Contractor Foreman vs Buildertrend Price Check 2026

The short answer for a residential owner

A construction management platform, for this decision, is the one system a residential contractor uses to price the job, run the schedule, show the homeowner what changed, and see whether the job is still making money. Contractor Foreman and Buildertrend are both still sold under those names. Neither one in this search is a renamed, merged, or discontinued product.

TL;DR: pick Contractor Foreman when you need a price you can read before anyone calls you, a 30-day trial, and a user cap that fits a short crew. Pick Buildertrend when the homeowner will live in selections and daily updates, you want every module included, and you can accept a quote with unlimited users and no trial.

The posted dollars are all on one side. Basic plan: $49 per month according to Contractor Foreman (2026), and that same annual card lists renewals of $588, $1,264, $1,997, $2,654, and $3,984 for user allowances of 1, 3, 8, 15, and unlimited. Buildertrend's site does not print a dollar price. The category choice is not "which logo looks more like construction software." It is whether a small residential shop would rather buy a published company plan with a seat cap, or enter builder type and annual revenue to get a quote for a platform aimed at shops that already juggle several jobs and a demanding client.

Our read, separate from those published facts: if the next three jobs are kitchens, baths, or a single custom home and the office is you plus a few people, start on the published card and use the trial on a live job. If homeowners already expect a selections portal, a warranty trail, and a polished client login, and you will not sign anything until a rep prices your volume, Buildertrend is the product to take through a sales conversation. A wider map of other options sits in this Buildertrend alternatives guide.

Key Takeaways

• Contractor Foreman publishes five company plans. The entry card is $49 per month for 1 user and an annual renewal of $588. The top card is $332 per month and a $3,984 annual renewal for unlimited users.

• Buildertrend does not publish a dollar price. Its pricing page offers 10% off when you pay annually upfront, and it includes unlimited users and unlimited projects.

• Buildertrend's FAQ says there is no free trial, every plan includes the full feature set, and the quote uses builder type, annual revenue, and business needs. Contractor Foreman's cards say the trial is free for 30 days and then the annual renewal is due.

• The 100-day money-back line on Contractor Foreman is stated for the Plus, Pro, and Unlimited plans, not for Basic or Standard. Free setup is stated for Pro and Unlimited.

• Both products document a QuickBooks connection. The books still need a person to check vendor and cost code before a due date is trusted. Partial convenience is not the same as a closed month.

• Review scores are not one number. Capterra and G2 publish different samples, and this guide keeps those samples separate.

Who this is for

This comparison is for the owner of a small residential contractor who typed "contractor foreman vs buildertrend" because the choice is close. You are a remodeler, a custom or spec home builder, or a specialty trade that sells direct to homeowners. You already feel the pain of text-message change orders, a spreadsheet budget, and a QuickBooks file that does not match the job. You want to know what you would actually pay, how many people can log in, whether the homeowner gets a real portal, and what breaks when a bill has to land in the accounting file.

Red flags: you will not buy without a dollar figure on a public page, and you will not fill out a volume form to learn the price. You need a hands-on trial before an annual charge. You are a one-trade crew that will not use homeowner selections, bids, or a client login, and a shared inbox plus your current accounting file is still keeping the jobs straight.

If those red flags describe you, the rest of this page will still show the published gaps, but neither platform is a casual add-on. Buildertrend's pricing page describes builders who oversee several projects a year and who are past the "one job at a time" stage. Contractor Foreman's own cards start at a single user, which is a different door. Read the fit section before you book time with either company.

How we evaluated these two platforms

We weighted what this owner actually decides, not a generic feature tour. Posted price and the user cap get 25% because a small shop can be forced up a plan, or into a quote, before it learns whether the software fits. The homeowner portal and selections get 20% because residential work is won and lost on what the client can see and approve. The QuickBooks handoff and job cost get 20% because a pretty schedule that never matches the books creates a second job for the office. Trial, refund, and the ability to leave get 15% because both products push you toward a longer commitment. Training and setup get 10%. Schedule, daily logs, and field use get 10%. The weights sum to 100%. They are a buying order for this reader, not a score of either vendor.

