Electrical Quote Software in Canada (2026): How We Quote With AI
Most guides to electrical quote software in Canada are a list of apps and their prices. We're starting somewhere else: with what we actually use to quote our own electrical jobs, which isn't a quoting app we bought, it's an AI workspace we built ourselves.
Quick answer: electrical quote software in Canada
- Build it with AI, the way we do — one AI workspace loaded with your own templates and pricing. About $275 USD/month for a dedicated workspace, no per-seat software bill.
- Jobber — simplest off-the-shelf quoting and job management for a small crew. From $49 USD/month.
- Tradify — trade-built quoting and job management, priced per user. From $47 USD/user/month.
- Housecall Pro — quoting, dispatch and payments in one app. From $59–79 USD/month.
- McCormick, Accubid & ConEst IntelliBid — specialist electrical estimating with a material database, built for bigger bid work. Quote-based pricing.
How we built our own setup, and the full comparison table, are both below.
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We quote electrical jobs with an AI workspace loaded with our own templates, pricing and quoting rules. It gets us to roughly 90% of what our own estimators would price the same job at, built in minutes instead of an evening. A person checks every number, and an owner signs off before anything reaches a customer. That part hasn't changed.
If that's not the right fit for your shop yet, the rest of this guide covers the real off-the-shelf options: Jobber, Tradify, Housecall Pro, Fergus, ServiceTitan, Simpro, and the electrical specialists McCormick, Accubid and ConEst IntelliBid. Real prices, not vendor spin.
How We Actually Quote Electrical Jobs Now
In May 2026 we ran a pilot. We had our own estimators quote real jobs, then had an AI model quote the same jobs cold, and compared the two side by side. We'd been about to buy Accubid. We held off and kept testing instead.
The setup
It's one dedicated project inside Perplexity, on the paid Max tier (about $275 USD/month, 10,000 credits). Three things live in it:
- Files. Our quote, change order and RFI templates, our pricing sheets, and a stack of past change orders and specs. Uploaded once, reused on every job.
- Project instructions. How we actually write a quote: the format, the wording, what has to be included, what scope assumptions we make. The more specific the instructions, the fewer mistakes it makes and the fewer credits it burns getting there.
- Two skills. An "Electrical Estimator" role and a "Project Manager" role, each built to think about the job the way that person on our team would.
Running a job
We open a session, upload whatever we've got for that job (site photos, drawings, scope notes, RFIs, a supplier quote), and it fills in the template. That's it. What used to be an evening of paperwork is now minutes.
A person checks the numbers every time. An owner says yes before anything reaches a customer. Nothing about that part changed; we just stopped starting from a blank page.
Steal our setup
- Pick one AI tool with project-level memory (we use Perplexity's Max tier; Claude and ChatGPT have similar project features) and set up one dedicated project for quoting, not a general one everyone dumps questions into.
- Upload your real templates first (quote, change order, RFI) and your current pricing sheet. The output is only as good as what you feed it.
- Write down how you actually quote: the format, the wording, what has to be in every quote, your default scope assumptions. This is the single biggest lever on accuracy.
- Build one or two "skills" or custom instructions for the roles doing the work. An estimator role is enough to start.
- Run it against a job you've already quoted by hand and compare the two before you trust it on a live customer.
- Keep a person checking every number and an owner approving every quote before it goes out. That step doesn't go away.
Where this is going
Right now it's one account we control, with fixed prompts and files, not a seat per employee. That's deliberate: hand everyone their own AI account and their own prompts, and the bill gets away from you fast. We're building toward one company-owned pipeline, where a site lead uploads the job files and gets a draft back, without needing their own AI login at all.
The honest limits
This isn't a finished product and it isn't magic. It still needs a person checking the numbers every time. It's only as current as the pricing files you keep feeding it. Stale pricing data gives you a fast, wrong quote instead of a slow, right one. And it's not a takeoff tool: for a large competitive bid with real plan sets, you still want something built for takeoff, not a chat window.
We've written before about what happens once the quoting side is under control and the back office catches up with it. See our case study on an electrical contractor we helped get billing and cash flow under control.
