Civils.ai
Civils.ai is a construction AI that measures quantities from PDF drawings, checks contracts and specifications against codes, and digitises borehole logs. Every takeoff is reviewed by an in-house QA team before delivery, and exported to Excel and annotated PDF.
What is Civils.ai?
Civils.ai is a construction-specific AI platform built by Civils.ai Pte. Ltd., a Singapore company founded in 2022 by civil engineers and AI researchers. It targets three of the most time-consuming jobs in pre-construction: measuring quantities from drawings, reading contracts and specifications, and turning geotechnical reports into usable data.
The takeoff engine is the core. You upload PDF drawings — scanned, historic or multi-sheet — and describe the scope in plain English, for example measure all asphalt road surfacing and paving areas. The platform returns measured areas, lengths, volumes and counts across six families of work: floors, roads and landscaping; utilities, drainage and MEP; devices, fixtures and installations; foundations, footings and wall runs; facade and formwork elevations; and opening counts and sizes. Results land on an annotated copy of the original drawing and export to Excel and marked-up PDF, with an in-browser editor for final corrections.
The second layer searches documents. Civils.ai runs checks and reusable query checklists across contracts (NEC, JCT, FIDIC), employer's requirements, specifications and codes of practice, and cites the exact page and section behind every answer, so any claim can be verified in a click. Teams use it to flag risks before signing, extract submission dates and deliverables into a checklist, and compare a subcontract package against client requirements.
The third layer is geotechnical. Civils.ai reads borehole logs — including scanned and handwritten ones — and converts them into structured AGS 4.1 and Excel data covering more than sixteen data groups, from geology and in-situ SPT and CPT tests through to laboratory results. Output is geo-referenced, loads into OpenGround or Leapfrog Works, and can be rendered as 2D cross-sections and 3D ground models. The company reports more than 100,000 boreholes digitised since 2022.
What separates the product from a general-purpose model is the review step: every AI measurement is checked by an in-house QA team before it reaches the customer. Civils.ai claims 97% accuracy on modern PDFs and up to 90% less manual effort, and is explicit that the tool is meant for tendering and early-stage planning, not for construction-issue documents.
What it does
- Measure areas, lengths, volumes and counts on PDF drawings from a plain-English instruction
- Annotate the original drawing automatically and export quantities to Excel and marked-up PDF
- Search contracts, specifications and codes of practice, with citations to the exact page and section
- Compare a subcontract package against client specifications and score the options
- Digitise borehole logs and geotechnical reports into AGS 4.1 and Excel
- Build 2D cross-sections and geo-referenced 3D ground models of a site
- Save reusable check workflows and share them across a team account
When to use Civils.ai / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Civils.ai is the right fit.
When to use Civils.ai
- Estimators at groundworks and civil subcontractors who measure from PDF drawings every week
- Quantity surveyors and cost engineers pricing tenders against a deadline
- Pre-construction and bid teams checking contracts, employer's requirements and codes of practice
- Geotechnical engineers and consultants who need borehole logs turned into AGS 4.1 data
- Construction consultancies and public developers running high volumes of takeoffs across many projects
When not to use Civils.ai
- Teams needing for-construction quantities: the vendor restricts the tool to tendering and early-stage planning
- Occasional users, for whom USD 90 a month buys only ten takeoffs
- Anyone who needs results in seconds, since processing is quoted at up to 24 hours
- Firms wanting a live CAD or BIM link, or a native mobile app, rather than file exports
- Organisations that require a named cloud provider, published subprocessors or EU-only hosting
How to use Civils.ai
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Create an account with an email address or with Google, and pick a plan on the pricing page
- Drag and drop your PDFs: drawings, specifications, contracts or geotechnical reports, scanned or handwritten, no preparation needed
- Choose the AI agent that matches the job, or select Extract CAD data for a takeoff
