Our take
A contractor's portal is their record of their job, shared on their terms. That's useful, and you should use it if you get the invite. But when you're choosing between three contractors, or deciding whether a change order is fair, you want a record that isn't kept by the person sending you the bill.
When each one starts on your remodel
Project Pilot Pro
Buildertrend client portal
Side by side
| For a homeowner | Project Pilot Pro | Buildertrend client portal |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Project Pilot ProHomeowners running a remodel or a single-family build | Buildertrend portalBuilders, remodelers and specialty contractors |
| How you get in | Project Pilot ProYou sign up and start your own project | Buildertrend portalYour contractor adds you to their job and sends an invite to the client portal |
| Who decides what you see | Project Pilot ProYou. You can invite your contractor as a collaborator (with Complete) | Buildertrend portalYour contractor, job by job |
| Bids from several contractors | Project Pilot ProA bid package for one documented scope, and Bid Room to set each proposal against it | Buildertrend portalNot listed on Buildertrend's client pages (as of Nov 2026) |
| Change orders and payments | Project Pilot ProYour own log of change orders and payments, and the final invoice checked against it | Buildertrend portalBudget, invoices and online payments, when your contractor turns them on |
What the portal gives you
If your contractor runs Buildertrend, the client portal is where they post daily logs, progress photos and documents. You can see the schedule and leave questions on each phase, approve selections, and see the budget and invoices or pay online if they've turned that on.
Your contractor decides which of those you get. Buildertrend tells contractors, “You stay in control by choosing exactly what they can see and do,” and they can set it differently for each job.
Other ways to keep your side of the job
A spreadsheet in Google Sheets or Excel works if you build the budget, bid and payment tabs yourself and keep them up to date.
Trello, Notion, Airtable, Asana and monday.com are general tools for organizing work. You set up the boards or tables for a remodel yourself, and lining bids up against one scope is something you'd have to build.
HomeZada is a home management subscription with a remodel module, built around keeping records for the house. Houzz is for finding ideas and pros, which is a different job.
Project Pilot comes with the remodel already set up: the estimate, the scope, the bids, the changes and the payments, in one project.
Before you hire, and after
Say three contractors are bidding your kitchen. The bid package gives each of them the same written job to price. When the proposals come back, Bid Room lines them up against it, so exclusions, allowances and unanswered questions sit next to each total instead of hiding inside it.
Once work starts, you log each change order as proposed, approved or rejected, and every payment against the contract. When the final invoice arrives, it's checked against that record, not against anyone's memory.
Using it next to your contractor's portal
Keep the portal for the schedule and the photos. In Project Pilot, add the signed contract and the bids as PDFs or photos, and it reads the terms into your project for you to check.
Questions people ask
Do I need to pay for Buildertrend as a homeowner?
Not on your own. Buildertrend's price is a custom quote for the contractor's business, not for you. Your way in is the client portal, through your contractor's invite.
What about JobTread?
Same story. JobTread is construction management software for contractors, with a portal for their customers. If your contractor uses it, your access comes from them.
Start your own record before the first bid
The free readiness assessment gives you a preliminary room-by-room estimate and the open decisions to settle, so every contractor prices the same job.
Start the free readiness assessment