Talk to us about your setup
If You Want Off-the-Shelf Instead: Electrical Quoting & Job Management Software in Canada (2026)
Building your own AI workflow isn't the right call for every shop, especially if nobody on the team wants to own the prompts and files. Here's what's actually on the market, with real prices. All of these price in USD, and as of October 2026 none publish a separate CAD rate, so budget for the exchange rate on top of the sticker price. Figures came straight from each vendor's own pricing page unless the table says otherwise.
| Tool | Best For | Team Size | Starting Price | Key Strength | Main Drawback |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jobber | General job management and quoting for a small crew | 1, scales per user | $49 USD/mo (Core, 1 user; intro annual rate from $21/mo) | One app for quoting, scheduling, invoicing and payments | Jumps fast past Core. Connect starts at $139/mo |
| Tradify | Trade-built quoting and job management | Priced per user | $47 USD/user/mo (Lite) | Built specifically for trade contractors, not generic field service | Per-user pricing adds up fast as the crew grows |
| Housecall Pro | Quoting, dispatch and payments for small-to-mid crews | 1–8 users on published plans | $59–79 USD/mo (Basic, 1 user) | Strong on booking and payment collection | Essentials/Max jump to $149–329/mo past 1 user |
| Fergus | Job management for trade crews | Priced per user | From $53/mo (Basic); currency not stated on vendor page | Built for trades, simple quoting and job tracking | Published price doesn't clearly state CAD or USD. Confirm before you budget |
| ServiceTitan | Larger electrical/HVAC/plumbing shops, 10+ techs | Priced per technician | No published rate; third-party estimates ~$245–500 USD/tech/mo | Deep dispatch, marketing and reporting for bigger operations | Built for scale, not a 1–5 person crew; real cost is a sales call |
| Simpro | Mid-size to larger trade businesses | Priced per user | No published rate; third-party estimates ~$300–600 USD/mo for 5–10 users | Strong job costing across bigger, multi-crew operations | Quote-only pricing, with reported setup and training fees on top |
| McCormick | Electrical estimating specialists | Priced per user | No published rate; third-party listings near $300 USD/user/mo | Electrical material database, 55,000+ items, prebuilt assemblies | No public pricing page, real learning curve, starts with a sales call |
| Trimble Accubid | Electrical estimating specialists, bigger bid work | Priced per user/license | Accubid Classic ~$2,000 USD one-time (desktop); Accubid Anywhere priced on request | Industry-standard electrical takeoff and assembly database | Real training time; the cloud version's pricing isn't public |
| ConEst IntelliBid | Electrical estimating specialists | Priced per user | No published rate, quote-only | Purpose-built for electrical bid estimating, three tiers | No public pricing or free trial. You commit before you see a number |
A note on sourcing: Jobber, Tradify and Housecall Pro publish their pricing directly, and those numbers came straight from getjobber.com/pricing, tradifyhq.com/pricing and housecallpro.com/pricing. Fergus lists starting prices on its own site but doesn't label the currency. ServiceTitan, Simpro, McCormick, Accubid and ConEst IntelliBid don't publish pricing anywhere we could find; the figures shown are rough, third-party planning numbers, not quotes.
General quoting and job management: Jobber, Tradify, Housecall Pro, Fergus
These four are built to be used the same day, with no real training. If most of your pricing comes from a walkthrough and your own judgment rather than a material-heavy takeoff, one of these covers quoting, scheduling and invoicing in a single app without the setup time an electrical specialist tool asks for.
Built for bigger shops: ServiceTitan, Simpro
Both are built around dispatch, reporting and job costing across several crews at once, and both price per technician with no published rate. For a 1–5 person electrical shop they're usually overkill; for a 10+ tech operation, the custom quote and the setup time can be worth it.
Electrical-specific estimating: McCormick, Accubid, ConEst IntelliBid
These exist for one reason: a prebuilt electrical material database and assembly library, so a panel upgrade or a tenant improvement quote doesn't start from a blank spreadsheet. They're also the opposite of "no training needed." None publish pricing, all three expect a real ramp-up period, and all three are built for complex bid work, not fast mobile quoting. That gap is a lot of why we tested an AI workflow against Accubid instead of just buying it outright.
