful question is not which one is free, it is what gets taken away when you stop paying. In the free tiers checked today, the first two things gated are cost data and export. Those are exactly the parts that turn a takeoff into a bid.
A count you cannot export is not an estimate.
STACK has a real free tier, and its own pages disagree on the terms
STACK is the one genuine free-forever option in this group. Its pricing page labels the free column “Free forever, after 7-days of Pro” and lists what you keep: one active project per month, up to 300 plan pages per project, up to 50 measurements per project, one viewer seat, plan viewing and markup, core takeoff tools, and in-app chat, help and support.
STACK’s FAQ answers the same question with different numbers. Under “Can I really use STACK for free?” it says you can create a free account to work on up to two concurrent projects for seven days, and that free accounts may perform up to 10 takeoffs per project.
Those do not describe the same offer. One page says one active project per month with 50 measurements. The other says two concurrent projects for seven days with 10 takeoffs each. Before you plan any part of your estimating process around either version, get the current terms in writing from STACK.
Both pages agree on the part that decides whether the free tier is useful to you. The free version does not include cost data or export. The FAQ also rules out autocount and API access. You can measure a drawing and you cannot get the numbers out of the building.
STACK’s paid rates are published: Takeoff & Estimate at $249 per user per month, Build & Operate at $49, and the full platform at $298. The page does not say whether those assume annual or monthly billing, so do not assume either. Worth remembering that STACK is general construction takeoff, not an electrical package built around electrical assemblies with labor units attached.
Vision InfoSoft posts an actual trial download
Vision InfoSoft’s electrical estimating page carries “Download Free Trial” and “Download Demo” as its calls to action. That is real electrical estimating software landing on your machine, not a form that produces a sales call.
The page does not publish how long the trial runs, so ask before you invest time building a job in it. Vision InfoSoft is also the vendor here that answers the price question in public, under a heading that asks it directly: “Get started for less than $1,000/year,” plus a note that interest-free payment plans are available. That willingness to put a number on the page is rare enough in this category that it tracks with which electrical estimating vendors publish a price at all.
A free trial tells you whether the software fits your work. It does not tell you the software stays free.
A free demo is a sales call
Countfire’s pricing URL does not show pricing. Request countfire.com/pricing and it returns a 302 redirect to the contact page. Trimble Accubid, ConEst IntelliBid, and McCormick Systems publish no dollar figure either and route you to a demo request. Directory sites carry numbers for all of them that the vendors themselves do not publish, and those numbers contradict each other, so none of them belong in your budget.
The AI tools run the same play. Togal.AI lists Growth at $299 per user per month billed yearly and a custom Business tier for teams with four or more users, with no free tier and no advertised trial length behind its “Try Now” and “book your demo” buttons. Beam AI publishes annual licenses instead: its do-it-yourself construction plans start at an $8K annual license per trade, its done-for-you plans at $25K covering all trades, and its aerial imagery tier at $10K per trade.
If you are typing “ai electrical estimating software free,” the honest answer among these vendors is that no such tier exists. Beam’s cheaper self-serve license is listed for HVAC, plumbing and steel. Its electrical page offers no trial, no free tier, and no self-serve signup, just “Book a demo.”
The pirate download breaks your pricing, not just your security
Cracked installers of commercial estimating packages carry malware risk and cannot receive vendor updates. The second half of that matters more than most contractors expect, because an estimating package’s real value is its material pricing database. A build that cannot update is quoting your jobs off stale material costs. You have bought a bidding problem on top of a security problem, and the bidding one will cost you quietly for months.
The spreadsheet stays free and stays dumb
A price book in a spreadsheet costs nothing, has no license, and nobody can revoke it. What it will never give you is assemblies with labor already attached or a material pricing update service. That labor assumption is the whole difference between a measurement and a bid, and the rate you build into it still has to cover the business, which is the math behind pricing electrical jobs without underbidding yourself.
Before you buy anything, check whether you bid plan-and-spec work at all. If nearly everything you run is service calls and small residential quoted from a price book, field service software already does that job, and the seat math on that side is a different purchase than takeoff.
The estimate starts on the phone, not in the software
Look at what a proper electrical intake collects and the overlap with your estimate inputs is obvious. On an EV charger call: panel size, single-phase or three-phase, and where the parking sits. On a breaker call: whether it resets or trips again straight away, and whether the power is fully off or only partial. On every call: property type, house, apartment, commercial, new build, or rental.
Those are estimating inputs. They get captured on the first call, or somebody chases them down later and the bid waits.
Wirewoman answers 24/7, in about two seconds, and runs that electrical intake herself. She texts a job summary to your phone about 30 seconds after the call: who called, what they need, where to go, whether it is urgent. She logs every call to a dashboard and routes the urgent ones by your shop’s own escalation rules. She also adds nothing to anyone’s per-seat count, because she is not a seat. Pricing is flat at $95, $295, or $495 a month with no per-minute meter and no per-caller overage, and the plans are on one page.
Write down what free has to include before you test anything: cost data, export, labor assumptions, project caps, and the date the trial ends. Then price the intake as its own line, because no free tier and no $25K license will write the bid for a call that went to voicemail, which is the gap measured in what a missed call costs a California electrician.
