Built for the field. Made for the books.
Stak is AI project finances for builders: it reads subcontractor invoices and receipts, matches them to the right job and cost code, and turns them into branded client bills and reports, synced with QuickBooks.
- Saves you hours on billing.
- Saves you thousands on software.
- Up and running in under an hour.
$199 a month. Not $2,000 and up.
Adaptive and Agave are venture-backed and built for contractors doing $5M and up. Adaptive’s QuickBooks App Store listing says “starting at $2000/mo”. Neither puts a price on its own website. Prices you can’t see tend to climb: Adaptive went from around $600 to $800 a month in 2025 to $2,000 and up today. Stak is bootstrapped and founder-run, with no investors demanding we squeeze more out of you. So the price is right here.
Stak
$199
per month ($2,388 a year). No sales call required to see it.
Adaptive
$2,000+
“Starting at $2000/mo” on its QuickBooks App Store listing, but hidden on its own website. (source)
Agave
Hidden
Behind a sales call. You get a custom proposal after a discovery call and a demo.
What $199 a month gets you
Everything below is in the one plan. No modules, no seats, no add-ons.
- AI AP invoice capture & cost coding
- Email or text a sub or vendor invoice. Stak reads it, matches it to the right project, codes every line, and sends it to QuickBooks as a bill to pay.
- Learn more about AI AP invoice capture & cost coding
- Two-way QuickBooks sync
- Everything syncs both directions with QuickBooks Online and Desktop, including cost codes. No double entry.
- Learn more about Two-way QuickBooks sync
- AI estimate reader
- Drop in an estimate. Stak builds the budget, assigns cost codes, and writes those cost codes back to QuickBooks.
- Change order management
- Create, e-sign and bill change orders, kept separate from budgeted work on every AR invoice and report.
- Learn more about Change order management
- AR invoicing: percent-complete & cost-plus
- Invoice your client the way each job is contracted, with markup and sales tax calculated, synced to QuickBooks as an invoice.
- Customer portal
- Your homeowner logs in and sees their project: invoices, change orders, progress and budget. Fewer "where are we at?" calls.
- Team comments on every document
- Your whole office can comment on any AP invoice, AR invoice or change order, from the office or the job site, so it’s right before it goes out.
- Vendor compliance & communication
- Track vendor documents and message vendors and clients straight from the AP invoice or project.
- Lien waivers, end to end
- Sub tracking, conditional waivers, vendor overage notices and payment holds until paperwork is in.
- Learn more about Lien waivers, end to end
- Reports clients actually read
- Branded AR invoices, progress reports, change order reports and budget-to-actuals with change orders kept separate.
- Bruce ChatLaunching now
- "How much have I spent on roofing in the last six months?" Ask in plain English, get the answer, and save it as a chart that refreshes.
Built for custom homes and remodels
There’s a real person paying for this house.
Their own websites say who they’re built for. Adaptive: “Built for $5M to $1B”. Agave: “from $5M to $5B in revenue”. Big firms and big projects, often with no homeowner in the picture. Neither lists a client portal on its website.
Stak was built for the other kind of job, where a family is writing the checks. They log in and see their invoices, change orders, progress and budget, with change orders kept separate from what they signed up for. Clear invoices build trust, and trust gets you paid faster.
Stak vs. Adaptive vs. Agave
Competitor details from their public websites as of October 4, 2026. A gray dash means we couldn’t find it publicly, and we’d rather say that than guess. Spot something out of date? Email us and we’ll fix it.
Sources (26, checked October 4, 2026)
- Adaptive pricing
- Adaptive on the QuickBooks App Store: pricing (viewed Sept 27, 2026)
- Adaptive on G2: pricing (updated Sept 3, 2026)
- Adaptive homepage
- Adaptive construction accounting
- Adaptive AP Clerk
- Adaptive Compliance
- Adaptive help: what syncs with QuickBooks Online
- Adaptive help: Procore
- Adaptive help: change orders
- Adaptive help: paying bills (ACH)
- Adaptive help: requesting vendor compliance docs
- Adaptive help: importing budgets
- Adaptive Build on the App Store
- Axios: Adaptive raises $30M
- Agave pricing
- Agave homepage
- Agave AP automation
- Agave vendor compliance
- Agave sync
- Agave AI analytics
- Agave Procore sync
- Agave expense management
- Agave contractor pricing
- Agave job posting: Founding Account Executive (undated; viewed Sept 27, 2026)
- Agave Series A announcement
The only question that matters
Is the difference worth the price?
$1,800+
more every month for Adaptive
$21,600+
more every year for Adaptive
Adaptive and Agave do more than Stak, and we won’t pretend otherwise. They connect to far more software and are built for bigger companies. Agave got there by selling the connections other software companies used to reach QuickBooks and other accounting systems. Stak was one of those customers, until Agave dropped its API customers and became a competitor overnight. That’s why they connect to so much, and part of why they cost so much. If you run QuickBooks and billing is eating your nights, ask whether the extras are worth $21,600+ a year to you.
