What the estimate is built around
Topcoatly: Wall area, coats, production rate and prep hours, the way a painter prices
A general trades suite: A generic line-item quote you adapt to painting yourself
Estimate, invoice, remember
Painting contractor software for the crew that quotes from the van
Topcoatly is for the owner of a small painting business: the estimate written in front of the customer, the invoice that follows it, and the job record that says what was quoted, what was agreed and what was billed.
Free for 14 days. No card needed.
Free to use
- No account
- No card
- No sign-up
Topcoatly Pro is $49 per month for the whole crew, billed monthly.
- 2
- free tools on this site the answer is never behind a login
- 19
- providers' own published prices, compared in the Painting Cost Index
- $49
- per month, whole crew Free: $0
- The owner or office manager of a painting contracting business, from a single painter to a crew of fifteen, who writes the estimates and chases the invoices
- Not a householder pricing their own decorating, not another trade, and not anybody selling painting leads or advertising
A painting business loses money between the estimate and the invoice, not on the wall
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Priced from your production rate, not from a book
Wall area, coats and the rate your crew actually rolls at give you hours; hours and your fully loaded labor cost give you a number you can stand behind when the customer asks how you got there.
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The estimate you sent, turned into the bill you send
Rekeying an estimate into an invoice is where the extra coat and the added closet quietly disappear. Carrying the estimate forward means what was agreed and what is billed start from the same lines.
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What you charged that street last spring, still readable
Repeat and referral work is most of a painting business, and the second call is far easier to price when the first job's area, hours and price are one search away rather than in a phone gallery.
Tools
The tools, free and open
The worksheets on this site are free and work your own production rate and labor cost on the page, with no account, so you can price a job before you decide whether software is worth paying for.
- Free Labor cost to paint a 12x12 room Wall area, coats, your production rate and your fully loaded labor cost, turned into painting hours and what the room costs you in labor. $265.16Labor cost for the room
- Free Painting cost calculator Area, coats, prep, your labor cost, coverage and paint price, turned into a job cost and the price that keeps your margin. $2,349.01Price at your margin
Free to use. No account, no card, no sign-up.
In figures
Painting Cost Index
2USD
Median published figure, the middle half 1.5 to 2.5 USD
21 sources with a published figure, read 19 October 2026.
Should you just buy a general trades suite?
If you run several trades out of one office, or you need dispatch, GPS and stock control across a fleet, buy a general field-service suite and use its painting fields. Topcoatly is for the painting business below that line, where the alternative is a spreadsheet, a notes app and a photo of a notepad.
What you set up before the first estimate
Topcoatly: Your production rate and your fully loaded labor cost, and nothing else
A general trades suite: Trades, price books, crews and workflows, configured before the tool is useful
How it is priced
Topcoatly: $49 per month for the whole crew
A general trades suite: Usually per user per month, so the price grows with the crew
What it does not do
Topcoatly: No dispatch board, no GPS tracking, no stock control, and no painting leads for sale
A general trades suite: Covers scheduling and fleet work at a depth a small painting crew rarely needs
No competitor price is stated here, deliberately: the published tiers of the general trades suites are behind a challenge page we could not read on 2026-09-05, and an unread figure is an invented one. This hub's own price is the one figure on the page, and it is recorded as an estimate in research/data/saas-products.tsv rather than benchmarked against a tier we verified.
Topcoatly Pro
$49
per month, whole crew
The answer is yours. Keeping it is Topcoatly Pro.
The worksheets are free. Pro is what happens after the customer says yes: the estimate becomes a job, the job becomes an invoice, and next spring you can still see what you charged this street and what it actually took you.
- Send the estimate from inside the record rather than from your phone
- Take the deposit without leaving the job
- Connect QuickBooks or Xero to your account
Free for 14 days. No card needed.
Topcoatly Pro is $49 per month for the whole crew, billed monthly. Billed monthly. Cancel any time from your account page. Price and renewal terms are shown before checkout.