Updated November 2026
The best electrical contractor software for estimates, job costing and invoicing depends on how your shop prices its work. For service calls, look at Jobber or Housecall Pro. A sub billing general contractors on pay applications should start with Knowify, and a shop that quotes a job and then builds it should look at Simpro or Trade Agent. Joist handles estimates and invoices for one person and stops there.
All of them write an estimate and send an invoice on their cheapest plan. Job costing is the part that costs extra. At Jobber and Housecall Pro it starts $150 a month above the entry plan, at Knowify $250 above, and Joist doesn't cost labor to a job on any plan.
We make Trade Agent, so read this with that in mind. Every fact about another product comes from that company's own website, checked on November 9, 2026, and every price is the month-to-month one.
What does it cost to get estimates, job costing and invoicing in one app?
For a five-person electrical shop paying month to month, the cheapest plan that does all three is $299 a month at Jobber and at Housecall Pro, and $399 at Knowify, which covers ten users. Simpro and ServiceTitan don't publish prices, and neither do we. The table lists the plan to ask for and what to check before a demo.
| App | Plan with all three | Month-to-month price | Best for | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jobber | Grow | $199 for 1 user, $299 for 5 | Service calls and small installs | No QuickBooks Desktop; job profit alerts need Plus |
| Housecall Pro | Essentials | $229 for 1 user, $299 for 5, then $100 a user | Residential service with a flat-rate price book | Basic ($79) doesn't list job costing or QuickBooks sync for electrical shops |
| Knowify | Advanced | $399 for 10 users | Subs billing GCs on AIA pay apps | Core ($149, 1 user) has no job costing or T&M contracts; dispatch is a $199 add-on |
| Simpro | Base Plan | Not published; setup fee | Shops running service, maintenance and projects together | No self-serve trial; plan takeoff is a paid add-on |
| ServiceTitan | Not stated on its site | Not published; priced per technician | Larger residential service shops | Leaving an order-form contract early costs the remaining payments |
| Joist | None | $17 for Pro, which tracks receipts but not labor | One electrician sending estimates and invoices | One user per account |
| Trade Agent | Quoted to your shop | Not listed; ask for a quote | Shops of 3 to 25 that quote and build jobs, with AI writing the quote and reading supplier bills | No dispatch board, flat-rate price book or plan takeoff |
Housecall Pro's prices here are its electrical package, and other trades see a different set of plans. The page shows one price per plan with no billing label. Its Basic plan lists $59 "billed annually" against the $79 shown, so we read the displayed prices as monthly billing. Confirm that on a call before you sign.
Which app fits which electrical shop?
Match the app to the work that pays your bills. Maintenance, service and repair brought in 39.7% of revenue in 2025 at the firms surveyed, ahead of new construction at 31.7%, according to Electrical Contractor magazine's 2026 Profile of the Electrical Contractor, a survey of 926 firms. Single-family homes were almost 50% of revenue at firms with fewer than 10 employees.
- Service calls and small installsJobber or Housecall Pro
- Commercial jobs billed to general contractors on pay appsKnowify
- Service, maintenance contracts and projects togetherSimpro
- Jobs you quote and then build, with 3 to 25 peopleTrade Agent
- A larger residential service shop selling from a tabletServiceTitan
- One electrician sending estimates and invoicesJoist
A shop that runs on service calls should demo Jobber and Housecall Pro first. Housecall Pro dispatches "the closest electrician from a live map" and builds flat-rate pricing into Essentials. Jobber puts progress invoicing on every plan and sells an AI receptionist for $29 a month that answers calls and books visits.
Either one beats everything else on this list, ours included, when the phone rings with a dead circuit.
A sub wiring commercial jobs for general contractors should start with Knowify. AIA G702 and G703 pay applications, retainage and change orders are on every plan, and the Advanced plan tracks costs "against the job budget as crews work," by phase. It works with QuickBooks Online on every plan and with QuickBooks Desktop on Enterprise only.
Simpro fits a shop running service calls, maintenance contracts and multi-stage projects together. It imports price files from electrical wholesalers and quotes from pre-built assemblies. Expect a setup fee and a guided demo in place of a trial. ServiceTitan suits a larger residential service shop whose techs sell from a tablet, and its terms of use set an early-termination fee "equal to all the remaining payments."
Joist is the cheap, quick option for one electrician. Every account is a single login, and Joist's own help center says it "is not a construction cost estimating program."
Is Jobber or Housecall Pro better for an electrical contractor?
Housecall Pro is the better pick when your electricians price work in the field from a flat-rate price book, and Jobber when you bill bigger jobs in stages. On the plan with job costing, both list $299 a month for five users.
Housecall Pro puts its price book on every plan and flat-rate pricing on Essentials. It also says it works with QuickBooks Desktop, which Jobber doesn't. Jobber has progress invoicing on all four plans, and Grow lets a customer choose between packages on one quote. Two shops of the same size can fairly land on different answers here.
