Buy quoting software when RFQs arrive as clean 3D files of familiar parts; choose an AI quoting agent when they arrive as emails with PDF drawings and the answer depends on your ERP. Published prices run from €0.95 per drawing page to €990–1,870 a month for quoting suites, and GETMILK's RFQ automation starts at €4,900 plus €290 a month per plant.
Buy quoting software if most of your RFQs are standard CNC or sheet-metal parts that arrive as clean 3D files: the software prices known geometry against a costing model you already trust. Choose an AI quoting agent if RFQs arrive as emails with PDF drawings, customer standards and long threads, and the answer depends on data in your ERP. Published prices on 27 September 2026 put the options side by side: drawing reading from €0.95 per page [1], quoting suites from €990 to €1,870 a month [2] [3], and Microsoft's Sales Order Agent at about 1,650 Copilot Credits per 100 requests [5]. GETMILK's own RFQ automation starts at €4,900 to set up and €290 a month per plant (our prices, excluding VAT).
Key facts
- Werk24 reads technical drawings through an API for €0.95 per page on pay-as-you-go [1].
- Quotation Factory lists €1,870 a month plus a €5,490 one-off setup; over 36 months that is €72,810 (our arithmetic) [2].
- Oroox starts at €990 a month on a 12-month term [3].
- Microsoft's worked example for the Business Central Sales Order Agent uses 1,650 Copilot Credits for 100 requests [5], about $16.50 at $0.01 per credit [6], or €14.47 at the ECB rate of 1.1403 dollars per euro on 25 September 2026 [15].
- An hour of manufacturing labour in Portugal cost €16.5 in 2025, against €35.0 in the EU [7].
- 11.5% of Portuguese firms with 10 or more staff used any AI technology in 2025, against 20.0% in the EU [16]; 24% use generative AI systematically to improve processes, against 37% [17].
What does quoting software actually do?
Quoting software is a costing engine with a front end. You give it a part, usually as a 3D model, and it applies your machine rates, setup times, material prices and margins to produce a price. The better tools recognise features in the CAD file, estimate cycle time and add a customer portal where buyers upload files and see an instant price.
That is a real gain when the input is clean and the geometry is familiar. Toolpath prices CNC machining estimates per seat [8]. CloudNC's Quote Agent works from 3D models and charges per part above a monthly allowance [9]. DigiFabster sells an instant-quote portal for CNC, 3D printing and sheet metal, from $335 a month outside North America (about €294 [15]) plus a processing fee on orders [10]. Suites such as Oroox and Quotation Factory cover more processes and larger teams at a larger monthly price [2] [3].
What quoting software does not do is read your inbox. It expects someone to open the email, find the right drawing revision, check the material, type the quantities and decide which customer terms apply. In most small plants, that is where the hours go.
What does an AI quoting agent do differently?
An AI quoting agent starts one step earlier. It reads the email and the attachments, extracts the part data from the PDF drawing (dimensions, tolerances, material, finish, quantities), checks it against what your plant can make, looks up prices and history in the ERP and drafts the quote and the reply in your template. A person reviews and sends.
Few Portuguese firms have got this far: 24% use generative AI systematically, against 37% across the EU [17]. In Portuguese searches this shows up as «ia para orçamentos». Be precise about what it means. When people search for AI and technical drawings in Portuguese, most results are about generating drawings. For quoting, the job is the opposite: reading a drawing someone else made and turning it into a price. Components for that exist. Werk24, for example, extracts title-block data, dimensions and tolerances from drawings through an API [1]. On its own it does not know your machines, customers or prices, so it is a part of an agent, not a replacement for one.
