If you are a General Contractor doing between $1M and $10M in revenue, you are in a difficult spot. You have outgrown Excel, but you aren’t quite ready to drop $10,000 a year on enterprise software.
You have probably looked at BuilderTrend. It is the 800-pound gorilla of construction management. It does everything: scheduling, CRM, selections, warranty, and payroll integrations.
But here is the problem: You pay for everything, even if you only use 10% of it.
For many custom home builders and remodelers, BuilderTrend feels like buying a semi-truck just to pick up some lumber at Home Depot. It’s powerful, but it’s expensive, complex to learn, and overkill for your needs.
If you are looking for a cheaper alternative to BuilderTrend that focuses specifically on the money—budgeting, bids, and subcontractor tracking—this guide is for you.
BuilderTrend’s pricing has shifted over the years, often moving toward “custom quotes” that require a demo call to uncover. However, most small GCs report pricing that looks like this:
For a business running $2.5M in revenue, paying $8,000 to $12,000 per year for software is a massive line item. That is money that could be going toward a new truck, a bonus for your super, or your own profit margin.
The biggest hidden cost of software isn’t the monthly fee—it’s adoption.
If a software is too complex, your field team won’t use it. If your Project Manager has to click through seven different screens just to upload a subcontractor’s bid, they will eventually stop doing it. They will go back to text messages and Excel spreadsheets.
Then, you are paying $600/month for software that nobody uses.
You don’t need “All-in-One.” You need “The Important Stuff.” Most small GCs don’t need complex warranty tracking or built-in CRM marketing tools. They need to answer three questions:
We built Bid Bench for the GCs who said “No” to the bloat. We aren’t trying to replace every single feature of BuilderTrend. We are perfecting the pre-construction and financial organization that actually wins you jobs.
Here is how we compare.
We don’t believe in locking you into annual contracts or forcing you to pay for features you don’t touch.
This is where we leave the big guys behind. In BuilderTrend, if you get a PDF proposal from a plumber, you have to manually type that data into the system.
In Bid Bench, our AI does the heavy lifting.
No more late nights squinting at PDFs and typing numbers into cells.
Tracking who has bid and who hasn’t is a full-time job. BuilderTrend handles this, but often requires your subs to log into a “Portal.” Subs hate portals. They lose the passwords. They call you asking how to log in.
We keep it simple. We track your invitations to bid (ITBs) and organize the incoming quotes in one dashboard. You see exactly who is covered and who is missing, without forcing your plumber to learn new software.
You don’t just need a place to dump files (like Dropbox); you need them associated with the project and the budget line item. Bid Bench offers integrated cloud storage, so the quote, the drawing, and the budget number live in the same place.
| Feature | BuilderTrend | Bid Bench |
|---|---|---|
| Best For | Large, complex firms needing full lifecycle management. | Small to Mid-sized GCs focused on Budgets & Bids. |
| Learning Curve | High (Weeks of training). | Low (Start using it today). |
| Subcontractor Bids | Requires “Portal” usage. | Seamless tracking & AI parsing. |
| Data Entry | Manual typing. | AI-Automated from PDFs. |
| Pricing | High ($500+/mo) + Setup Fees. | Affordable Monthly Subscription. |
| Contract | Often Annual. | Monthly / Flexible. |
If you are building 50 homes a year and need a complex warranty and marketing system, BuilderTrend is a great tool.
But if you are a custom builder or remodeler dealing with the chaos of spreadsheets, sticky notes, and lost PDF proposals, you don’t need a semi-truck. You need a precision tool.
Bid Bench helps you build professional budgets, track every subcontractor bid, and organize your files without the enterprise price tag.
Ready to ditch the spreadsheet without breaking the bank? [Link to Sign Up/Home Page] – Start your free trial today.