ServiceTitan or BuildOps for commercial work?

What are ServiceTitan and BuildOps?

ServiceTitan is field service software for the trades. It began with home services such as HVAC and plumbing, and now has separate commercial service and construction offers. BuildOps is software for commercial contractors, covering service work, projects, financials and sales in one system. It says it serves more than 1,500 commercial contractors and calls itself purpose built for commercial, not residential software stretched to fit.

That is the vendor's own pitch, so test it. If you are mostly commercial, the question is which tool handles your contracts, your general contractors (GCs) and your accounting system with the least workaround.

How do they compare at a glance?

	ServiceTitan	BuildOps
Origin	Home services, now also commercial and construction	Commercial contractors
Pricing	Per technician, three packages, request pricing	Custom proposal by crew size, trades, modules and integrations
Service work	Service agreements, dispatch, equipment scanning, AR management, customer portal	Work order closeout, asset management, preventative maintenance, dispatch, purchasing
Project work	Project plan, RFIs and change orders, daily logs, progress billing, project financials	Resource planning, field execution, document control, materials and subcontracts, project financials
Accounting links	NetSuite, Sage Intacct, QuickBooks, Viewpoint Vista and Spectrum, others	QuickBooks, Sage, NetSuite, Viewpoint Spectrum and Vista
AI	Atlas assistant, AI Virtual Agent, Pro add-ons	OpsAI built in, plus agents for quotes, jobs, billing, collections

How does pricing work?

ServiceTitan states pricing is per technician, with Starter, Essentials and The Works packages and a "Request Pricing" button on each. Pro add-ons are extra. I cover the estimates third parties give in ServiceTitan pricing.

BuildOps does not list a price either. Its pricing page describes a path: a quick call within a business day, a demo set up for your trades and your accounting system, then a proposal built around your crew size, the modules that fit and the integrations your back office needs. It also sells add-on modules named Fleet+, Payments+ and CRM+.

So the way to compare is to ask both for a written quote for the same inputs: the same number of technicians, the same trades, the same accounting system, the same add-ons, the onboarding cost, and the contract term. Put the three-year total side by side. Ask what happens to the price when you add 10 technicians next year.

Which is better for service plus project work?

Both now say they handle service and construction in one place. ServiceTitan's construction offer lists RFIs (requests for information) that turn into change orders, daily logs with AI summaries, crew management, document management, and progress billing that produces AIA-style payment applications, the standard form many GCs expect. BuildOps lists resource planning, field execution, document control for RFIs, submittals and drawings, materials and subcontracts, and construction financials that connect labor, materials, change orders and billing.

A feature list will not tell you which does your projects better, because both lists look the same on paper. The test is a real project from your last year. Ask each vendor to load a sample job with a schedule of values, one change order, and one subcontract, and show you the billing application that comes out. Then show it to your project manager.

On BuildOps vs Procore: Procore is construction management software used by GCs and owners to run big builds. If your GCs make you work inside their Procore, you may still log in there whichever tool you pick, so ask each vendor how your project data gets in and out. Pricing and fit for Procore itself are in my Procore alternatives article, and the wider category is in construction management software.

How do the accounting integrations compare?

This is the make-or-break item for a commercial contractor, because job cost has to land in the right place.

ServiceTitan's accounting page lists links to NetSuite, Sage Intacct, QuickBooks Online and Desktop, Viewpoint Vista, Viewpoint Spectrum, Foundation, Xero, Acumatica, ComputerEase and Sage 50. Some are marked coming soon, so confirm the one you use.

BuildOps lists QuickBooks, Sage, NetSuite and Viewpoint Spectrum and Vista for accounting. Its enterprise page also names Sage Intacct, so for a BuildOps Sage Intacct integration or a BuildOps to NetSuite integration, ask which objects sync: invoices, purchase orders, payments, job costs. BuildOps says its syncs are two-way, meaning an update in one system changes the other, and that it tests with sample work orders in a sandbox before going live. It also lists Bluon (HVAC troubleshooting), Inspect Point (fire safety inspections), ServiceChannel, Coast, Miter, Avalara and Kojo.

Questions to ask both: Is the sync one-way or two-way? How often does it run? What happens when an invoice is edited after posting? Who fixes a failed sync?

What about the API?

An API is the door your other software uses to read and write data. I explain ServiceTitan's API and its limits in ServiceTitan API. BuildOps has a Dev Center at developer.buildops.com. Check what you can see without an account, and get API access, rate limits and the list of objects in writing before you sign. If you plan to build custom reports or dashboards, this matters more than any feature.

How do reports compare, and where do gaps remain?

BuildOps lists an ops dashboard, job health (cost, margin and billing progress), custom reports saved by role, project analysis, financial reports including work in progress (WIP), and labor analytics. ServiceTitan lists dashboards, technician and CSR scorecards, and project financials. Both claim real-time job costing.

Gaps still appear. Worked example, made-up numbers: a $400,000 project has billed $280,000 while the work done is worth $250,000. You are overbilled by $30,000, a cash cushion today and a liability if the job stalls. A WIP report shows that. A report that compares it across all 6 active projects, by project manager, with next month's expected billing, is the kind of custom view that needs the API or an export. See field service reporting software for how I think about that layer.

How does AI compare?

ServiceTitan's AI leans toward phones, techs and dispatch: the AI Virtual Agent, Atlas and the Pro add-ons. BuildOps' OpsAI leans toward the back office: drafted quotes, flagged stalled jobs, billing to each contract's rules and collections follow-up. BuildOps lists dispatch agents as coming soon. I go through the ServiceTitan side in ServiceTitan AI features.

Who should pick which?

• Pick BuildOps if: nearly all your work is commercial service and projects, your office lives in the billing and job cost, and you want one commercial-first system.
• Pick ServiceTitan if: you mix residential and commercial, want phone and dispatch AI add-ons, or need a particular integration it has and BuildOps lacks.
• Neither if: you have under 5 technicians. The cost and setup are built for bigger firms. See my ServiceTitan alternatives for lighter tools. There is no separate BuildOps alternatives article here yet.

Need something completely custom?

Everything above is a path to get it running quick and cheap. But sometimes none of these fit, and what you need is something custom that you own, built uniquely for your business from the ground up, with AI thoughtfully designed into the parts of it that your processes actually benefit from. An asset that grows in value, not a generic, one-size-fits-all boilerplate that's an expense with a lock-in. This is a complete bespoke build, and it's something I do very well. Get in touch to know more.

How I'd approach this

I would pick one real project and one real month of service work, and make both vendors run them in front of your office manager and your controller. Ask for the accounting sync to be shown with your system, not a slide. Get the API terms and the three-year total in writing.

Then ask one more question: what is the first thing that would still be a spreadsheet? Whatever the answer, that is your custom report or small integration, and it is usually cheaper to build beside the platform than to pay for a bigger package.