What do the options cost?
| Option | What it covers | Published price | Fits best when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Werk24 [1] | Reads drawings (API) | €0.95 per page; plans from €390 a month | You have a team to connect it to email and ERP |
| Toolpath [8] | CNC estimates from CAD | $40 per seat a month (annual), about €35 [15] | Standard CNC parts, 3D files |
| CloudNC Quote Agent [9] | CNC quotes from 3D models | Free tier, then plans by parts per month | Low volumes of CNC parts |
| DigiFabster [10] | Instant-quote customer portal | From $335 a month outside North America, plus processing fees | You sell online to many small buyers |
| Oroox [3] | Quoting suite for contract manufacturers | From €990 a month, 12-month term | Several processes, a sales team |
| Quotation Factory [2] | Sheet-metal and machining quoting suite | €1,870 a month plus €5,490 setup | High volumes of sheet metal and machining |
| Business Central Sales Order Agent [4] [5] [6] | Email RFQ to sales quote inside the ERP | About 1,650 credits per 100 requests | You already run Business Central |
| Custom quoting agent (GETMILK) | Email, drawings, capability check, ERP, draft reply | Setup from €4,900 plus €290 a month per plant (ours) | Mixed RFQs, own ERP data, several languages |
Two things stand out. First, most job-shop platforms do not publish prices at all: Paperless Parts asks you to contact sales [11]. Second, over three years the published list prices and ours land in the same order of magnitude. GETMILK's arithmetic for 36 months, excluding VAT: Quotation Factory €5,490 + 36 × €1,870 = €72,810 [2]; Oroox 36 × €990 = €35,640 [3]; GETMILK's RFQ automation €4,900 + 36 × €290 = €15,340 (our prices). The cheapest line is not the answer: the choice should follow where your hours go, not the monthly fee.
Which one fits a machine shop, a mould maker or an EMS plant?
Machine shops. If most parts are prismatic or turned, arrive as STEP files and repeat, CNC quoting software is the cheaper answer. If they arrive as scanned PDFs with customer standards attached, the bottleneck is reading and checking, and an agent pays off first. Either way, the price still comes from your machine-hour rate, setup and margin; how to price a machined part sets out that model.
Mould makers. Every mould is a one-off, and the quote depends on the part geometry, cavities, steel and runner system. No off-the-shelf tool prices a mould from a part drawing on its own. What an agent can do is assemble the quote: read the part data and the customer's specification, pull comparable past moulds from your records and prepare the cost sheet for the engineer. The cost drivers are in how much an injection mould costs in Europe.
EMS plants. Quotes start from a bill of materials, not a drawing. The work is matching part numbers, checking availability and prices, and flagging obsolete or long-lead components. An agent that reads the customer's BOM and fills your costing sheet saves the most time here; CNC quoting tools do not apply.
Does your ERP already do this?
Sometimes, and you should check first. Cegid includes its Pulse AI assistant, which answers questions about your company's data, in every PHC GO plan [12]. Microsoft's Business Central has a Sales Order Agent that reads incoming requests, including attachments, and prepares sales quotes for a person to review [4]. These cover generic sales tasks inside the ERP. They do not check a technical drawing against your plant's capabilities. If your ERP has the data but not the workflow, a connection through an MCP server lets an agent use it without replacing anything.
Is a quoting agent high-risk under the AI Act?
No. The EU AI Act lists its high-risk uses in Annex III, and pricing quotes for industrial parts is not among them, while using AI to manage or evaluate workers is [13]. The transparency duties in Article 50, which tell people when they are dealing with AI, apply from 2 August 2026 [13]. The high-risk rules for Annex III uses were postponed to 2 December 2027 by the 2026 Digital Omnibus [14], and the list itself did not change. Keep a person approving every quote that leaves the company and log what the agent did.
How to decide in five questions
- How many RFQs a month? Below a few dozen, a spreadsheet and a disciplined routine may be enough. See how to respond to an RFQ in 24 hours.
- What arrives? Clean 3D files point to software. Emails with PDFs and specifications point to an agent.
- Where is the price logic? In software rules, or in one estimator's head and an Excel sheet?
- Which ERP? If it is Business Central, try the Sales Order Agent first.
- Who will own it? Someone must maintain the rates and review the drafts, whichever you choose.
What to do next
- Count and sort last month's RFQs. How many arrived, how many as clean 3D files and how many as PDFs in emails, and how many hours went into each. If most are clean 3D CNC or sheet-metal parts, trial a quoting tool first; several in the table have a free tier or a monthly plan.
