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Open a drawing (PDF or image) to begin
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What is pdf2takeoff? Takeoff you can check, line by line.

pdf2takeoff is free, open-source construction takeoff software. You open a PDF drawing, set the scale, then measure and count straight on the sheet. Every quantity stays on the drawing as a markup you can check, and the whole takeoff exports to Excel, CSV or back into the PDF for Bluebeam.

  • Reads the scale off the title block or a printed dimension
  • One click fills a room's area; one click counts every matching symbol
  • Compares two revisions and shows what moved
  • Runs from Claude, Cursor or a script through its MCP server and CLI
A floor plan in pdf2takeoff with a measured wall, a filled room area and eight numbered downlight counts, one flagged for a person to check OFFICE 32.00 m² MEETING 12.00 m 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Check GROUND FLOOR PLAN · REV B SCALE 1:100 @ A3

How to do a takeoff from a PDF.

Four steps, all in the browser. The sample drawing walks you through them in under two minutes.

  1. 01

    Open the drawing

    Drop in a PDF or an image. Multi-page sets keep a scale per sheet.

  2. 02

    Set the scale

    Click Auto-read to take it from the title block, or draw along a known dimension. Press C.

  3. 03

    Measure and count

    Lengths, areas, perimeters, volumes and angles. Fill a room in one click. Scan counts every matching symbol.

  4. 04

    Export

    Excel, CSV or a quantity report, or save the markups into the PDF to open in Bluebeam or Acrobat.

Everything a takeoff needs. Nothing you pay for.

Built with estimators and quantity surveyors in mind, and tested against public benchmarks.

Scale from the sheet

Reads "SCALE 1:100" or a printed dimension, metric or imperial.

Room area in one click

Magic Fill traces the walls and bridges door gaps.

Symbol scan

Click one downlight; every match is counted in about a tenth of a second.

Revision compare

Overlay revision A on B: removed in red, added in blue.

Excel, CSV and report

A real .xlsx workbook, formula columns for waste and rates.

Bluebeam round-trip

Markups save as standard PDF annotations and reopen intact.

Private by design

No server, no account, no tracking of your drawings. Works offline.

Open source

Apache-2.0. Read the code, run it yourself, build on it.

For AI agents and scripts

Let an AI agent run the takeoff.

The same engine runs as an MCP server and a command line tool. An agent opens the drawing, reads the scale, measures and counts, then hands back a marked-up PDF for you to review.

ClaudeCursorCodexAny MCP clientNode 22.13+
# add it to Claude Code
claude mcp add pdf2takeoff -- npx -y github:ajflow/pdf2takeoff mcp
# or run a takeoff from the terminal
npx github:ajflow/pdf2takeoff scan plan.pdf --page 1 --at 88,271
npx github:ajflow/pdf2takeoff export plan.pdf --format xlsx -o takeoff.xlsx

Measured in public.

We test on outside benchmarks and publish the results, including where we fall short. Every number links to its method.

BenchmarkWhat it testspdf2takeoffFor comparison
AECV-BenchCounting doors, windows and rooms on 120 floor plans58.5%with opt-in AI (GPT-6.1)54.3%best published model; 57.2% same model, standard prompt
AEC-Geometric-BenchFinding walls on 15 construction sheets0.519wall F1, no AI model, laptop CPU0.287best general AI model
ScaledDrawingBenchScaled measurement questions, 200 sheets99.8%PDFs exported from CAD; 37.3% on degraded scansNo outside scores yet. It is our own open benchmark, and we publish the scan gap.

Updated 24 October 2026.

Questions estimators ask.

Is pdf2takeoff really free?

Yes. There is no account, no paid tier and no file limit. It is open source under Apache-2.0, built and maintained by Flowtivity.

Are my drawings uploaded anywhere?

No. pdf2takeoff runs in your browser and processes the PDF on your computer. It works offline once loaded. The only exception is the optional AI count, which sends a page image to the model provider you choose, and only when you ask it to.

Does it work with Bluebeam Revu?

Yes. Markups save into the PDF as standard Line, Polygon and FreeText annotations with their measurements, so they open in Bluebeam Revu and Adobe Acrobat.

Can AI do my takeoff for me?

Not reliably on its own. The best published model gets 54.3% of floor plan counts exactly right. pdf2takeoff uses AI to propose items you confirm, and flags the ones most likely to be wrong.

Does it work on scanned drawings?

Yes, with care. Scans are read with on-device OCR. Accuracy is lower than on PDFs exported from CAD, and we publish that gap in our benchmarks.

Can I measure a JPG, PNG or screenshot of a plan?

Yes. Open or drop any image (PNG, JPEG, iPhone HEIC photos, TIFF, WebP, GIF, BMP, AVIF or SVG), or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V or ⌘V. Multi-page TIFF scans open as a set, and a scan that states its resolution keeps its paper size, so the printed scale works. Drop several files at once and they open as one set of sheets. An image only has a paper size when the scan states its resolution, so most images are calibrated from a dimension you know. Markups save into a PDF like any other drawing.

Can I open a DXF or DWG file?

DXF, yes. It opens as a vector drawing at a standard scale (1:50, 1:100 and so on) worked out from the file’s own units, so you can measure straight away without calibrating, Scan counts blocks such as doors and fittings exactly, and text stays searchable. DWG is a closed format: export a DXF or a PDF from your CAD app first.

Who makes pdf2takeoff?

Flowtivity, an AI consultancy on the Gold Coast, Australia, that builds practical AI tools for construction and other industries.

Open a drawing. See it measured.