The standard is great. Until the invoice. Or the Mac.
Revu earned its reputation — deep markup, Studio collaboration, twenty years of it. It also stopped selling perpetual licenses, retired its Mac and iPad apps, and put AI on the top tier of four.
Choose Bluebeam if you need its twenty-year feature catalog — scripting, batch Sets, digital forms, CAD plug-ins — and your office is entirely on Windows. Choose Groundwork Takeoff if what you do all day is measure, count, price and bid: quantity takeoff and estimating in one window, native on Mac and Windows, AI on every seat, and a perpetual license that still exists.
| Checked September 20, 2026 | Groundwork Takeoff | Bluebeam Revu 21 |
|---|---|---|
| Price, per seat, per year — checked September 20, 2026 | ||
| What the vendor publishes | $590 a year or $59 a month, every feature on it | Basics $260 · Core $330 · Complete $440 · Max $590 (labeled an introductory price) |
| Cheapest tier that does what one Groundwork seat does | $590 — there is only one tier | $590 — Max — the only tier with AI |
| Volume discount | 3+ seats −15%, 5+ seats −25%, applied at checkout | Not published on the vendor's pricing page |
| Perpetual license | $2,500 once, first year of updates included; $295/yr after that gates new versions, never access | New perpetual licenses ended Sept 30, 2023 |
| AI takeoff included | Every seat, including trial seats | AI is the $590 Max tier only |
| Native Mac app | Apple silicon and Intel | Mac app discontinued 2023; iPad app retired Dec 31, 2025 |
| Platforms | ||
| Windows native | Yes | Yes |
| iPad | Home-screen app, Pencil markup | Revu for iPad retired Dec 31, 2025 |
| Works offline | Offline-first, 14-day grace period | Desktop yes; the cloud and web apps need a connection |
| Takeoff & estimating | ||
| Measuring tools | 6 measuring tools — Linear, Segment, Perimeter, Area, Volume, Count | Full measurement is gated to Core ($330) and above |
| Assemblies — material, labor, waste | Library and builder | Quantity Link into Excel instead |
| Estimate grid in the same window | Live grid and formula evaluator | Excel round-trip |
| Plan compare / overlay | Live-canvas diff and blend | Overlay at Core and above; AI compare at Max |
| Where Revu is ahead | ||
| Markup depth — clouds, stamps, Tool Chest | Yes, plus a revision log and legends | The deepest in the category, and twenty years of it |
| Scripting and batch automation | Not built | Complete tier and above |
| Digital forms and CAD plug-ins | Not built | Yes |
Competitor figures are read off that vendor's own pricing page on September 20, 2026; the sources are listed at the foot of this page. A vendor who publishes no price gets no number here — the empty cell is the finding.
Bluebeam Revu costs less than we do. Max — the only tier with AI is $590 a year against our $590, so the argument for Groundwork on this page is not price and the page does not make one.
What a Revu renewal actually looks like in 2026
Three things are worth knowing before you sign, and all three come from Bluebeam's own announcements rather than from us.
New perpetual licenses ended on September 30, 2023. If you hold one, you still hold it — but you cannot buy another, and the version you own has dates on it. Bluebeam has published end of support for Revu 20 as July 31, 2026 and end of life as December 31, 2026. Perpetual holdouts reach that cliff this year and the choice at the bottom of it is annual, per seat, from then on.
There is no native Mac client. The Mac app was discontinued in 2023, and Revu for iPad was retired on December 31, 2025. The current answer for a MacBook is Parallels or the browser — a Windows license and a virtualization license to run software you are already paying for.
AI is the Max tier. Revu ships in four tiers, and measurement, Studio hosting and the AI review tools each sit at a different height on that ladder. Max is labeled an introductory price on Bluebeam's own pricing page, which is worth reading twice: an introductory price is a price that has somewhere to go.
Set against that, the Groundwork position is simple enough to state in one line — one tier, every feature on it, on whichever machine you like.
Revu is the deeper document platform, and we are not going to pretend otherwise
If your workflow depends on Revu's scripting engine, batch Sets processing, digital forms or CAD plug-ins, Bluebeam is the deeper product and switching would cost you more than it saves. It is a twenty-year document platform and we have not cloned all of it, on purpose. Its markup depth — clouds, stamps, the Tool Chest — is still the best in the category, and we would rather say so than pretend the gap is the other way round.
Sources
Tier prices, the introductory label on Max and AI availability: bluebeam.com/pricing, read September 20, 2026. The end of new perpetual license sales (September 30, 2023), the discontinuation of Revu for Mac and the December 31, 2025 retirement of Revu for iPad are from Bluebeam's own end-of-sale and legacy-support announcements. Revu 20 end-of-support and end-of-life dates are Bluebeam's published lifecycle dates.
Bluebeam® and Revu® are trademarks of Bluebeam, Inc. Everything above is public vendor information; check the current details with the vendor before you sign anything.
Check it against your own set.
The fastest way to settle a comparison page is to open your own plans in both. Ours takes a week and no card.