A fact in the tables below is something the vendor or a review site published. A sentence that says "our read" is the buying advice for a small residential owner. We did not run either product on a job, and we do not treat a vendor case study as our result. Where a public page does not state a dollar amount, the cell says Quote-based.

Where a remodel crew will feel the difference

The published split is sharper than a feature checklist suggests. Contractor Foreman sells five named plans with a user allowance on each card, a 30-day trial, and a plan grid that includes estimates, invoices, bills, purchase orders, change orders, daily logs, scheduling, service tickets, work orders, a client portal, takeoffs, and QuickBooks Online. The checkmarks on that grid did not come through as text when the page was read for this guide, so confirm the tier before you assume Basic includes takeoffs or the client portal. Buildertrend's pricing page names scheduling, daily logs, tasks, time clock, change orders, selections, a sub portal, warranties, proposals, a client portal, bids, bills, purchase orders, budget, estimates, invoices, takeoff, and QuickBooks. Its FAQ says every plan includes the full set, so the quote is not a menu of locked modules.

Our read: the disqualifier for Contractor Foreman is a crew that will blow past the user cap on the plan you can stomach, or a client process that depends on a formal selections catalog rather than approvals and invoices. The disqualifier for Buildertrend is a buyer who will not accept a quote, will not skip the trial, or does not run the kind of multi-job residential work the pricing page describes. Owners also comparing larger job systems can use this Procore and Buildertrend comparison and this Buildertrend and JobTread comparison without treating those as the same choice.

Review samples should stay labeled. Positive share: 92% according to Capterra (2026), beside a 4.5 score across 837 reviews on that same Contractor Foreman page. That is not Buildertrend's sample, and it is not G2's sample. Capterra also sometimes prints Contractor Foreman's starting price as a per-user fee. The vendor card shows one monthly figure and a user allowance. Use the vendor card for the bill, and use Capterra for the review count.

Pricing checked against the live cards

Pricing checked October 10, 2026. Every dollar figure in the table is from Contractor Foreman's annual pricing page cited above. The last column is 12 times the monthly figure shown on the card, subtracted from the annual renewal the same card prints. The gaps are a few dollars, so budget the renewal number, not a mental "monthly times 12."

Buildertrend's pricing page offers Annual prepay discount: 10% according to Buildertrend (2026) when you pay annually upfront. That page also states unlimited users and unlimited projects, does not print a dollar price, marks client payments as US only, and says the product was built for builders who oversee 5 or more projects a year. Treat any other site's Essential, Advanced, or Complete dollar figures as unofficial. They are not on the vendor pricing page read for this article, so they are not in this table.

Training and setup are part of the real cost, because a cheap subscription that nobody learns is not cheap. On Contractor Foreman's comparison grid, private training sessions are 2 on Standard, 3 on Plus, 4 on Pro, and unlimited on the Unlimited plan. Basic does not list a session count. The 100-day money-back guarantee is listed on Plus, Pro, and Unlimited. Setup is "available" on Plus and free on Pro and Unlimited. Buildertrend's FAQ describes two onboarding tiers, daily virtual trainings, a 24/7 help center, and paid extras named Buildertrend University and Onsite Consulting. Those extras sit outside the idea of "one number covers everything," even though the software modules themselves are described as included. Ask, in the quote, what year-one onboarding costs and whether the 10% annual discount applies to it.

Our read on total cost for a small residential shop: Contractor Foreman can be planned from the card tonight. A 6-person crew does not fit Basic or Standard. Plus is the first card that covers 8 users. Buildertrend's year-one bill is unknowable until the quote returns, so a TCO comparison that invents a Buildertrend price would be fiction. Put Quote-based in the spreadsheet and make the rep fill the cell. Then compare that quote with $1,997 or $2,654, which are the published Plus and Pro renewals, plus whatever QuickBooks itself costs you, which is a separate Intuit bill either way.

