Looking for a magicplan alternative: what to compare
Most comparisons of these apps list features. The features are broadly the same. What differs is what happens when the phone gets a wall wrong.
Six questions, in order of how much they will cost you
Does it tell you which numbers are measured?
Every one of these tools produces a number for a wall. Almost none of them distinguishes between a wall the sensor guessed at and a wall somebody put a tape on — and that difference is the one that ends up on a contract.
Where does your work live?
Hosted service, your own cloud storage, or the device. This decides what happens when you stop paying, and whether a client’s address sits on somebody else’s server.
What does it cost per project?
Per-scan, per-project and per-export pricing all look small and all scale with your busiest month. A flat seat price is easier to plan against.
Does the estimate come out of the same measurements?
If the takeoff is a separate step where numbers get re-typed, the two documents will eventually disagree, and it will be in front of a client.
What happens with no signal?
Basements. Half the job sites in this trade have no bars, and a tool that needs a round trip to a server is a tool that stops in exactly the room you needed it.
Can you get your data out?
PDF, CSV, CAD, ESX. And can the client open what you send without an account?
Where Trueline sits, plainly
It is built around the first question. Every length carries how it was arrived at — scanned by the phone, drawn on a grid, or measured with a tape — and that travels onto the drawing, the takeoff, the proposal and the claim. Until a tape has been on one wall running each way, the sheet says SCANNED across its face where a client reads it.
On the others: there is no Trueline server. Rooms are folders on your phone, backed up to your own iCloud, and the whole app works with no signal. Measuring, the drawing and the 3D view are free; the takeoff, the pricing, the proposal and the claim documents are the subscription.
What it is not: a hosted platform with a client portal, a team of users, or a library of national cost data. Prices come from your own rate book, and if you want a shared workspace for six estimators this is the wrong tool.
Questions to ask whichever you pick
- What is the total for a year, including any per-project or per-export charges?
- If I cancel, can I still open the jobs I have already done?
- Does a client need an account to open what I send them?
- What exactly happens on a phone with no LiDAR?
- Does the app ever tell me a number is unreliable?
Pricing and feature lists change constantly, so check them against the vendor rather than against any comparison page — including this one.
Questions people ask
- What should I look for in a room measuring app?
- Beyond the obvious: whether it distinguishes a scanned number from a measured one, where your data lives, whether the estimate comes out of the same measurements as the drawing, and whether it works with no signal. Feature lists across these tools are broadly similar; those four are where they genuinely differ.
- Is there a free alternative to magicplan?
- Several tools including Trueline have a free tier — usually the measuring and the drawing, with estimating and documents paid. Compare the total annual cost including any per-project or per-export fees rather than the headline monthly figure.
- Do these apps need internet?
- It varies, and it is worth asking directly. Anything that renders plans or stores projects server-side needs a connection at some point, which matters more than it sounds when half your job sites are basements.
Where this fits with Trueline
Trueline is an iPhone app that measures a room, takes it off, prices it from your own rate book and turns it into a proposal — with every length carrying whether it was scanned, drawn or measured, right onto the document a client reads. See how it works, or take the free templates and use them with whatever you already have.