Bidflow
AI electrical takeoff: counts the power and lighting devices on your PDF plans in minutes.
Bidflow is worth a test if your bottleneck is counting power and lighting devices on commercial PDF sets and you are currently doing it by hand in Bluebeam: the model reads schedules and legends without pre-processing, and the review-and-fix step keeps a human in the loop before export. The scope is the catch. It explicitly does not do conduit and wire lengths, feeders, panel schedules, or fire alarm, so it cannot replace Accubid or PlanSwift for a full estimate. Treat it as a count accelerator next to your existing estimating suite, and validate accuracy on your own drawings rather than on the vendor's clean-drawing benchmark.
Verified 11d ago · liveness 53/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/bidflow
- Electrical contractors bidding commercial projects with high device volumes
- Lighting distributors quoting fixture counts under deadline
- Estimating teams that want to raise bid frequency without adding headcount
- Small electrical shops offloading takeoffs to a managed service
- Projects that need conduit, wire lengths, feeders, or panel schedules in the same count
- Multi-trade estimating for mechanical, plumbing, or fire alarm scope
- Workflows that forbid any opt-in use of project data for model training
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Skip Bidflow if your takeoff needs conduit, wire lengths, feeders, or panel schedules in the same count - it counts devices only, so you would still run a second pass in your estimating suite.
Review time is the real cost: 95-98% accuracy means on a 5,000-device set you still hand-check roughly 100 devices before export.
Bidflow quotes custom pricing scoped to bidding volume and plan-set size for both contractors and distributors, so the comparison that matters is against your current cost of estimator hours, not against a per-seat estimating licence. For a shop running a handful of commercial bids a month it is a cheaper entry than adding a full Accubid or PlanSwift seat; at very high bid volume, run the math against the Takeoff-As-A-Service quote versus hiring.
In short
Bidflow — AI electrical takeoff: counts the power and lighting devices on your PDF plans in minutes. Best for Electrical contractors bidding commercial projects with high device volumes, Lighting distributors quoting fixture counts under deadline, Estimating teams that want to raise bid frequency without adding headcount. Paid pricing.
What's new in Bidflow
Checked 4 days agoAcross the latest 1 update: 1 launch.
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is Bidflow? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: October 2026
How we score →Key Features
- AI counts power devices, lighting fixtures, and controls from PDF plan sets
- Reads lighting schedules, symbols, and legends directly from sheets
- Vendor-published 95-98% count accuracy against manual takeoffs
- AI run averages 1-3 minutes per drawing, under 5 minutes typical
- No pre-processing or special file formats - PDF upload only
- Sheet-by-sheet review with color-coded count boxes
- Add, move, or remove count boxes to correct AI misses and false positives
- Export counts as CSV organized by device type
- Handles multi-page PDF drawing sets
- Lighting and power counted from the same plan set
- Takeoff-As-A-Service: Bidflow's own estimators run the takeoff
- Optional model training opt-in for your project data
- Book-a-demo onboarding that creates your account and runs a first takeoff
- Web-based, no desktop or mobile install required
- Backed by Y Combinator (operated by Ghostship AI Inc.)
About Bidflow
Bidflow is a web tool that counts electrical devices directly off PDF plan sets. You upload a drawing set, the AI reads the schedules, symbols, and legends on each sheet, and it returns color-coded count boxes for power devices, lighting fixtures, and controls in roughly 1-3 minutes per drawing. Vendor-published accuracy is 95-98% versus a manual takeoff, with an average of under 5 minutes for a run and the vendor positioning the full upload-to-reviewed-count cycle at under 15 minutes. Every run ends in a human review step: you add, move, or remove count boxes so the totals match the sheet, then export counts as CSV organized by device type. Bidflow states it does not handle conduit and wire lengths, feeders, panel schedules, security and fire alarm, or niche symbols such as HVAC power and LED tape lengths. It is built for electrical contractors bidding commercial work and lighting distributors quoting fixture counts, and it plugs in alongside estimating suites rather than replacing them. If you would rather not run the tool yourself, Takeoff-As-A-Service has Bidflow's own estimators produce the takeoff. The company is backed by Y Combinator and operates as Ghostship AI Inc. Pricing is custom and scoped to bidding volume and plan-set size.
Behind the Verdict
The honest framing of Bidflow is that it does one narrow thing and is upfront about the boundary. Counting power devices, light fixtures, and controls off a PDF is a task estimators hate and that consumes hours per bid, and Bidflow targets exactly that: upload, AI run in 1-3 minutes per drawing, then a sheet-by-sheet review where you add, move, or delete color-coded count boxes before exporting a CSV by device type. The vendor's own FAQ page lists what it cannot do - conduit and wire lengths, feeders, panel schedules, security and fire alarm, and niche symbols like HVAC power or LED tape lengths - which is a more useful piece of documentation than most tools in this category publish. Accuracy claims need to be read carefully. 95-98% is stated against a manual takeoff on clean drawings, and 98% on a 5,000-device set still means 100 devices to catch by eye in review. Bidflow's answer is structural: every run goes through human review before export, and the count-box editing is the intended way to close that gap. If you skip the review, you are shipping the model's error rate to a bid. The service tier is the more interesting commercial move. Takeoff-As-A-Service puts Bidflow's own estimators on your takeoffs; the site carries a testimonial from an electrical contractor claiming twenty bids a week versus one or two before, using the human service. That is a headcount argument, not a software argument, and it is what to evaluate if your real constraint is estimator capacity rather than tooling. Where it does not fit: multi-trade estimating, anything requiring conduit or feeder quantities, teams that need conduit and wire in the same number, and workflows that forbid model training opt-in at all - Bidflow lets you decline training on your data, but if the underlying policy blocks any such use, walk away. Bidflow is a web app, so there is no desktop install to slot into an offline jobsite workflow. Use it as a specialist count engine feeding your existing estimating software, and only after you have run a real bid set through it and measured the review time yourself.