A six-person crew and the renewal math

The seat table divides each published annual renewal by that plan's user allowance and rounds to the nearest cent. It is a way to see how concentrated the company fee is. It is not a per-person price the vendor charges.

A six-person residential remodel crew is short 5 seats on Basic and short 3 seats on Standard, so those cards are a mismatch before features even matter. The Plus plan on Contractor Foreman renews at Plus renewal: $1,997 per year according to Contractor Foreman (2026) for up to 8 users, which leaves 2 spare seats, while the Pro plan renews at $2,654 for up to 15 users and leaves 9 spare seats. The step is $2,654 minus $1,997, which is $657 a year. If that office still retypes vendor bills, the illustrative point of the $657 is not "software pays for itself by magic." It is that the plan jump buys seats, not a finished accounting close. QuickBooks Online stores the payment deadline on the Bill as Bill.DueDate, according to Intuit. A sensible close still has a person confirm the vendor and the cost code before that date is written. The spare-seat math uses published caps. The retyping scene is an illustration of where review belongs, not a timed study of a real company.

When the job file and the books disagree

Contractor Foreman's QuickBooks page says the online sync can move invoices, bills, payments, and expenses both ways, that the connection is included in the subscription, and that you still need your own QuickBooks Online subscription. QuickBooks stays the accounting record. Buildertrend's FAQ says the platform integrates with QuickBooks and Xero, and its help center documents pushes for bills, invoices, deposits, credit memos, and time, with payments able to flow back. Buildertrend's QuickBooks FAQ says a bill is marked paid on the job side only after it is fully paid in QuickBooks, so a partial payment will not look "done" on the job. Read that page before you promise a super that the budget updated because someone paid half the invoice. The setup guide on Contractor Foreman's site is worth doing line by line. Older pages and the current integration page do not always use the same words about QuickBooks Desktop, so confirm desktop on a current screen if your file is not online.

When a bill is saved in the job system with the accounting send option turned on, a proposed US Tech Automations workflow can take that export, compare the vendor and the cost code with the job budget, and stop when they do not match. The output is a held record and a short note for the bookkeeper. Nothing posts by itself. This is a configurable design, with the job tool's export or supported connection and a QuickBooks Online company as prerequisites, not a report of a shop already running it.

After that person approves the match, the same proposed US Tech Automations workflow can create the bill in QuickBooks and write the deadline to Bill.DueDate, then keep the name of the reviewer and the time of the approval. A failed match stays in a queue instead of becoming a second bill. You need a named reviewer, permission to create bills in that QuickBooks company, and a rule for what "match" means on cost codes. The design does not claim a measured time saving.

Zapier, Make, and n8n can carry a new lead or an approved invoice between a job tool and QuickBooks, and they can keep a run history, retries, error branches, and an audit trail when someone builds that. The buyer then owns observability, idempotency so the same bill is not created twice, escalation when a cost code is blank, access control, and the upkeep when a field changes. A proposed US Tech Automations design can put the stop-for-review step in front of the write to Bill.DueDate, with the same prerequisites: an export or supported connection, QuickBooks permissions, and a person who can reject a bad vendor. That is a different shape of ownership, not a claim that the connector tools are incapable. If you only need a one-way copy of a lead into a sheet, the connector you already know is the smaller tool. For the native path, see sending Buildertrend records toward QuickBooks and connecting Buildertrend to QuickBooks.

Mistakes that waste the first month

• Pricing the wrong card. A crew of six cannot live on the 1-user or 3-user plan. Comparing Buildertrend's quote with the $49 card is not a real comparison.

• Treating a review site's "per user" label as the invoice. The vendor card is one company price plus a cap.

• Assuming every Contractor Foreman module is on Basic because the marketing site says "all in one." The plan grid exists for a reason. Confirm takeoffs, the client portal, bills, and QuickBooks on the tier you will buy.

• Skipping the renewal line. The monthly figure and the annual charge differ by as much as $5 on the published cards. Pay the renewal figure.

