Earthworks takeoff software in Australia: an honest 2026 list

Most "best software" lists are written by affiliates who have never priced a job. This one is written by a vendor — we make SitesAI Estimate, which is on the list — so read it with that in mind. What we can offer instead of neutrality is accuracy: every figure below comes from the vendor's own public page, checked on 16 September 2026, with the links at the bottom so you can verify it yourself.

We have left out tools we could not source properly today. An absence here is not a judgement.

The short version

Kubla Cubed

The one to try first if budget is the constraint. Kubla Cubed Lite is free with no time limit and it does the core job: import a PDF or CAD drawing, define existing and proposed levels, get cut and fill volumes from a TIN prism engine, and look at the result in 3D. Phased projects, plan stitching and vector extraction from PDFs are all in the free edition.

The Professional edition is where the design and output tools live — slopes, paths and roads, trenches and berms, cross-sections, volume region queries, and every export: reports, spreadsheets, drawings and CAD/BIM/machine-control. Professional sells as an annual subscription, a perpetual licence, or an enterprise agreement for five or more users.

Watch out for: it is Windows only — the system requirements list Windows 7, 10 and 11, with no macOS. And Lite gives you numbers on screen but not the exports, so check the comparison page before assuming a free workflow ends in a spreadsheet.

MudShark

The Australian incumbent, made by Buildsoft in Campbelltown, NSW. Smart 3D takeoff from PDF, CAD, DWG and DXF, fully interactive 3D visualisation, custom cross-sections, multiple boring solid modelling for material layers, drone data import, and integrations into estimating systems and Excel.

Its distinctive feature is MudShark Trench: pipe and trench network takeoff with automatic clash detection. If stormwater, sewer and utility networks are a real share of your work, nothing else on this list matches it.

Buildsoft publishes pricing, which is refreshingly rare: A$230 +GST per month billed annually (A$275 billed monthly), or A$250 +GST per month for MudShark + Trench. There is a 14-day free trial and no free edition.

Watch out for: the price is per user and the trial is a fortnight, so plan your evaluation.

AGTEK

The heavy-civil standard. AGTEK sells a family of desktop takeoff products — Gradework for earthwork volumes from PDFs, CAD files and drone imagery; Materials for materials estimating; Underground for storm, sewer and water trench volumes; and Highway for 3D transportation work with mass diagrams and haul calculations.

If you are bidding large sites where mass haul and machine control decide the job, this is the category leader and everyone in that tier knows it.

Watch out for: nothing is priced publicly — every product is contact-for-quote — and the whole family is desktop software. For a three-estimator business it is usually more tool, and more cost, than the work requires.

Civils.ai

The AI-native option. It does groundworks, landscaping and geotechnical takeoffs from PDF drawings — areas, lengths, volumes and counts — and it will also pull structured data out of borehole logs and geotechnical reports, which nothing else here does.

Their published claims are "over 97% accuracy" for modern PDFs and "90% less manual effort". Those are their figures, not ours or an independent test.

Watch out for: pricing is not published, and their own FAQ says workflow processing time varies and they "aim to return results within 24 hours" — so parts of it are a submit-and-wait service rather than something you drive live while the client is on the phone.

SitesAI Estimate

Ours, so treat the description as a spec sheet rather than a recommendation. It runs in a browser with nothing to install. You calibrate a PDF or image plan by clicking two points a known distance apart; DXF files are read in the browser and DWG converted on our server; survey CAD can supply the elevations directly. It builds existing and design surfaces, gives cut and fill volumes, contours, batters and pads, and shows the job in 3D. Multiple design sheets calculate against each other so they behave like construction phases, and material layers and boreholes split volumes by strata.

What makes it different from the others is the back half: the volumes become priced estimate lines in the same file, with rate build-ups for labour, plant and materials and stages you can assign to contractors, exporting to Excel or a single-page PDF. Any takeoff can be shared as a view-only link that the recipient opens without an account. And Claude can take a first pass at the takeoff which you review before it applies, with a 22-tool connector that lets an AI assistant drive the whole app.

The free plan covers markup, the 3D view, sharing and one design sheet. Pro is US$39 per user per month and adds the volume figures, unlimited sheets, Excel and PDF export and cloud sync; AI is US$99 and includes monthly credits.

Watch out for: no point clouds or LiDAR, no machine-control export (a deliberate decision, not a roadmap item), no pipe-network clash detection, and pricing is in US dollars.

How do you actually choose?

Ignore feature lists, including this one, and do this instead:

1. Take a job you have already built. You know the real quantities. That makes it the only honest benchmark.
2. Run it through two tools. Not five. Time how long the whole thing takes, not just the volume calculation — calibration, tracing levels and getting to a number you would put your name on.
3. Check what happens after the number. Does it become a priced quote, or a CSV you retype? That step is where most of the afternoon goes.
4. Ask what happens when the plan is reissued. Re-doing a takeoff from scratch on revision C is the hidden cost nobody demos.

Then buy the cheapest one that survived. Earthworks takeoff is not a place where paying more buys accuracy; your levels decide that.

Sources, checked 16 September 2026

• Kubla Cubed prices, Lite vs Professional comparison and system requirements
• MudShark pricing and MudShark product page
• AGTEK products
• Civils.ai
• SitesAI pricing

Prices and features change. Check each vendor's current page before you decide, and if we have something wrong here, email admin@sitesai.net and we will correct it.