Why do small electrical shops skip job costing?
Many of them price in a way that hides the cost. Stephen Carr, who has worked in electrical construction since 1971 and runs Carr Consulting Services, writes in Electrical Contractor: "Many of the small contractors I trained have all of their markups in the labor rate." Commercial estimators, he adds, total the real cost of the work first and add overhead and profit after.
A labor rate with everything folded in will produce an invoice. It won't tell you what a job cost, and so it can't tell you which kind of job to stop bidding.
The gap shows in the magazine's survey data. In a January 2025 special report drawn from its 2024 survey, 56% of firms with one to nine employees handled job cost control on a computer, against 82% of larger firms. For estimating it was 59% against 78%. Only 66 small firms answered that version of the survey, so treat the numbers as a direction.
Time-and-materials work makes the habit easy to keep. In the 2026 survey, 77% of electrical contractors did some T&M work in 2025, and it was 38.8% of projects at the smallest firms against 12.1% at firms with 100 or more employees. T&M feels safe because the customer pays for every hour. It is, until the rate is wrong. Our guide to seeing the profit on each job works through one electrical job where the books showed a 32.5% margin on the way to 16%.
What does an electrical estimate have to handle?
An electrical estimate has to survive bad drawings and moving prices. In the 2026 survey, 78% of electrical contractors said they had received incomplete plans or specifications in 2025, and 83% had received incorrect ones. Construction input prices rose 11.2% between September 2025 and September 2026, according to Associated Builders and Contractors' analysis of federal price data, with copper among the materials still climbing.
- 83%of electrical contractors received incorrect plans or specifications in 2025
- 78%received incomplete plans or specifications in 2025
- 11.2%rise in construction input prices, September 2025 to September 2026
So ask each vendor where its material prices come from and how often they change. Simpro imports wholesaler price files. ServiceTitan says its pricebook "integrates with electrical industry supplier catalogs." Jobber quotes with current Home Depot prices. Joist's AI builds the estimate from the rates you tell it, and Trade Agent's looks up current prices and shows its sources.
None of the apps in the table reads a set of plans on its base plan. Simpro sells takeoff as an add-on, Knowify imports takeoff data from tools like STACK, and ServiceTitan says on the same page that it "doesn't perform on-screen takeoff." If you bid from blueprints, you'll pair one of them with an estimating program. Trimble Accubid and McCormick are both built for electrical takeoff, and McCormick includes NECA's labor units.
Is AI writing electrical estimates yet?
AI is writing estimates at a few small electrical shops so far. In the 2026 Profile survey's topline report, 13% of firms with one to nine employees used AI or planned to, against 41% of larger firms. Among the 93 respondents already using it, 77% used it for estimating, more than for any other job.
What the AI does varies a lot from app to app, so make each vendor show you on a real job.
- Jobber drafts a quote from a new customer request for you to review and send (Connect plan and up).
- Housecall Pro's AI drafts the summary of work on an estimate from the line items you enter, and on Max it compares your prices with similar businesses.
- Joist turns a spoken or typed description into an estimate. It was still rolling out on iOS and the web as of late August 2026.
- On Knowify's Advanced and Enterprise plans, you can connect ChatGPT or Claude to your job data and ask it questions.
- AI agents with names like JobScribe and JobBrief run on Simpro's Lightning platform.
- Trade Agent's AI writes and prices the quote from your description.
Where does Trade Agent fit for an electrical contractor?
Trade Agent is estimating, job costing and invoicing software for trade shops of roughly 3 to 25 people, electrical shops included, that quote a job and then build it. Think of a panel upgrade with an EV charger, or the wiring on a custom home for a builder. Arti, its AI, writes the quote and reads the supplier bills.
Describe the job to Arti in the phone app, the way you'd text the office, and it writes and prices each line from current prices, with its sources in the estimate for you to check. The customer signs on their phone without making an account. Our trades page walks through one panel-and-charger job.
Once the job starts, your supply house emails its bills to your shop's Trade Agent address. Arti matches each one to the job when it's sure, and every bill waits for your approval before it counts. Crew hours from the phone timer are costed at the rates you set once you approve the week.
On a fixed-price job, the P&L in the web app shows the profit the job is heading for while the crew is still on site.
Start the invoice from the quote, tick the lines you're billing, and they fill in. Send it from the phone app with Stripe connected and it goes out with a button to pay online. Approved bills and expenses go to QuickBooks Online. Customer invoices don't.
It has no dispatch board, flat-rate price book or maintenance memberships, and it doesn't take quantities off plans. A shop living on same-day service calls should pick Jobber or Housecall Pro.
Our price isn't listed, so ask us for a quote.
Our ServiceTitan alternatives comparison covers plumbing and HVAC shops too. Book a demo and bring a job you finished last month, with its supplier bills. We'll run it through Trade Agent while you watch, and you can compare its numbers with what the job really made.
