Buildertrend vs Fieldwire for Contractors in 2026

Two products, two records of the job

A contractor who searches buildertrend vs fieldwire is choosing which file will be true when a client, a sub, or a bookkeeper challenges the job. Buildertrend is a residential construction platform that gathers the schedule, the client file, selections, estimates, and invoices, and it sells that platform on a custom quote. Fieldwire is a jobsite product, sold on its current pricing page as Fieldwire by Hilti, that starts with plans and tasks and adds sheet compare, forms, RFIs, submittals, change orders, and budget only as you step up published plans. Buying both is a second decision, and it only works when you name which screen wins an argument.

Construction project management software is the system a contractor uses to keep the schedule, the cost, the drawings, and the client updates for a live job. TL;DR: pick Buildertrend when the homeowner file and the invoice are the record you will defend, and pick Fieldwire when the current sheet and the task on that sheet are the record.

Hilti agreed on November 16, 2021 to acquire Fieldwire for an approximate Deal value: $300 million according to PR Newswire (2021). That release said closing was expected in the fourth quarter of 2021 and that customers had used the platform on more than 1,000,000 projects. The product was not renamed and it was not shut down. The pricing page checked for this article still sells Fieldwire plans under the Fieldwire by Hilti name.

Buildertrend did not become Fieldwire, and Fieldwire did not become Buildertrend. On February 24, 2021, Buildertrend announced that it had acquired CoConstruct, a separate residential product, with growth investment from Bain Capital Tech Opportunities and HGGC and a reinvestment from Serent Capital. The announcement described a 2021 combined ARR: over $100 million according to Buildertrend (2021), plus a combined network of 23,000+ clients. CoConstruct is not the product in this search. Judge the Buildertrend login and the Fieldwire login on the screens you will actually administer.

Key Takeaways

• Buildertrend's pricing page asks for a quote and advertises a discount when you pay annually upfront. It does not print a monthly dollar subscription price.

• Fieldwire prints self-serve rates on annual billing and leaves a custom contract for buyers who need a negotiated deal, including API access and single sign-on.

• The free Fieldwire plan is real, and it is capped on users, projects, and plans. A growing crew outgrows it quickly.

• Change orders, RFIs, submittals, and budget appear on Fieldwire's highest self-serve plan. Estimates, a client portal, selections, and invoices appear on Buildertrend's pricing page.

• A dollar that starts on a field task still needs a person to accept it before it becomes a bill or a change order in another system.

• Public review averages sit close together, while the number of reviews behind them does not. Read the sample size before you treat the averages as equal evidence.

Who this is for

This page is for a contractor, a superintendent, or an office manager who is close to signing and needs the purchase answered in plain terms. It fits a residential builder or remodeler who lives in proposals, selections, client messages, and invoices. It also fits a field crew that lives on PDF sheets, markups, and task pins, including specialty contractors and general contractors who already keep the ledger somewhere else.

Red flags: You want the homeowner portal and sheet compare packaged as one product these two vendors do not list together. You need a Buildertrend subscription dollar amount before anyone fills out a quote form. You expect the free Basic plan to hold the crew after you pass its published user, project, and plan caps.

Run one pass before you sit through sales calls. Name the record. Count the people who need a paid Fieldwire seat, and separate your own staff from subs and clients. List the documents that must exist on day 30: estimate, client invoice, current sheet, RFI, submittal, change order, and a QuickBooks or Xero entry. If that list is mostly client and money, stay with Buildertrend and get the quote. If that list is mostly sheets and tasks, stay with Fieldwire and price the plan that actually contains the modules.

If JobTread is also on a residential shortlist, read Buildertrend vs JobTread for construction firms after you settle the record question here. If the other name on the whiteboard is Procore, use Procore vs Buildertrend for construction firms and Fieldwire vs Procore for construction firms so this page stays a two-product decision.

How we evaluated these tools

We weighted six things a buyer at this stage actually argues about. The client-and-invoice record and the sheet-and-task record each get 25 points, because this search is a fight over which file is true. A price you can put in a budget before a sales call gets 20 points, because one vendor prints rates and the other does not. RFIs, submittals, and change orders get 15 points. Accounting and payroll connectors named on the vendor's own pricing page get 10 points. How subs and clients get access gets 5 points. These points are our buying frame. They are not a rank either company published. Score each product from 0 up to the points in the last column, and withhold points for a capability that was absent from the pages cited here.