- Check what your ERP already includes. If you run Business Central or PHC GO, test the built-in assistant on ten real requests before buying anything else. With the Portuguese manufacturing hour at €16.5 on average [7], a tool that does not free real estimator hours will not pay back, whoever sells it.
- If your RFQs are mixed, PDF-heavy and multilingual, GETMILK builds the agent version: RFQ and quoting automation puts every RFQ in one queue, checks completeness and capability, and drafts the quote from your own rules, from €4,900 to set up and €290 a month per plant, excluding VAT, fixed in writing, with the code and data yours. To test one workflow first, an AI agent pilot starts at €3,900.
References
- Werk24. Pricing: PMI extraction and RFQ feasibility (accessed 27 September 2026)
- Quotation Factory. Pricing (accessed 27 September 2026)
- Oroox. Pricing: Oroox Manufacturing Commerce Cloud (accessed 27 September 2026)
- Microsoft Learn. Sales Order Agent overview (Business Central) (21 July 2026)
- Microsoft Learn. Manage consumption-based billing (Business Central) (4 February 2026)
- Microsoft Learn. Pay-as-you-go meters (Power Platform) (14 August 2026)
- Eurostat. Labour cost levels by NACE Rev. 2 activity (lc_lci_lev), manufacturing, 2025 (updated 23 April 2026)
- Toolpath. Toolpath pricing: plans for shops and developers (accessed 27 September 2026)
- CloudNC. CNC quoting software for machine shops (Quote Agent) (accessed 27 September 2026)
- DigiFabster. Pricing (accessed 27 September 2026)
- Paperless Parts. Pricing request (accessed 27 September 2026)
- Cegid. Cegid PHC GO: planos e preços (accessed 27 September 2026)
- Official Journal of the European Union. Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (Artificial Intelligence Act), Article 50, Article 113 and Annex III (12 July 2024)
- Official Journal of the European Union. Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 (Digital Omnibus on AI) (24 July 2026)
- European Central Bank. Euro foreign exchange reference rate, US dollar (EXR.D.USD.EUR.SP00.A) (25 September 2026)
- Eurostat. Enterprises using AI technologies, by size class (isoc_eb_ai), 2025 (2025 data, accessed 28 September 2026)
- European Investment Bank. EIB Investment Survey 2025: Portugal overview (9 December 2025)
Questions people ask
- What is the best quoting software for a small machine shop?
- It depends on what arrives. For standard CNC parts sent as 3D files, per-seat tools such as Toolpath ($40 per seat a month, billed annually) or CloudNC's Quote Agent are the cheapest start. For RFQs that arrive as emails with PDF drawings and customer standards, the bottleneck is reading and checking, and an AI quoting agent connected to your ERP saves more hours.
- How much does quoting software cost?
- Published prices on 27 September 2026: Werk24 drawing reading €0.95 per page; Toolpath $40 per seat a month; DigiFabster from $335 a month outside North America plus processing fees; Oroox from €990 a month on a 12-month term; Quotation Factory €1,870 a month plus €5,490 setup. Paperless Parts does not publish prices.
- Can AI read technical drawings to quote?
- Yes, for most PDF drawings. Drawing-reading APIs such as Werk24 extract the title block, dimensions, tolerances and material. An agent then checks the data against your capabilities and prices it from your own rules. A person should approve every quote before it is sent.
- Does my ERP already have an AI quoting agent?
- Business Central has a Sales Order Agent that reads requests, including PDF attachments, checks availability and prepares sales quotes for review; Microsoft's example uses 1,650 Copilot Credits for 100 requests. Cegid includes the Pulse AI assistant in PHC GO plans. Neither checks a technical drawing against your plant's capabilities.
- How much does an AI quoting agent cost?
- With GETMILK, RFQ and quoting automation starts at €4,900 to set up and €290 a month per plant. A one-workflow AI agent pilot starts at €3,900 and an agent that reads and writes through the ERP at €7,900. Prices exclude VAT and are fixed in writing.
- Is an AI quoting agent high-risk under the EU AI Act?
- No. Quoting industrial parts is not in Annex III of the AI Act. The transparency duties of Article 50 apply from 2 August 2026, so tell people when they deal with AI, keep a person approving quotes and log what the agent does.