Groundwork vs. Procore: The Honest Comparison

Short answer: choose Procore if you need its integration marketplace or your GC-of-record already mandates it on a project. Choose Groundwork if you want published pricing, unrestricted data export, and compliance modules (certified payroll, federal award tracking) built into the core platform instead of purchased separately.

The pricing difference is structural, not a discount

Go to Procore's pricing page and you won't find a dollar figure. Their model is priced as a percentage of your Annual Construction Volume (the aggregate value of construction work across your projects), quoted after a sales conversation, tailored per product. That's not a criticism of Procore's math; ACV pricing can make sense for a platform selling into enterprise GCs project-by-project. But it means every prospective customer starts a Procore evaluation with a qualifying call before they know what anything costs.

Groundwork publishes a monthly plan price and a per-user rate on the pricing page. Every module is included at that price. No separate line item for job costing, no separate line item for certified payroll.

Data portability: locked in vs. always exportable

Both Procore and Groundwork are cloud SaaS. The real difference shows up when you want out: Groundwork exports every project, document, and financial record in standard formats (CSV, XLSX, PDF, JSON), any time, no gate or support ticket required. That's a deliberate design choice, not a courtesy — your data staying usable outside our platform is part of the product, not an afterthought.

Compliance: built in, not an integration

Procore covers a lot of ground, but Davis-Bacon certified payroll and federal award/compliance tracking (EEO-1, VETS-4212 reporting, FAR-adjacent flags) aren't part of the core platform the way they are in Groundwork's Professional and Enterprise plans. If federal or state-funded public work is a meaningful part of your backlog, this is worth checking against your specific Procore configuration before you assume it's covered.

Where Procore is genuinely stronger

Procore has a much larger third-party integration marketplace and a mobile app with years of field-tested polish behind it. If you're subcontracting to a GC who mandates Procore on their projects (which happens a lot on large commercial work), that requirement exists independent of which platform is objectively better, and you'll need to be in Procore regardless.

The migration question

If you're evaluating a move off Procore, the honest complication is the same as any platform switch: historical project data, drawing markups, and RFI/submittal history need to come with you. Groundwork's import path handles standard exports (CSV, IFC/DWG for drawings); contact us if you want a concrete assessment of what a specific migration would involve before you commit to anything.

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For a category-wide breakdown against Procore, Buildertrend, and others, see the full comparison page, or the field guide to Procore alternatives.