- Type the scope in plain English, for example "measure all paving and landscaping material areas shown in legend"
- Hit Run and close the tab if you like — an email arrives once the extraction is finished
- Wait for the in-house QA team to review the measurements before they are released to you
- Open the annotated drawing, check the results and correct anything that needs adjusting in the browser
- Export the quantities to Excel and the marked-up drawing to PDF
- For geotechnical work, export AGS 4.1 and load it into OpenGround or Leapfrog Works
- Save frequently used checks as workflow templates and share them with your team account
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Purpose-built for construction documents rather than adapted from a general-purpose model
- Every AI measurement passes through a human QA review before it is delivered
- Document answers cite the exact page and section, so any result can be verified at source
- Handles scanned, handwritten, historic and multi-sheet PDFs without preparation
- Geotechnical output follows the AGS 4.1 standard and loads straight into OpenGround or Leapfrog Works
- Clear data position: customers keep ownership, and files are never used for model training
- Month-to-month billing with no setup fee, cancellation and data export at any time
Cons
- No permanent free plan and no free trial advertised: the entry point is USD 90 a month
- The takeoff unit is intricate — one sheet by one trade, doubled above 1:250 scale, capped at five per sheet — which makes budgeting harder than a seat price
- Results are not immediate: processing is quoted at up to 24 hours
- Starter and Professional are single-user; multi-user access requires an Enterprise contract
- No native mobile app and no live CAD or BIM integration beyond file exports
- Data sits on United States servers with a cloud provider the site never names, and no transfer mechanism is documented for a Singapore vendor
- No security certification and no subprocessor list is published
Pricing & Plans
Civils.ai offers no permanent free plan for its AI product, and no free trial is advertised on the pricing page. The lowest paid entry point is the Starter plan at USD 90 per month, billed monthly and cancellable at any time, with no setup fee. Separately from the paid product, more than 32 engineering calculators and construction cost benchmarks for 100 cities remain free of charge after registration.
- 10 takeoffs a month
- unlimited AI searches and checks under fair use
- one user account
- 2 GB of project storage
- email support
- everything in Starter
- plus 30 takeoffs a month
- 50 GB of project storage
- revision requests from comments
- learning of your standards
- priority support
- everything in Professional
- plus custom takeoff and storage allowances
- unlimited users
- API and MCP integrations
- SSO and SAML
- a custom DPA and a security review
- Advanced multi-step agent workflows fall outside the standard allowance and are quoted separately
- scoped and confirmed in advance
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Civils.ai handles your data.
GDPR overview
The privacy policy claims compliance in plain terms: it is described as fully compliant with the European GDPR as well as with Singapore law. Five data subject rights are named individually — access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing and portability — and the right to object, including to direct marketing, is set out separately. Consent is requested explicitly, non-essential cookies can be refused without losing access, and the banner offers a straightforward reject option. Security measures listed include TLS, antivirus software and the DKIM, SPF and DMARC email standards; policy changes are announced at least two weeks in advance. Two gaps stand out: no Article 27 EU representative and no data protection officer is named, and data is hosted in the United States with no transfer mechanism described.
Who owns the data?
Civils.ai states that you keep full ownership of every document you upload. The company processes that data only to run the requests you launch, and commits in both its pricing FAQ and its user licence agreement that customer data is never used for AI model development or training, and never shared with third parties. Uploaded files are anonymised in storage, and un-anonymised content is visible only from the account that uploaded it. The exception is legal compulsion: a court, judge or law enforcement request can oblige Civils.ai to hand over personal data, without prior notice. The software itself remains the property of Civils.ai Pte. Ltd., licensed to you non-exclusively for internal business use.