A Canadian Note: Tax and Licensing on the Quote
None of the tools above, and nothing in our own AI-built quotes, handles your licensing or files your sales tax. In BC that means GST (5%) plus PST (7% on most goods, separate from labour), set correctly before your first real quote goes out, and confirmed against your bookkeeping software. Ontario contractors add HST instead. None of this is Canadian Electrical Code compliance either; that's still an estimator and electrician's job, software or AI workflow aside. The quoting tool just calculates and formats the number the customer sees.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best electrical quote software in Canada?
There isn't one tool every electrical contractor in Canada should buy. We quote our own jobs with an AI workspace we built ourselves, loaded with our templates and pricing, and it gets us within about 90% of what our estimators would price by hand, in minutes instead of an evening. If you'd rather buy something off the shelf, Jobber and Tradify cover general quoting and job management well, and McCormick, Accubid and ConEst IntelliBid are built specifically for electrical estimating.
Is there Canadian electrical estimating software?
Not really, in the sense of a Canadian-built, Canadian-priced product. Every tool in this guide, including the electrical specialists, is a US, Australian or New Zealand company pricing in its home currency. None publish a CAD rate. That's part of why we built our own setup: an AI workspace loaded with our own templates and pricing sidesteps a per-seat US-dollar software bill entirely.
How much does electrical estimating software cost?
Off-the-shelf tools range from about $47 to $79 USD a month for general quoting and job management apps like Tradify, Jobber and Housecall Pro, up to several hundred dollars a month per user for electrical specialists like McCormick, and a custom quote for enterprise platforms like ServiceTitan and Simpro. Our own AI setup runs about $275 USD a month for one shared workspace, not a per-seat fee.
Is there electrical estimating software specific to British Columbia or Ontario?
No. The software itself doesn't change by province. What changes is your tax rate (GST plus PST in BC, HST in Ontario) and your licensing body (Technical Safety BC, the Electrical Safety Authority in Ontario), neither of which any quoting or estimating tool handles for you. You set the tax rate in the software and keep your licensing separate.
What's the best electrician quote software for a solo electrician?
For a solo electrician, the fastest, cheapest start is a simple mobile quoting app like Jobber's Core plan or Tradify's Lite plan, both built to turn a site visit into a sent quote without a learning curve. An AI workspace like ours pays off once you're quoting often enough to justify building the templates and pricing files it runs on.
Is there cheap electrical estimating software?
Yes. Jobber starts at $49 USD a month and Tradify at $47 USD per user a month, both well under the few-hundred-dollar-a-month range the electrical specialists charge. Cheap and electrical-specific rarely go together, though: the dedicated electrical estimators (McCormick, Accubid, ConEst IntelliBid) don't publish pricing and are built for bigger bid work, not a two-person crew.
Is there electrical estimating software that doesn't need training?
The general quoting and job management apps (Jobber, Tradify, Housecall Pro) are built to be used the same day with no training. The electrical-specific estimators (McCormick, Accubid, ConEst IntelliBid) are the opposite: they come with a real material database and assembly library, which means a real ramp-up period. An AI-based setup like ours sits in between: no software to learn, but you do need to build your templates and instructions once before it's reliable.
Can AI actually quote an electrical job accurately?
In our own testing, close. We compared AI-built quotes against our estimators' quotes on the same jobs and landed at roughly 90% accuracy, based on our internal comparison, not an independent audit. We still have a person check every number and an owner approve every quote before it reaches a customer. It's a fast first draft, not a replacement for a human sign-off.
What's the difference between electrical estimating software and job management software?
Estimating software, or an estimating workflow, AI-built or not, builds the price before the job starts. Job management software runs the job after it's won: scheduling, dispatch, job notes and invoicing. Jobber, Tradify and Housecall Pro do both. McCormick, Accubid and ConEst IntelliBid are estimating-only, built to be paired with whatever you already use to run the job. For the job-management side specifically, see our guide to the best job management software for small contractors, and for general estimating across trades, our roundup of the best estimating software for contractors in Canada.
Does electrical quoting software handle GST, PST and the Canadian Electrical Code?
Every tool in this guide, and our own AI-built quotes, can add a tax line for GST, HST or PST, but none of them file or remit it for you, and none of them check CEC compliance. Code compliance is still an estimator and electrician's job; the software or workflow just calculates and formats the number the customer sees.
Want help setting up your own AI quoting workflow, or picking the right off-the-shelf tool for your crew? Contact TradeBrain and let's figure it out together.