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Bidflow actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
A commercial TI bid lands with a 40-sheet PDF set due Friday. You upload the drawings, the AI returns color-coded counts per sheet in a few minutes, and you spend the next hour in review adding missed receptacles and deleting false positives before exporting a CSV by device type into your estimate.
Outcome: Device counts are done the same day the drawings arrive, leaving the rest of the week for pricing and scope review.
A GC sends plan sets for three projects and needs fixture counts to quote. You run each set through Bidflow, confirm the fixture and control counts against the lighting schedule, and export per-sheet CSVs for the quote.
Outcome: Quotes go out faster and the count basis is documented sheet by sheet if the GC questions a number.
You are carrying bids yourself and cannot add another estimator. You hand the plan set to Bidflow's Takeoff-As-A-Service and get the takeoff back from their estimators instead of running the AI in-house.
Outcome: Bid volume goes up without a hire, at a quoted cost per takeoff.
Use Cases
- Upload a commercial PDF plan set and get power device counts back in minutes instead of hours.
- Count thousands of lighting fixture symbols per sheet to turn a distributor quote around faster.
- Review AI counts sheet by sheet, adding missed receptacles or deleting false positives.
- Export a per-sheet CSV of all devices to hand to procurement or project management.
- Run lighting and power takeoffs from the same plan set without re-uploading.
- Hand a takeoff to Bidflow's estimators for a second pair of eyes on the AI output.
Limitations
- Bidflow's live site is now branded LuxTakeoff™ and positions itself specifically as AI-assisted commercial lighting takeoff software; the on-site content emphasises lighting fixtures, linear runs, schedules and emergency components, and notably does not describe the power-device counting that appears in the existing profile.
- Every AI result is surfaced for estimator review and approval before quoting, and the site describes transparency features such as flagging uncertain tags, duplicate and emergency fixtures, and uncertain text/line/pattern detections, so a human review pass remains part of the workflow.
- Drawings are stated never to be shared and are used to improve models only with permission.
- No quantitative accuracy figures, run-time benchmarks, or pricing details appear in the evidence provided, so those claims cannot be confirmed from this scrape.
as of 2026-09-27
Verification history
We have re-verified Bidflow 7 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Showing the 6 most recent of 7 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Bidflow's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Bidflow quotes custom pricing scoped to bidding volume and plan-set size for both contractors and distributors, so the comparison that matters is against your current cost of estimator hours, not against a per-seat estimating licence. For a shop running a handful of commercial bids a month it is a cheaper entry than adding a full Accubid or PlanSwift seat; at very high bid volume, run the math against the Takeoff-As-A-Service quote versus hiring.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Bidflow — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
For an estimator comfortable with PDF plan sets, first value is quick: book a demo, Bidflow creates your account, and you run a first takeoff on a real drawing - the AI pass itself is 1-3 minutes per drawing, and the remaining time is your own review of the counts. For an owner routing work to Takeoff-As-A-Service, budget the demo and scoping conversation before the first takeoff is delivered.
Switching to or from Bidflow
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From manual Bluebeam/PDF counting: upload the same plan sets you already count by hand and compare Bidflow's counts against your last takeoff before switching a live bid.
- →From a general estimating suite (Accubid, PlanSwift, McCormick): keep the suite for conduit, feeders, and panel schedules and use Bidflow only to produce the device counts that feed it.
- →From spreadsheet-based counting: export Bidflow's per-sheet CSV by device type and map the columns into the spreadsheet you already price from.
- ↗To a full estimating suite: take the exported CSV of device counts into Accubid, PlanSwift, or McCormick and complete conduit, wire, and feeder quantities there.
- ↗To in-house counting: Bidflow's counts are reviewed in the plan viewer, so your own estimator can reproduce the count manually from the same PDFs if you leave.
Resources & Guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Bidflow”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “Bidflow” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about Bidflow.
Official links
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Featured Head-to-Head Comparisons
Bidflow vs Transfix
Choose Transfix if you run a freight brokerage or 3PL and need an AI-powered TMS with custom cost models and centralized bid management. Choose Bidflow if you do electrical takeoffs and want to slash manual counting time from hours to minutes. These tools serve completely different verticals — there is no overlap.
Bidflow vs Cryptohopper
Cryptohopper and Bidflow serve completely different markets: crypto trading vs. electrical takeoffs. Choose Cryptohopper if you need a powerful cloud bot with copy trading, DCA, and AI integration across exchanges. Pick Bidflow if you're an electrical contractor or estimator tired of manual symbol counting on PDFs, as it slashes hours to minutes. They are not direct competitors.
Bidflow vs Bitsgap
If you trade crypto, Bitsgap is your bot; if you count electrical devices for bids, Bidflow is your tool. They serve entirely different professions. Choose based on your industry, not feature overlap.
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