Public review scores are a separate input from those points. On the Software Advice comparison updated October 12, 2026, Buildertrend shows an Overall score: 4.5 of 5 according to Software Advice (2026), based on 2,489 reviews, with 84% of those users recommending the product, ease of use at 4.4, value for money at 4.3, customer support at 4.7, functionality at 4.3, and mobile access at 4.1. That page says 61% of the Buildertrend reviews are tagged to construction, and it says Buildertrend's starting price was not provided by the vendor. Software Advice discloses that it may earn a referral fee.

Fieldwire shows a Review score: 4.6 of 5 according to Software Advice (2026), based on 99 reviews, with 85% recommending the product, ease of use at 4.5, value for money at 4.4, customer support at 4.6, functionality at 4.3, and mobile access at 4.6. The same page prints budget-tracking and estimating scores for Buildertrend and marks those feature scores for Fieldwire as not available. A 4.6 average on 99 reviews is a thinner sample than a 4.5 average on 2,489 reviews, so read it as a signal with a short base, not as a tied result.

Our read of that table: customer support favors Buildertrend on this page, and mobile access favors Fieldwire. The missing Fieldwire scores for budget tracking and estimating line up with a public grid that puts money tools on the top self-serve plan rather than on every login. Neither average is a test we ran.

Published price, caps, and the quote

Pricing checked October 13, 2026.

Buildertrend's pricing page does not print a subscription dollar amount, so the price cell is Quote-based until a written quote arrives. The page offers an Upfront discount: 10% according to Buildertrend (2026) when you pay annually upfront. It also says more than 1 million users across more than 100 countries have chosen the platform, says the product is built for builders who oversee 5 or more projects a year, includes unlimited users and unlimited projects, and names QuickBooks, Xero, and Gusto. Payments are marked US only. The quote form asks for builder type and annual construction volume, then a conversation. Unlimited users matter if subs and homeowners need logins and you refuse a per-seat meter, and you still cannot compare that benefit with a Fieldwire seat total until the quote states a dollar amount.

Fieldwire's plan guide sets a Basic user cap: 5 according to Fieldwire (2026), along with 3 projects and 100 plans. Paid plans remove those caps and charge every user, including people already on the account when you upgrade, so a five-person Basic team that moves up starts at five paid seats. The same guide says a premium Trash tab can restore plans, files, tasks, or forms deleted within 30 days, on the web, for account and project admins. It also says API access can be added to the Business plan or the Business Plus plan, or bought as a custom plan. The pricing page groups API access with custom contracts, next to single sign-on, tailored training, and a dedicated success team. Confirm which path is on your order before you plan a connection.

Take an illustrative crew of 8 paid users, already past the Basic cap of 5. The Pro plan rate: $39/user/month according to Fieldwire (2026) is the annual-billing price on that page, Fieldwire's Basic plan costs $0 per user per month, the Business plan on Fieldwire costs $64 per user per month billed annually, and the Business Plus plan on Fieldwire costs $89 per user per month billed annually, with custom contracts left as Quote-based. On those annual-billing rates, 8 × $39 × 12 = $3,744 a year on Pro, 8 × $64 × 12 = $6,144 a year on Business, and 8 × $89 × 12 = $8,544 a year on Business Plus. The step from Business to Business Plus is $89 − $64 = $25 per user per month, and $25 × 8 × 12 = $2,400 a year. Fieldwire's task API documents cost_value as the monetary cost on the task. If one verified task carries a cost_value of $2,400, that single field equals the whole year of the upgrade, which is why a person should read the field before anyone copies it into a change order. Buildertrend cannot sit on the same eight-user line, because its platform price is Quote-based.

Pro is the Fieldwire tier that adds reports and exports, sheet compare, project templates, and custom task statuses. Business adds custom forms, app integrations, a BIM viewer, and custom task fields. Business Plus adds RFIs, submittals, change orders, and budget. Custom task statuses still follow an Open, then Tracked, then Verified sequence. A verified task means someone in Fieldwire closed the loop. It does not mean the dollar has been accepted by accounting.

What each product lists in public

Picture a remodeler's Tuesday. The homeowner wants a revised tile allowance, the estimator needs that allowance in the proposal, and the draw depends on an invoice the client can open. Buildertrend's public list puts selections, proposals, the client portal, and invoices on one platform. Picture a superintendent's Tuesday on a commercial interior. The architect issued a new sheet, the foreman needs the delta, and the punch item has to sit on the pin. Fieldwire's public list puts plan viewing on Basic and sheet compare on Pro, with the punch captured as a task. Those two days are the purchase. A tie score on a generic feature grid hides them.

