We are not first to photo-to-quote. Here is what we are first to.
Reading a data plate is a commodity feature in 2026 and several of the products below already ship it — two of them for a fraction of our price. Pretending otherwise would waste your time. What follows is what we can actually verify, with the cells we cannot verify marked as such.
How to read this page. A cell states a fact only when we have a source for it. Where we do not, it says not verified — that means we have not confirmed it on the vendor's own site, not that the answer is no. Competitor products change weekly; check their own pages before you decide anything, and tell us if we have something wrong.
| Chival | BuildOps | ServiceTitan | QuoteIQ | BuildFolio | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Quoting system of record for commercial mechanical service | Commercial contractor field service management platform; quoting is one feature of the platform | Field service management platform not verified for the specifics of its quoting/photo capture | Quoting/estimating app with "QuoteIQ Cam" data-plate capture and an AI Estimator | Quoting app with AI photo-to-quote and "Living Estimates" |
| Who it is sold to | Commercial/industrial mechanical service contractors, 10–75 field techs, PMA-heavy, multi-site customers | Commercial contractors | not verified for segment mix | Residential (prices against SEER tiers); solo and small operators | Residential; solo operators |
| Published price | Coming soon — flat per shop, not per seat. See pricing | No public pricing; sales-led | No public pricing; sales-led | $29.99/mo secondary source | $39/mo secondary source |
| Nameplate / data-plate capture | Yes — and it is table stakes, not our pitch | Yes — OpsAI nameplate OCR, commercial equipment | not verified | Yes — "QuoteIQ Cam" data-plate capture | Yes — AI photo-to-quote |
| Capture produces a priced proposal, not just an asset record | Yes — Good/Better/Best against the shop's own price book | Asset capture is not the same as a priced proposal; the extent of the quoting hand-off is not verified | not verified | Yes, for residential equipment | Yes, for residential equipment |
| Progressive delegation — software earns autonomy from your own correction history | Yes: Assist → Fast-track → Auto-approve under your ceiling → Autopilot, per (equipment × job) bucket, thresholds set by you, always revocable | not verified — we know of no such feature, but we have not audited the platform | not verified | not verified | not verified |
| Techs cannot see cost or margin (enforced server-side) | Yes — a tech's API response does not contain cost or margin fields at all | not verified | not verified | not verified — marketed to solo/small operators, where the question rarely arises | not verified — marketed to solo operators |
| Commercial role model (owner / admin / manager / estimator / tech / viewer) | Yes, capability-based, with org-scoped data on every row | not verified for the specific role split | not verified | not verified | not verified |
| Multi-site asset history across repeat PMA visits | Yes — quote #40 for a customer knows what happened on visits #1–39 | not verified for how asset history feeds quoting | not verified | not verified | not verified |
| Integrations with FSM / accounting | not verified — being built; nothing is published yet, so do not buy on this basis | Publishes a partner network and partner library | Publishes an app marketplace and partner program | not verified | not verified |
| Track record, scale, references | None. Chival is new. No customer logos, no testimonials, no case studies, no published metrics — because we have not earned any | Established platform with a partner ecosystem; company scale and customer count not verified here | Established platform with a public app marketplace; also publishes primary market research (see sources) | not verified | not verified |
Where these competitors are stronger than us
If you only read one section on this page, read this one. It is the part a vendor comparison normally leaves out.
They have scale and a track record. We do not.
BuildOps and ServiceTitan are established platforms with partner ecosystems, implementation teams, support organisations and years of production use behind them. Chival is new and has no customer references to offer you. If your buying process requires reference calls with contractors your size, we will fail that requirement today, and you should weigh that honestly.
They are cheaper, or they are the whole system.
QuoteIQ and BuildFolio are priced far below us (secondary source figures of $29.99/mo and $39/mo). If you are a solo or small residential operator, one of them is very likely the right answer and we are not. At the other end, a full FSM replaces dispatch, timesheets, invoicing and inventory — Chival does none of that and is not trying to.
Integrations: they have them, ours are unproven.
BuildOps and ServiceTitan publish partner programmes and marketplaces. Chival's integration story is under construction and unpublished. If your quoting has to write back into an existing FSM on day one, ask us for specifics before you commit — we will tell you what is actually working rather than what is on a roadmap.
Photo-to-quote alone is not a reason to pick us.
Every product in the table above does some form of it. If reading a data plate is the only thing you want, buy the cheapest one that reads yours accurately. Chival earns its price only if you want a commercial quoting system: org roles, margin protection from your own techs, multi-site asset memory, and delegation that has to earn its way up.
The one thing we claim to be first at
Commercial service quoting with progressive delegation and a real org structure. No product we have found makes the software earn the right to skip your review, measured against your own corrections, per equipment type and job kind, with thresholds you set and can revoke. If you know of one, tell us and this page changes.
The market context we work from: 63% of commercial contractors report that more than half their customer base is secured by preventative maintenance agreements. Their techs are already in front of the equipment on a schedule — which is the whole reason quoting on the visit matters. Source below.
Sources
Every factual claim above traces to one of these, or is marked not verified.
- PMA statistic (63%) — ServiceTitan 2025 Commercial Service Market Report, n = 1,014 commercial owners and executives, fielded May 2025. https://www.servicetitan.com/blog/commercial-service-market-report-takeaways
- BuildOps — no public pricing, partner ecosystem — the vendor's own site. https://buildops.com/ · https://buildops.com/partner-network/ · https://buildops.com/platform/service-management-suite
- ServiceTitan — no public pricing; app marketplace — the absence of a public pricing page plus the vendor's own marketplace. https://marketplace.servicetitan.com/
- QuoteIQ $29.99/mo and BuildFolio $39/mo — secondary source. These figures come from third-party and vendor content-marketing listicles, not from each vendor's own pricing page, and have not been confirmed at the primary source. Treat them as directional. https://myquoteiq.com/best-photo-to-quote-software-hvac-2026/ · https://build-folio.com/blog/best-quoting-software-for-hvac-contractors-2025/
- Everything else — feature-level claims about competitor role models, delegation, margin redaction and multi-site asset history are marked not verified because we have not audited those products. We would rather leave a gap than fill it with a guess.
Judge it by the mechanism
Walk a failed rooftop unit through capture, review, approval and the ladder.