BidBud finds the general contractors active near you, writes to them, fills their prequal and checks each job's rules. You approve every message.
Then it helps you win the bids they send: it reads them, prices them from real public bid results and fills the forms.
You sign everything. A list counts only when the GC invites you.
Newest permits on file, from city open data. GC on file, not shown.
3new GC bid lists
and 1 more, plus 1 past day 90, not counted
One general contractor, start to finish. A real run of BidBud's agents on public records, recorded 2 Nov 2026, with the sample firm's documents.
BidBud reads the building permits cities and counties publish as open data (15 of them today), federal construction awards and our directory of GCs, which is where it starts in a place with no permit data. In this run it read 3,936 issued permits from 15 public sources, 130 of them in Cincinnati.
5 of those permits name the same general contractor: about $17.9M of declared work between 13 May 2026 and 25 Sep 2026. It holds general construction permits, so it is a GC and not a competitor, and it is active.
By the time a building permit is issued, most of the subs on that job have been bought out. So in New York City, for projects still in design, BidBud ranks the GCs most likely to build them from the building filing: the GCs its owner, architect and filing rep have worked with before. It covers NYC filings today. It is a prediction, and it says so.
The Outreach writer drafts a short intro email that cites this GC's own permits and asks for a place on the bid list. A BidBud reviewer and you approve it. Nothing is sent on its own.
It builds a capability sheet fitted to what this GC builds, then fills their prequalification from your documents. Every answer shows where it came from. What it cannot back up goes to a person.
Then it checks the rules for this GC's typical job: prevailing wage, licensing, workers' comp, apprenticeship, local hire and more, each with its source and how sure we are.
Schematic: permits grouped by neighbourhood, not to scale. 6 with no neighbourhood stated are left off. Copper marks one GC's permits.
These shares are the model's ranking, not the odds. When its top pick looked this strong on past filings, it was the GC that built the job 32% of the time (204 of 639).
On 4,648 New York City filings the model never saw, the top pick was the GC later named 21% of the time, and the top three held it 35% of the time. Picking the busiest GCs in the borough gets 4% and 10%.
BidBud Busiest GCs
GC names are left off this page. Shares are the model's ranking, from 681 open New York City filings ranked on 30 Oct 2026 or before.
Reviewer's checks
Not ready to send: the email's $13.5 million figure is not backed by the packet and conflicts with the $1.1 million cost on the compliance record. The Ohio license and workers' comp coverage also need the owner's attention.
The agent's own draft from the recorded run, with the GC's name taken out, and the reviewer's own verdict on it. The firm is BidBud's sample firm.
Past public wins: a real contractor's record from public bid results, name withheld (the sample firm's history)
Bonding: $3M single, $8M aggregateSample documents
Missing: Ohio BWC certificate of coveragebwc.ohio.gov
2 depend on facts nobody knows yet (public money, size, owner)
1 rule has a low-confidence source and is marked Unverified, check the source. A checklist from cited public sources, not legal advice.
We count a new list when a GC that has not invited your firm in the last 12 months sends its first invitation to bid, within 90 days of our first contact. That invitation goes straight to your bid desk.
From the Philadelphia GC in the sample quarter (lab fit-out), to the sample firm
Counted as list 3 of the sample quarter, 64 days after first contact. Goes to your bid desk.
Six agents work public plumbing and HVAC bids in MA, NY, NJ, PA and OH. A GC's invitation gets a brief, a price with its chance to be low and your signature. $250 per finished bid, never a percentage of award.
The Reader pulls scope, due date, site walk, bonds, insurance, prevailing wage and the required forms out of the notice and the bid book, each with the page it came from.
Public owners in these states publish every bidder's price. BidBud has 5,752 public contracts with every bid, 1,155 of them plumbing, HVAC or mechanical. On plumbing and HVAC, the runner-up bid a median 11% above the winner.
The Pricer gives your chance of being low at every price, from a model trained on real bid results (trade, state and county, the owner, field size, contract size and year), then tunes it to how your own bids have run. You see the chance and the range, and a person checks the packet before you sign.