Buildertrend

Published scope on the pricing page covers scheduling, daily logs, tasks, a time clock, change orders, selections, a sub portal, warranties, lead management, proposals, email marketing, a client portal, file storage, messaging, bids, bills and purchase orders, budget, estimates, payments, invoices, and takeoff. Setup, data migration, a learning academy, live call and chat support, virtual trainings, and onsite consulting are listed as services. The page says most builders can begin within a few days. That is the vendor's onboarding claim, not a timed result from this guide.

Best fit: a home builder, remodeler, or specialty contractor who already knows the job is won or lost in the client conversation and the job cost, who expects to run 5 or more projects a year, and who will wait for a written quote. The unlimited-user model fits when subs and homeowners need logins.

Limitations: the public page cannot close a budget, because the price is Quote-based. Sheet compare, a BIM viewer, and plan-pinned RFIs are not on the pricing page opened for this article. Payments are marked US only, so a firm that collects outside the United States should ask that question on the quote call. The 2021 CoConstruct acquisition means some remodelers still have history in a second product. Ask for an export of jobs, contacts, selections, and change orders before you treat a move as a login swap.

Implementation: name an owner for cost codes before migration, because bills, estimates, and invoices are all on the list. If QuickBooks is the ledger, the follow-on is sending Buildertrend costs to QuickBooks. Primary evidence is the pricing page and the February 24, 2021 acquisition announcement cited above.

Fieldwire

Published scope starts, on Basic, with plan viewing, task management, specifications, files and photos, and checklists, and the plan guide adds instant messaging on that tier. Pro adds the sheet and reporting tools named above. Business adds custom forms, Dropbox, Box, and OneDrive sync, file access control, 360-degree photos, the BIM viewer, custom task attributes, and phone support. Business Plus adds company groupings so a draft submittal can stay inside the company until it is submitted, plus RFIs, submittals, and change orders. The pricing page also lists budget on Business Plus.

Best fit: a superintendent or project engineer whose day is the latest sheet, the pin on that sheet, and the person who must close the task. It also fits a commercial or specialty crew that wants RFIs and submittals on the plan and does not need a residential client portal. The per-user meter is workable when the paid list is the field team, not every homeowner.

Limitations: the free plan stops at the caps cited above. Estimating, a client portal, selections, and invoices are not listed on the pricing page or the plan guide opened here. API access is not part of the self-serve Pro checkout. Every user on a paid plan is a paid seat, so the bill moves when the crew moves.

Implementation: pick the plan before you upload the set you care about, because sheet compare arrives at Pro and change orders arrive at Business Plus. If task costs must reach accounting, get API access in writing on the order. Primary evidence is the pricing page and the plan guide cited in the price section. If a Buildertrend quote comes back above what the job file is worth, other residential options are collected in Buildertrend alternatives for construction firms.

The matrix is a listing check against pages opened for this article, not a lab score. A capability missing from those pages is a question for the quote or the order form. Choose Buildertrend when you will run the company from the client file and the invoice and you can accept a quote. Choose Fieldwire when the crew will adopt the sheet tool this quarter and you can pay per user up to the plan that holds your modules. If you keep both, one of them has to be downstream of the other.

From a verified task to a reviewed cost

The expensive failure shows up after a clean purchase. The field records one cost on a task. The office records another cost on an invoice. The draw goes out before anyone lines the two numbers up.

A proposed US Tech Automations workflow starts when a Fieldwire task already has a cost_value and a verified_at timestamp. The workflow reads those fields through the Fieldwire API, writes a draft cost line that names the project, the task, and the amount, and assigns that draft to a project manager. The output is a review item. It is not a posted invoice, and it is not a completed change order. Prerequisites are API access actually enabled on the Fieldwire account, a token an admin can revoke, and a field map the office has signed. The human review point is that assignment. Nothing downstream runs while the draft sits open.

After that person accepts the amount, the same US Tech Automations workflow can create the matching record in the system that already holds the job cost, which for many of these buyers is a Buildertrend change order or a QuickBooks bill. A rejection returns the draft with a note and does not write the ledger. You need permission to create the destination record, and you need a duplicate rule so a second pass does not open a second bill for the same task. This is a proposed, configurable design. It is not a live customer, and it is not a measured result.