Adaptive “starting at $2,000/mo” per Adaptive’s QuickBooks App Store listing. Stak $199/mo.
Is Stak right for you? Straight answer.
Stak is for you if
- You run your books in QuickBooks Online or Desktop.
- Sending AR invoices every month is a slog: markups, change orders, sales tax, backup.
- You’re a custom home builder, remodeler or small GC who wants it handled without an ERP project.
- You want a price that’s on the website and stays put.
Stak is not for you if
- You run Procore. Stak doesn’t integrate with it; Adaptive and Agave do.
- You’re on Sage, Viewpoint, CMiC, Foundation or Acumatica. Stak only connects to QuickBooks.
- You need one tool wired into a dozen other systems. They connect to far more software than we do.
- You don’t mind overpaying for features you’ll never use, or a price that keeps going up.
Automate. Validate. Build.
Three short videos show how an invoice becomes a client bill. The numbers below are live from the invoices Stak has processed.
Automate.
Email or text in invoices. Stak’s AI reads them, so nobody types them in.
Validate.
AI predictions with a person checking them, so your books stay accurate.
Build.
Client-ready bills and project reports, synced with QuickBooks.
- Invoices Processed
- 1,500
- Project Match
- 96%
- Cost Code Match
- 94%
- Vendor Match
- 93%
Customers save an average of 20 hours per month with Stak.
Live from Stak’s AI. Updated Oct 5, 2026, 03:08 PM PDT.
Turn invoices into insights.
Stak builds a full set of reports from the invoices you send in: work completed, forecasted costs, updated budgets and change order details. Need something specific to your company? We’ll build custom reports with you. Here are three your clients see every month.
Report progress. Predict costs.
Every client bill comes with a report that sums up progress, shows what’s been billed to date and forecasts what’s left to spend, so your client sees where the job is headed before they ask.
Professional bills with your name on them.
Branded with your logo, with budgeted work and change orders in their own sections. Markup and sales tax are calculated from the project automatically, and Stak re-checks the tax rate for the project address every time a bill is created.
The full breakdown of the work billed.
Every line of work on the bill, grouped by cost code and sourced to its invoice, with change order work broken out on its own. Your client can check any number.
AI that keeps you in control.
Bruce is the AI engine inside Stak. Bruce auto-drafts emails to clients and vendors, builds reports that surface project insights, and predicts costs before they surprise you, with every draft fully editable so you stay in control.
Snap it. Text it. Assigned.
Built for the field: Stak turns any phone into a job-site invoice scanner. Text a photo of a receipt or vendor invoice and Stak's AI reads it on the spot. Reply with the project number and it's filed in seconds. No app to open, no paperwork lost in the truck.
Change orders signed in minutes, not days.
Create a change order in Stak and send it straight to your client for a legally binding digital signature through Dropbox Sign. Lien waivers go out for signature the same way. Approvals come back in minutes, so scope changes never stall the job.
What builders say about Stak
From the builders and remodelers billing their clients with Stak.
“Stak has been a super effective tool at streamlining our monthly invoice review and billing procedures. The platform is highly intelligent and user friendly and has become our go-to software for managing the financial side of the business, which has improved organization, communication and work flow on all of our projects.”
Colin Anderson
CCM at Hamish Anderson Custom Homes, Inc.
"Stak gives me a clean system for cost-plus billing. Budgets, job costs, and change orders stay organized, and the invoices and reports are clear for clients. It's tightened up my process and cut way down on admin time."
Ben Millar
Owner at Common Cents Remodeling LLC
The custom home in Seattle where Stak started.
Designed with builders. Priced to keep your trust.
It started with a house in Seattle.
Stak started on a job site. Building this custom home, I saw up close how complicated construction is, and how much time, which I was paying for, went to billing: coding AP invoices, pulling change orders out of bills and reports, tracking each project’s markup and sales tax, and keeping all of it lined up across every project.
I also saw how expensive building is. When every line item is real money, you get price conscious fast. You should expect the same from your software.
Agave used to sell the software that connected Stak to QuickBooks. As a customer, we felt its price increases ourselves. Then it dropped its API customers, launched its own product for contractors built on that same technology, and became a competitor overnight. Adaptive was charging around $600 to $800 a month in 2025. Today its QuickBooks App Store listing says “starting at $2000/mo”. And both just raised millions again: $15M for Agave, $30M for Adaptive, and more than $75M between them across every round. Big rounds, then bigger prices. That’s the pattern across this industry.
Stak is bootstrapped and fully self-funded. I run it lean, so I can afford to keep the price low. AI now lets a small team build great software for a fraction of what it used to cost. That saving should reach you, not disappear into a price hike.
I know how expensive and how complicated building is. If Stak takes cost and complexity off your plate, its price shouldn’t put them right back.
Michael, founder of Stak