What you are actually buying
A drawing is the visible part of the purchase. The rest is judgement: how many circuits a kitchen needs, which cable size survives the voltage-drop check at the far end of the run, whether the panel has room for the surge device the utility will eventually demand, and whether the specification matches what the wholesaler stocks. That judgement is what you pay a designer for, and it is also why an hourly estimate is unstable — a good designer spends an hour on a problem a poor one never notices.
Deliverables usually include a layout with devices and circuits, a panel schedule, a single-line diagram, cable and breaker schedules, load and voltage-drop calculations, and a bill of materials. Some clients need a PDF set for approval; contractors want the schedule in a spreadsheet they can price. Ask which of these is contractual before comparing prices, because a quote that excludes calculations is not the same product.
The five cost drivers
Most of the variation between quotes comes down to five things.
Building type and density. A storage room and a commercial kitchen of the same floor area are not the same job. Density of devices, number of circuits and the amount of coordination with other trades drive hours more than square metres do.
Source material quality. A clean architectural plan with a scale and a north arrow saves hours. A photographed BTI or survey drawing with no dimensions costs them back, because every wall has to be verified. Importing a PDF floor plan is faster than redrawing, but the checking step does not disappear.
Revision culture. One round of comments is normal. Five rounds, each arriving as a scanned PDF with handwritten marks, is a different contract. Design cost is often revision cost wearing a disguise.
Standard regime. A project that has to satisfy two regimes at once — a client standard plus a local code — takes longer to check. Working across NEC and IEC in one project is a real multiplier on review time.
Who signs. A junior producing drawings that a senior reviews is cheaper per hour and slower per drawing. A senior working alone is the reverse. The line item looks different; the total is often similar.
Four ways to buy the same drawing set
| Approach | What you pay for | Good fit | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freelancer, per project | Fixed scope, one person | Small flats, one-off fit-outs | Scope creep, single point of failure |
| Design bureau | Team, review process, liability cover | Commercial, approval-heavy projects | Overhead in the price, slower start |
| Desktop CAD seat | Perpetual or annual licence per seat | Continuous in-house drafting | Idle licences, training, IT upkeep |
| Browser subscription | Monthly access, unlimited projects | Intermittent workflow, small teams | Needs a connection, lighter feature set |
These are not exclusive. A common 2026 arrangement is a bureau for the approval package and an in-house web tool for the small jobs that never justify a bureau quote.
A worked comparison that does not invent rates
Instead of rates, use hours and a ratio. Estimate the effort in hours, multiply by your own local rate, and add the fixed costs of the method. The point of the exercise is the shape of the curve, not the number at the end.
For a mid-size apartment, a realistic effort band is 6–12 hours for the first issue and 2–4 hours per revision round. A bureau might bill 10–16 hours for the same scope because review and documentation take longer, and it will usually include a checked calculation set. A desktop seat adds a licence and an update cycle whether or not work arrives. A subscription tool adds a monthly fee that does not scale with the number of projects.
Run the arithmetic for your own case: a firm issuing four small projects a month has a very different break-even point from one issuing one project a quarter. Current plans are on the pricing page; the free tier — 3 projects and 100 objects — is enough to measure your own hours before you commit.
Example: a 60 m² apartment
The job is a refurbishment: strip out, new sockets, lighting, kitchen and bathroom circuits, a new panel. Effort goes into verifying the existing riser, deciding whether the old aluminium feeds stay, and agreeing socket heights with the client. The design itself is a few hours; the coordination is the rest. Most of the cost is in the first issue, and revisions are cheap if the client comments once.
Example: a 400 m² office fit-out
Here the cost is dominated by coordination and by the panel. Lighting layout has to match the ceiling grid, circuits have to be grouped by tenant, and the panel schedule has to survive a facilities manager reading it. Calculations matter more because runs are longer and voltage drop becomes the constraint rather than current-carrying capacity. Expect the review cycle to be the largest single line, and budget for it explicitly.
The costs nobody quotes for
- Re-measurement. If the survey is wrong, the design is wrong. Time spent on site is rarely in the estimate.
- As-built drift. The set that gets installed differs from the set that was approved. Someone has to reconcile them.
- Archive and retrieval. Finding the 2021 revision in a hurry is a cost, usually paid by whoever is on the phone.
- Rework after a failed check. A missing RCD or an undersized feed found at commissioning is the most expensive hour in the project.
- Tooling. Licences, templates, symbol libraries, and the person who maintains them.
Three-year view
Over three years the ranking changes. A per-seat licence is cheap in a busy year and expensive in a quiet one; a per-project freelancer is the reverse. The honest comparison weighs utilisation, not list price. Write down how many projects per year you actually issue, how many seats need edit rights, and what a week of delay costs you. Those three numbers decide the answer more often than any feature list.
The second-order effect is worth naming: when the marginal cost of a project is near zero, teams start producing documents they previously skipped — panel schedules, cable schedules, a proper single-line diagram. That changes quality more than it changes spend. See how panel schedules are produced from the same data.
When a freelancer wins, when software wins
A freelancer wins when the project is unusual, when a signature with liability cover is required, or when you have no one to do the work. Software wins when the work is repetitive, when the deliverable is standard, and when the bottleneck is drafting hours rather than expertise. Most teams end up in the middle: a person who owns the engineering, a tool that removes the typing.
Try the workflow on one real project before deciding — open the demo, import a plan, and time yourself from import to exported schedule.
A budget method you can defend
- List the deliverables the client will actually accept.
- Estimate hours per deliverable, not per square metre.
- Add one revision round at 25–30% of first-issue hours; add more if the client has a committee.
- Add the fixed cost of the chosen method for twelve months.
- Multiply by the number of projects you expect, then compare scenarios at half and double that number.
If the ranking flips between half and double, the decision is not about price. It is about flexibility, and you should buy the option you can stop paying for.
Sources
- NFPA 70, National Electrical Code — nfpa.org
- IEC 60364 series, low-voltage electrical installations — webstore.iec.ch
- Autodesk, AutoCAD Electrical toolset (licence model reference) — autodesk.com
- EPLAN Electric P8 (enterprise licensing reference) — eplan.com
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, electricians — bls.gov
Informational only, not legal, tax or engineering advice. Rates, licence terms and code editions change; confirm current figures with vendors and with the authority having jurisdiction.
There is no reliable per-square-metre rate. Device density, building type and revision count dominate, which is why two flats of the same size can differ by a factor of three. Estimate in hours per deliverable instead.
For one project, a freelancer. For a steady flow of similar projects, software — the marginal cost per project drops sharply once the tool is paid for. The break-even depends on your project count, not on the tool's feature list.
Prices change by region, so check the [pricing page](/en/pricing/) for current figures. Free covers 3 projects and 100 objects; Pro removes the project limit and unlocks all exports and the AI allowance.
In many jurisdictions, yes — for approval packages and for anything with liability attached. Software produces the documents; it does not take professional responsibility for them.
Calculations, a panel schedule, and revision rounds. A quote that lists drawings but not calculations is not comparable with one that includes both.
Often, yes, for small residential work. The risk is documentation rather than judgement: an electrician can install correctly and still hand over a set that fails approval. A structured tool with built-in checks closes part of that gap. See the [documentation](/en/docs/) for what the checks cover.
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