Reuse rights
Outputs are yours to use: measured quantities download as Excel and as an annotated PDF, both editable in the browser before export, and workflows can be saved and shared inside a team account. The licence covers internal business use only — you may not modify, distribute or build derivative works from the software, nor rent, lease, sub-license or transfer your account without written consent. A separate licence governs the free calculators and construction cost benchmarks: individual figures may be cited in reports and appraisals with attribution to Civils.ai, but bulk extraction, scraping, redistribution, sub-licensing or resale of the dataset requires prior written permission. Usage fees are charged per upload and per workflow run and are non-refundable, and prepaid credits expire twelve months after purchase.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Civils.ai states that data is stored on servers in the United States with a vetted, best-in-class cloud infrastructure provider, which the site never names. Uploaded documents sit in a relational database and cloud object storage, anonymised, with un-anonymised content visible only from the account that uploaded it; the company describes project documents as isolated from other users, clients and third parties. Traffic travels over TLS, and the footer states that data is encrypted in transit and at rest. DNS resolution places the web server itself in Ashburn, United States, on Amazon infrastructure, though a web host is not necessarily where documents are stored. Two limits are worth noting for European buyers: the vendor is registered in Singapore and hosts in the United States without describing any transfer mechanism, and no security certification or subprocessor list is published. A custom data processing agreement and a security review are available on the Enterprise plan.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Civils.ai.
- The vendor itself bars use for construction-issue work: any output must be signed off by a competent engineer before it leaves the tendering stage
- Delegating manual measurement erodes the very skill needed to notice when a measurement is wrong
- 97% accuracy still leaves a 3% gap, and the site cites the narrow 5% margins most projects run on
- Hand-drawn drawings and documents predating 1975 carry no accuracy guarantee, yet look no different in the export
- Tender packs and contracts are commercially sensitive, and they leave for United States servers held by a provider the site does not name
- Liability is capped at the fees paid over the previous twelve months, and the service is provided as is with no accuracy warranty
- Charges apply on every upload and every workflow run, are non-refundable once delivered, and prepaid credits expire after twelve months
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Very low. Civils.ai runs entirely in the browser, with no installation and no file preparation: you register with an email address or a Google account, drag PDFs in, and type the scope in ordinary English. Scanned, handwritten and multi-sheet drawings are accepted as they are. The real requirement is professional rather than technical — describing a scope precisely and reviewing the measurements that come back. Only the Enterprise options, API and MCP integrations, SSO and SAML, call for IT involvement.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Civils.ai
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Civils.ai.
Frequently asked questions
What can Civils.ai measure from a drawing?
How is a takeoff counted?
How accurate are the results?
How long does a job take?
Who owns the documents I upload?
Where is the data stored?
Is there a free plan or a free trial?
Is there a mobile app?
Can the geotechnical output feed my existing tools?
Is a data processing agreement available?
Should you pick Civils.ai?
Civils.ai is a narrow tool that knows exactly what it is for. Rather than promising a general assistant, it takes three specific pre-construction jobs — measuring quantities off PDF drawings, interrogating contracts and specifications, and digitising borehole logs — and automates each one end to end, with an in-house QA team checking the AI's measurements before they reach the customer. That review step, and the habit of citing the exact page and section behind every document answer, are what distinguish it from a general-purpose model asked to read a drawing.
The evidence of use is unusually concrete for a young company: named clients including Kajima, AECOM, Arup, WSP, Penta Ocean and Costain, a published case study with 38 users and 528 hours saved over twelve months, and more than 100,000 boreholes digitised since 2022. Data handling is stated plainly too — you keep ownership, nothing is used to train models, and deletion is available from inside the platform.
The reservations are mostly commercial and infrastructural. There is no free plan and no advertised trial, so evaluation starts at USD 90 a month for ten takeoffs, and the takeoff unit — one trade on one sheet, doubled above 1:250 scale — takes some study before a budget can be forecast. Results arrive within 24 hours rather than instantly. Documents are hosted in the United States by a provider the site never names, with no certification and no subprocessor list published, which procurement teams in regulated environments will notice. And the vendor itself restricts the tool to tendering and early-stage planning, requiring a competent engineer to sign off any output.
For an estimating or bid team that measures drawings weekly, the arithmetic is straightforward. For anyone measuring occasionally, or bound to EU-only hosting, it is not.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
- Opens in a new window.