• Connecting QuickBooks on day one with messy cost codes. Both vendors describe a sync that copies what you send. A bad code becomes a bad job cost in two places.

• Buying Buildertrend for a selections process and then never staffing someone to load the choices. The module does not invent your finish schedule.

• Ignoring how you leave. Ask what an export looks like before the annual term, especially if the quote is large relative to the office.

Listed reviews: 374 according to G2 (2026), where Contractor Foreman is rated 4.5 and the pricing note was last updated on April 9, 2026. That 4.5 is a different pool from Capterra's 837 reviews. Do not average them into a new score.

A checklist you can finish in one sitting

1. Count the people who must log in, including the owner, the office, and any lead who will enter a daily log. Match that count to 1, 3, 8, 15, or unlimited.

2. Write down whether homeowners must approve finishes in a catalog, or only approve a change and pay an invoice.

3. Open Contractor Foreman's pricing page and circle the cheapest plan whose user allowance covers the count. Note the annual renewal, the training sessions, and whether the 100-day guarantee applies.

4. Request Buildertrend's quote with your real builder type and annual volume. Ask what is included in onboarding and whether the 10% annual prepay offer is still on the order.

5. List the QuickBooks edition you pay for today. Confirm, on each vendor's current help page, that your edition is supported before you migrate a live job.

6. Pick one active job, not a demo job, as the trial or the pilot. If the homeowner on that job will not use a portal, you will not learn what you came to learn.

7. Decide who may create a bill and who must approve a cost code that does not match the estimate. Write that name down before any sync is turned on.

8. Only then compare the quote with the published renewal. If the quote never arrives as a number, the comparison is not finished.

What each product is like after the sale

Contractor Foreman fits a small residential or light commercial contractor that wants estimating, invoicing, scheduling, daily logs, and a client login without a sales gate, and that can stay inside a user cap. The Basic plan is a one-person door. Standard covers up to 3 users. Plus, at the $1,997 renewal, is the first published card that covers a crew of six with room for two more logins. Limitations: the money-back window and free setup are not listed on the entry cards, the plan grid's checkmarks need a visual confirm, and the client portal page describes schedules, files, approvals, invoices, and online payment rather than a selections catalog as detailed as Buildertrend's named module. Implementation means using the 30-day trial on a live job, attending the private sessions your plan includes, and connecting QuickBooks only after cost codes match. Primary pages: the pricing card, the QuickBooks integration page, and the client portal page.

Buildertrend fits an established residential builder or remodeler whose clients expect a portal, selections, warranties, and a sub login, and whose team should not be capped by seats. Active businesses: 20,000+ according to Buildertrend (2026), with 1,000,000+ users in 80 or more countries on that same FAQ. The company says it was founded in 2006, that every plan includes lead, project, financial, and client tools, that price depends on builder type, annual revenue, and needs, and that there is no free trial. Limitations: you cannot audit the price from the website, client payments are marked US only on the pricing page, onboarding tier and premium training can change year-one cost, and a partial bill payment does not flip the job-side bill to paid. Implementation is a quote, a choice of onboarding tier, a link of jobs and cost codes, then daily virtual training. Evidence: the pricing page and the FAQ.

G2 score: 4.2 out of 5 according to G2 (2026), across 177 Buildertrend reviews. G2's summary of those reviews praises the single project record and also notes a learning curve and frequent updates. That is a smaller sample than Capterra's, and it is not a reason to ignore the product. It is a reason to budget training time.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations: a one-person shop that already checks the send-to-accounting box inside the job tool, and that only creates a handful of bills a week, does not need a second workflow in front of a native sync. A connector such as Zapier, Make, or n8n is the simpler tool when the only task is copying a new lead to a sheet and you will personally watch for duplicates. Stay on the vendor's own QuickBooks screen when one bookkeeper already opens both products and the cost codes are stable.

Questions owners ask before they sign

Is Contractor Foreman cheaper than Buildertrend?

