The Adaptive alternative at a tenth of the price: $199 a month.
Adaptive is built for contractors doing $5M to $1B, and lists pricing “starting at $2000/mo”. Stak gives small and mid-size builders AI AP invoice coding, two-way QuickBooks sync, change orders, cost-plus AR invoicing and a customer portal for $199 a month. Bootstrapped, founder-run, live in under an hour.
$199 vs. $2,000 and up. Every month.
Adaptive raised $57M from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z, early backers of Facebook, Airbnb and Lyft) and others, and its QuickBooks App Store listing says “starting at $2000/mo”. Stak is bootstrapped. No investors pushing us to squeeze more out of every customer, so the price is on the page.
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)
Why builders pick Stak over Adaptive
- A price you can see
- Stak is $199/month. Adaptive’s QuickBooks App Store listing says “starting at $2000/mo”, and its own pricing page says it’s “scoped to your revenue band”. As your business grows, so does the price.
- Priced for small builders
- Adaptive’s range starts at $5M contractors, but its price doesn’t: $24,000 a year and up is a lot for a small builder. Stak is $2,388 a year, everything included.
- Your homeowner gets a portal
- Stak gives your client their own login for invoices, change orders, progress and budget. We couldn’t find a homeowner portal on Adaptive’s site; its clients sign change orders from an email link.
- A price that stays put
- Adaptive charged around $600 to $800 a month in 2025. Today it starts at $2,000. Stak is bootstrapped, so there’s no investor pushing the price up. $199 a month is $199 a month.
Stak vs. Adaptive, feature by feature
Adaptive 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 Spot something out of date?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 (15, 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
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.
Stak vs. Adaptive: common questions
Switching from Adaptive? We'll get you live in under an hour.