Pricing
14-day Professional trial — no credit card. Built for every Texas civil contractor, especially the certified firms competing without a 20-year estimator on staff.
Market-calibrated pricing for the occasional bidder.
Everything you need to bid like a 20-year veteran.
Full market intelligence. Unlimited scale.
Every line, side by side. The Professional column is highlighted — it's where most contractors land.
What every plan includes
Real Texas data
1.6 million+ submitted bid observations from 2,000+ public agencies — calibrated to the agency type your bid is going to.
The filled file back
Upload your bid schedule. Caliche returns the same Excel file, filled with priced unit costs. No retyping.
Honest accuracy
Items the engine can't confidently price get a Limited tag (fewer than 5 real observations) — never silently filled with bad numbers.
Founder-direct support
Email the founder when something is broken or missing. Real response. On purpose.
The math
Not a replacement for a great estimator. A way to bid like one — without one — while you build the firm that can hire one.
An estimator costs $40–60/hr. A full bid schedule takes 4–8 hours to price manually. At $599/mo, Professional pays for itself on the first bid of the month.
Common questions
What counts as one "bid" in my monthly limit?
One bid = one priced schedule. Upload a bid schedule (Excel or PDF) and the engine returns it filled with low/typical/high pricing on every line item — that's one bid, regardless of whether the schedule has 12 line items or 120. Re-pricing the same schedule from cache doesn't count against your limit.
What happens if I go over my monthly bid limit?
You'll get an in-app notice when you're approaching the limit. If you exceed it, the engine pauses pricing for new bids until your billing cycle resets — or you can upgrade tiers instantly from the dashboard. Nothing breaks, nothing surprises you on the invoice.
How does the 14-day trial work?
Full Professional access — THE LINE receipts (the comparable awarded jobs proving every number), AI PDF/DXF plan takeoff with Plan View markup, the Bid Coach weekly read, the branded scorecard PDF, full bid board, and the daily email digests. (The THE LINE verdict and full Low/Mid/High pricing come with every plan, even Starter — the trial adds the proof, the takeoff, and the coaching on top.) No credit card to start. You can price unlimited bids during the trial. Cancel anytime; no auto-charge at the end unless you actively choose a plan.
Why does the Professional tier cost $599/mo?
It's anchored to what a senior estimator's pricing intuition is worth. A seasoned Texas civil estimator costs $80–150K/yr in salary plus benefits — and the value they bring is largely the years of bid-tab memory they carry in their head. Caliche's Professional tier puts that same caliber of pricing data on every line item you price, for roughly 1/10th the annual cost. The tier is priced for the firm that needs that intuition but can't hire a 20-year veteran to staff it.
Can I cancel anytime?
Yes — cancel anytime from your dashboard, no phone calls, no retention scripts. Monthly plans cancel at the end of the current cycle. Annual plans cancel at renewal (you keep access through the paid year).
I'm a smaller MBE/DBE firm just starting out — is there flexibility on pricing?
The tool was built specifically for certified firms competing without a 20-year estimator on staff. If the Starter or Professional tier is the right fit but the timing is hard, email the founder directly (lance@caliche.io) — we'd rather have you using the tool than walking away from it. We'll figure something out.
A note for certified firms
You compete for the same public contracts as Tier-1 firms with full estimating departments. The pricing data those firms rely on is technically public — Caliche just made it usable. Read the full MBE/DBE pricing guide →
Full Professional access for 14 days. No credit card. Upload your next bid schedule and see the priced workbook before you decide.
Priced blind against 1,870 real Texas bids, Caliche landed a median ~1% over the winning bid in Houston (our deepest market) and ~3% statewide — while the typical competing bid ran ~11% over. Those are medians; per-job results spread −17% to +32% vs the winner.
Or email the founder directly: lance@caliche.io