Only Contractor Foreman publishes a price, so "cheaper" is not a number you can finish today. The published range is $49 to $332 per month, with annual renewals from $588 to $3,984. Buildertrend is Quote-based, with 10% off if you pay annually upfront. Get the quote, then compare it with the Plus renewal of $1,997 or the Pro renewal of $2,654 if those are the cards that fit your headcount. Until that quote is in writing, any savings claim is a guess.

Does either product bill a rate that multiplies by every login?

Contractor Foreman's pricing page shows one price per plan and a user allowance beside it, from 1 user up to unlimited. That is not the same as a fee that grows with each added login inside the cap. Crossing the cap means a higher plan, which is how a crew of six leaves the $105 Standard card. Buildertrend states that unlimited users are included and that there is no extra per-user charge on the pricing page. Confirm both wordings on the order form so a later "active user" definition does not surprise you.

Which one should I buy if homeowners live in selections?

Buy the one whose published client tools match how you already sell finishes. Buildertrend names a Selections tool, a client portal, change orders, and warranties on its pricing page, and its FAQ says those modules are in every plan. Contractor Foreman publishes a client portal for schedules, documents, approvals, invoices, and online payment. If your sale depends on a finish catalog with allowances, start with Buildertrend's demo conversation. If the client mostly needs to approve a change and pay a draw, Contractor Foreman's portal is the one to try on a live job during the 30-day trial.

Can both of them send bills to QuickBooks?

Yes. Both document a QuickBooks connection, and both still leave a person responsible for cost codes. Contractor Foreman describes a two-way online sync of invoices, bills, payments, and expenses, included with the subscription, with QuickBooks remaining the accounting system. Buildertrend describes pushes of bills and invoices and a return path for payments, and its QuickBooks FAQ says the job-side bill stays unpaid until QuickBooks shows the bill fully paid. Neither fact removes the need to review a mismatched vendor before Bill.DueDate is filled in.

What if the office is only one or two people?

The Basic plan is the published 1-user card at $49 per month and a $588 annual renewal. The Standard plan allows up to 3 users at $105 per month and a $1,264 annual renewal. Those are the cards that match a tiny office, with the limits noted above on training sessions and the money-back line. Buildertrend still has no public entry price for a two-person shop. Its pricing page aims the product at builders running 5 or more projects a year, so a very small office should expect the quote to reflect that positioning even if the seat count is low.

Is there a free trial, and do I have to pay annually?

Contractor Foreman's five cards say the product is free for 30 days and that the annual renewal is what you pay after that. The 100-day money-back guarantee is listed on Plus, Pro, and Unlimited, not on Basic or Standard. Buildertrend's FAQ says it does not offer a free trial and uses a personalized walkthrough instead. Its pricing page offers 10% off when you pay annually upfront. Ask whether a quarterly term exists on your quote. Do not assume month-to-month is available just because a review site shows a monthly layout.

Why do the star ratings disagree?

They are different websites with different review counts, not one official score. Value score: 4.3 out of 5 according to Capterra (2026), where 66% of the value-for-money ratings call Buildertrend good or excellent, the overall score is 4.5 from 2,488 reviews, and the page shows no free trial and a custom quote. G2's Buildertrend page, cited above, is 4.2 from 177 reviews. Contractor Foreman is 4.5 from 837 reviews on Capterra, with 92% positive, and 4.5 from 374 reviews on G2. Use the counts beside the stars. Do not merge them.

Where this leaves the short list

For a small residential owner, Contractor Foreman is the product you can price tonight and try for 30 days, as long as the user cap on Plus or Pro actually covers the people who will log in and you confirm the modules on that tier. Buildertrend is the product to quote when selections, warranties, unlimited users, and a full module set matter more than seeing the price first, and when you can staff the onboarding that comes with a tool this wide. Keep QuickBooks as the accounting record either way, and do not turn on a sync until one named person owns cost-code mismatches.

If the native checkbox already covers a few clean bills a week, use it. If you want a held review before the due date is written, see how US Tech Automations configures this. See the playbook.