Brief from the owner's notice, quoted (no bid book posted yet).
| Gap | Contracts |
|---|---|
| 0% to 2% | 96 |
| 2% to 5% | 154 |
| 5% to 10% | 173 |
| 10% to 15% | 122 |
| 15% to 20% | 75 |
| 20% to 30% | 97 |
| 30% to 50% | 91 |
| 50% or more | 117 |
$196.6M left on the table across 925 contracts
Every contract with at least two ranked bids, 2013 to 2026. The median band is darker. Read from the warehouse when this page loaded.
35% chance to be the low bid (likely 24% to 38%)
Example priceA real public bid, Q2078H: Remove Kitchen Water Heater & Replace Various Pumps, worked by the agents on 2026-11-02; its cost and price are example numbers, set from similar past public contracts, so the chance is an example too. Picked by a fixed rule, not by hand: a state HVAC job the sample firm can bid, read from the owner's notice because its bid book was not posted yet. Watch the full replay, and how it was picked.
The “Do it all for me” button starts every agent above at once. It picks the best-fit GCs for your trade, area and job size and the best public bid for you, drafts each intro email, fills each prequal, checks the rules, reads the bid and prices it, then comes back with a price and a packet to sign. You still approve each message and sign the bid.
Comes back with
41% chance to be the low bid (likely 33% to 45%)
47971H: Replace Roof & Associated Mechanicals
Example price
3 intro emails to approve and 3 prequals to sign; a person reviews the packet before you sign.
Every accuracy number here is tested on past bids and filings the model never saw.
Where it is weak. At the price bid, its chance to be low is only slightly better than a flat guess, and about the same as counting the bidders; how many firms show up matters most, which is why the Field analyst predicts it for every bid. Predicting the low bid from scratch is hard: from similar past jobs alone the backtest misses by a median 68% on 174 plumbing and HVAC test contracts, so the agents price from your cost and normal price. A chance to be low is not a promise: a bid with a one-in-three chance still loses most of the time, and a thin field widens the range. A GC prediction is a ranked guess.
Shade is GCs mapped in the state by our directory research of 2 November 2026: 412 rows across 50 states and DC, 361 firms once a GC listed in more than one state is counted once, 292 of them checked on the GC's own site. That is far from every GC in a state. A blue outline means public bids too.
$250 per finished bid, public or private. A run you never sign costs nothing, and from the 11th finished bid in a month each one is $200. Never a percentage of award.
A new GC bid list is priced per placement, set with our first design partners, so we do not publish a price yet.
Your bids and costs price only your bids. Nobody else's data trains your model, and yours never trains theirs. Pooling competitors' private data to set prices is what the Justice Department sued RealPage over in 2024.
A BidBud reviewer checks every message, form and packet. You approve every message and sign every bid. We never submit for you. See pricing
A finished bid packet: the fit check, a brief of the bid book with page citations, the likely bidders, a price with its chance of being low, the state forms filled where we have the template (the rest flagged), and a BidBud reviewer's answer to every problem the agents flagged. You decide whether to bid, sign it and submit it. An invitation from a GC's list gets less, at the same price: a brief of the bid documents you upload, a price with its chance of being low, and your signature.
Because permits show who is building. By the time a permit is issued, most subs on that job are chosen, so we do not promise you that job. A permit shows which general contractors are active near you right now: the ones to get in front of for the next job.
No. A BidBud reviewer and you approve every outbound message and every form, and nothing is sent automatically. At most 10 new GCs a day per mailbox, one follow-up per GC, and nothing in the 48 hours before that GC's bid date. We never invent a contact: a name, email or phone number we could not find in a public source says unknown.
It does the work around the estimate: finding the bid, reading the book, sizing up the field, pricing the markup and filling the paperwork. Your cost is still your cost; if you have an estimator, they get their week back.
Not with other firms. Your bids, costs and markups are stored against your firm, and our models read them only with your firm's id. The one person outside your team who sees a packet is the named BidBud reviewer checking it, and every view is in your audit log.
No. You review and sign every bid and submit it the way the project owner requires. The agents prepare; you decide.