Zapier, Make, and n8n can carry this handoff when someone builds it. Configured with care, those tools can keep run histories, retries, error branches, and audit evidence. The buyer still has to design and own observability, idempotency (a repeat run must not create a second bill), escalation, access controls, and maintenance. A proposed US Tech Automations design places the review hold, the retry limit, and the duplicate check in one configuration, with the Fieldwire API prerequisite and a named approver on cost_value before any write. The split is who owns that design and the failed-run inbox, not a promise that software removes the review.

US Tech Automations is the wrong layer when the company lives in one product and has nothing to reconcile, when one coordinator already copies a few costs the same day and the volume stays that small, or when Fieldwire API access is off and the firm will not buy the add-on or the custom contract. A CSV from a task report, or a weekly pass by the project engineer, is the simpler tool in those cases. A workflow parked on a single screen only adds a queue nobody staffs.

Mistakes that surface after kickoff

• Treating a Buildertrend quote and a Fieldwire seat price as the same kind of number. One is a company quote with unlimited users. The other is a per-user rate that changes when the paid list changes.

• Opening a fourth active project, or inviting a sixth person, on the Basic plan and hitting the cap in the middle of a job.

• Buying Business Plus for change orders and still expecting a homeowner selections portal. That portal is on the Buildertrend list, not on the Fieldwire pages checked here.

• Letting a task's cost_value post into accounting because the status says verified. Verified means a person in Fieldwire closed the task. It does not mean the bookkeeper agreed the dollar.

• Reading the 2021 Hilti agreement as a rename or a shutdown. You are still buying Fieldwire, marketed with Hilti, and you are still buying Buildertrend as its own login.

• Skipping the order-form line on API access. The pricing page and the plan guide do not put that access in the same bucket.

Pass this list before you sign

• Which file wins an argument, the client invoice or the current sheet?

• Can you put a subscription number in this week's budget without a call? If Buildertrend is in the answer, you need the written quote first.

• How many people need a Fieldwire login, and how many of them are outside your company?

• Will the crew cross the Basic caps in the first month?

• Where must a change order live on day one, on the plan or in the client portal?

• Who may accept a cost_value before it hits the ledger?

• If both products stay, who owns the field map and the failed-run inbox?

Short glossary

Sheet compare. An overlay of two plan versions so a crew can see what changed. Fieldwire lists it on Pro.

Task. A field item for punch, safety, progress, or a question. On Fieldwire's task API the record includes cost_value, status_id, and verified_at.

RFI. A formal question that needs a tracked answer. Fieldwire lists RFIs on Business Plus.

Submittal. Product data sent for approval. Fieldwire lists submittals on Business Plus, including a path that starts from the specifications.

Change order. An agreed change in scope or price. Buildertrend lists it with project tools. Fieldwire lists it on Business Plus.

Client portal. A login where the owner sees files, choices, and messages. Buildertrend lists it. The Fieldwire pages opened for this guide do not.

System of record. The file you trust when two screens disagree. Name it before you name a vendor.

Seat. A paid user on Fieldwire's per-user plans. Buildertrend's published model uses unlimited users instead, at a Quote-based company price.

Questions to settle before you sign

Is Fieldwire still sold under its own name?

Yes. The pricing page markets it as Fieldwire by Hilti, and the 2021 agreement did not replace that product name with a different login.

Does Buildertrend publish a monthly subscription price?

No. The pricing page asks for a custom quote and advertises 10% off when you pay annually upfront.

What does the Pro plan on Fieldwire cost?

Fieldwire's Pro plan costs $39 per user per month when billed annually.

Which plan lists Fieldwire change orders?

The Business Plus plan lists change orders, together with RFIs, submittals, and budget.

Can these two products pass a cost without a person in the middle?

They should not. A safe handoff keeps a human review on the amount before any bill or change order is created, and it needs API access turned on first.

When should the firm skip an automation layer?

Skip it when one product already holds the whole job, when a coordinator updates the other screen the same day, or when API access is not on the order.

After the quote and the seat count

Pick the record first, then the price. If the homeowner file, the selections, and the invoice are what you will defend, get the Buildertrend quote in writing and compare it with your real user list, not with a single Fieldwire seat. If the sheet set is what you will defend, price Fieldwire at the plan that contains the modules you will touch in month one, and count every paid user. Firms that keep both should write the field map and the approver's name before a connection is switched on. For the configuration of that review step, see how US Tech Automations configures this.