Best trade quoting
software in Australia.

Quoting software

Quoting software is any tool that turns a job into a priced, itemised document a customer can read and accept — replacing a spreadsheet, a Word template, or a handwritten pad. At its core it does three things: price the labour and materials, apply the right tax (10% GST here, 15% GST across the Tasman), and format the result into something a client will actually sign off on.

Not every trade business needs the same amount of it. A sole trader sending a handful of quotes a week just needs the pricing and the document. A crew juggling scheduling, dispatch and timesheets on top of quoting needs a fuller job-management suite, where quoting is one module among several. That split is what separates a focused quoting tool like Insta Quotes from an all-in-one platform like ServiceM8 or Tradify — both quote, but only one of them is built to be nothing else.

Job quoting software

Job quoting software is quoting tied to a specific, real job rather than a generic price list — the version field trades actually use. A site visit turns up measurements, access issues and materials a template can't predict, and the quote needs to reflect exactly that job, not an average of past ones.

That means pricing labour and materials for what's actually in front of you, adding GST at the correct rate, and being ready for variations once the job is underway — a wall turns out to be brick, not stud, or the client adds a task on site. Insta Quotes builds a quote from a photo, voice note or plain description of the job, so the itemised breakdown reflects the actual site, not a guess made from the office.

Quoting tools

Comparing quoting tools comes down to a handful of things that actually change your bill and your workflow: whether pricing is flat or per user, how long the free trial runs and whether it needs a credit card, whether there's a job or quote cap that forces an upgrade, and whether the tool can build a quote from a plain job description or needs every line entered by hand.

Here's how Insta Quotes, Tradify, ServiceM8 and AroFlo compare on those points:

Competitor pricing checked 2026-08-08 against each vendor's own pricing page.

The tools, ranked honestly

Job quote software vs quoting by hand

Job quote software takes a job description — typed, spoken or photographed — and turns it into an itemised quote with labour, materials and GST already priced, in the time it takes to describe the job. That's the whole point of job quote software: replace the parts of quoting that are just data entry with something that does it in seconds.

Quoting by hand means re-typing the same line items every time a similar job comes in, looking up current material prices, calculating GST by hand and formatting it into something a client will actually read before you can send it. None of that changes the price you land on — it just costs you the evening. Multiply that across a week of quotes and it's easily hours you could have spent on the tools instead of at the desk.

That's who this suits best: solo operators and small crews who need a quote out before the next job starts, more than a back office running spreadsheets and a full costing team. Whether you're an electrician pricing a switchboard upgrade or a handyman quoting five different tasks in one visit, see current plans on the pricing page to find the right fit.

How to choose

Start with what's actually slowing you down. If quoting itself is the bottleneck — turning a job into a professional, priced quote quickly — a focused AI quoting tool like Insta Quotes gets you there in about 30 seconds without a learning curve. If you're managing a team's calendar, dispatching jobs and tracking timesheets across a crew, a full job-management platform like ServiceM8, Tradify, Fergus or simPRO earns its setup time. And if you're a builder pricing off plans and drawings rather than on-site jobs, plan-based estimating tools like Buildxact are built for that specific workflow.

Most trade businesses only need one of these three jobs solved well, not all three at once. Once a quote is accepted, tools like Insta Quotes also handle online quote acceptance and deposit payment, so the handoff from quote to job doesn't need a separate system.

Common questions

See how Insta Quotes compares.