Free Tool · Smooth Estimator™
Build an estimate.
Print it.
Get on with the job.
Smooth Estimator™ is a free plumbing and mechanical estimator. Set up the job, price it fixture by fixture with unit prices, and print a proposal a customer can read. No account, no setup fee, no catch — the free estimator carries the full estimating engine, so a shop can try it for nothing and see exactly how it works.
FREE — the full estimating engine, free to useHow it works
Three steps, and the third one is a proposal you can hand over.
Job, client, and contact details, labor rates, and project settings — the same setup the portal estimator uses. Fill in what the job needs and nothing it does not.
Fixture unit prices do the heavy lifting — water closets, lavatories, tubs, showers, kitchen sinks, laundry tubs, dishwashers, hose bibbs — plus pipe rows, alternates, and job features. Hours and material choices stay available where a fixture price does not fit.
A clean proposal output, ready to print or save, with a performance history so the shop can see how its estimates have run over time.
Free here, more in the portal
What people pay for is storage — not a second, better estimator.
- Free estimator — the full estimating engine: setup, fixture unit pricing, pipe rows, alternates, proposal output, and performance history.
- Plans and takeoff — the free estimator takes off one plan sheet; the portal takes on whole plan sets, with scale calibration, on-drawing measurement, and legend-driven auto-detection.
- In the Ask John™ portal — server save, plans hub, folders and attachments, labor-rate profiles, and push-to-portal actions that carry an estimate into projects, customers, and invoices.
Drawings in, takeoff out
In the portal, plan sheets feed the takeoff directly — the scaler, the measurer, and auto-detection, all review-gated.
Upload a plan sheet and calibrate it against a known dimension — two-point calibration, so every measurement comes out in real feet. The scale is never invented.
Trace pipe runs and count fixtures on the sheet itself. Measured quantities land in the takeoff grid, ready for pricing.
The detector reads the drawing's legend and finds its fixtures and symbols across the sheet. Every hit is reviewed before it counts — nothing lands in the takeoff unreviewed.
Why it's different
Estimating software usually charges before a shop knows whether it fits. This one proves itself first.
The free version shows how it works — all the features, so a shop can play with it and judge it on a real estimate before anything is paid.
Fixture unit prices, alternates, and proposal output come from how plumbing and mechanical jobs are actually priced — by a fourth-generation plumber, not a generic estimating template.
In the portal, an estimate is not a dead document: it becomes a project, a customer record, and an invoice. The estimate is where the job starts, not where the paperwork ends.