EstiMate turns your team's gut feelings into a defensible hour total — by having everyone rate relative complexity, not raw hours.
No upfront payment. Your first project estimation is free. See pricing
"How long will this take?" is the question every project starts with — and the one teams answer worst.
One person's guess
A single senior developer's hour estimate becomes the whole project's budget.
Anchoring bias
Once a number is said out loud, everyone else's opinion drifts toward it.
No paper trail
When the estimate is wrong, nobody can point to how it was calculated.
Two steps: relative complexity, then one hour anchor.
Step 1 — Rate complexity
Every estimator independently rates each work package on an 8-level complexity scale, from Trivial to Near impossible. No hours involved yet.
Step 2 — Anchor to real hours
Each estimator gives a real implementation-hour estimate for just their most complex Overseeable work package. That single number converts every complexity point in the project into hours.
The complexity scale
The same project, with up to 16 hours less estimating.
Take a typical project: 17 work packages, a clear scope and three engineers who know the domain. Estimating every package in hours and agreeing in a team meeting costs around 27 person-hours. EstiMate drops the meeting and the spreadsheet: 5 to 16 hours less.
Total estimation effort: 17 work packages, 3 engineers
Indicative figures, including estimating, reconciling differences and adding up the totals. For EstiMate, the darker part is the likely effort; the full bar counts only the savings we're sure of.
Curious what it means for your team? Calculate your time savings → Honest numbers, including what we're still measuring.
Estimating in hours
Estimating in complexities
The best of both
Complexity for speed, one hour anchor for a real budget.
Relative sizing still has to become hours or money in the end. EstiMate builds that step in, so you get the speed of complexities and an hour total you can plan and budget with.
You still need hours
One carefully estimated Overseeable work package anchors every complexity point to real hours.
Vague packages pile up at the top
Ratings of Very Complex or Near impossible are a clear signal to split a package before you commit.
Testing and documentation get forgotten
The calculated total includes testing and documentation allowances, so they are never left out. Project management, integration and the like are not added automatically: add them as work packages.
Built for anyone who has to put a number on the unknown.
Digital agencies
Scope client projects before signing a contract. Get every team member’s honest read on complexity without anchoring on a single senior developer’s gut feeling.
Product teams
Break a roadmap into work packages, invite the engineers who’ll build them, and get a defensible hour total to bring to planning and budget conversations.
Freelancers & consultants
Turn a vague brief into a list of work packages, estimate them together with a colleague, partner or the client’s technical contact, and hand the client a transparent, itemised total instead of a single scary number. The AI user adds an extra opinion, but never replaces the second estimator.
Connect your AI agent in minutes.
EstiMate has a built-in MCP server, so AI agents and tools that support MCP — such as Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor — can work with your projects on your behalf. They can never do more than you can yourself, and you can disconnect them at any time.
From brief to work packages
Hand your agent a project brief and let it create the project and break it down into estimable work packages.
Run the estimation
Invite estimators, follow their progress and compare the ratings during review — straight from your chat or IDE.
An extra, independent voice
Let the AI estimate the project itself as your company’s “AI user”. It sees no human ratings until it is done and never replaces your estimators.
Connect Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor in five steps. See how it works
From the field · Functional safety, embedded Linux
"We built an industrial embedded Linux system: a single board computer with a touch display, three CAN buses, Ethernet, SPE and USB, and a Category 3 functional safety architecture."
"We estimated it twice. Three experienced engineers and the project manager spent more than four hours going through every customer requirement, after each engineer had already studied them for hours. Separately, I split the work into packages and estimated them with the EstiMate method in about two hours, preparation included. Neither estimate used AI."
"The two totals turned out to be very close: about 7% apart."
Time spent estimating. The resulting engineering hours, excluding project management, were about 7% apart.
"We finally stopped arguing about hours and started discussing complexity — which turned out to be a much shorter conversation."
Frequently asked questions
People are unreliable at predicting absolute hours, especially on unfamiliar work. They are, however, very good at comparing two tasks and saying which is more complex. EstiMate uses that strength: everyone rates relative complexity, and a single calibration point (the "hour anchor") converts those ratings into real hours.
In a real industrial embedded Linux project with a Category 3 functional safety architecture, the project was estimated twice. Three engineers and the project manager went through every customer requirement in more than four hours of meeting, after hours of individual preparation. Separately, one person split the work into packages and estimated them with EstiMate in about two hours, preparation included. Neither estimate used AI, and the resulting engineering hours (excluding project management) were about 7% apart.
Each estimator picks their most complex "Overseeable" work package and gives a real, implementation-only hour estimate for just that one item. That single number is used to convert every complexity point in the project into hours — no more guessing hours for dozens of tasks.
The project manager or team lead sees every estimator’s ratings side by side, picks a final complexity per work package, and EstiMate calculates the total automatically.
Estimators never see each other’s ratings, so nobody can anchor the group. Only the project’s project manager or team lead, the company’s admins and the company owner see all ratings side by side in the review. Other companies never see your data.
The EstiMate server and database run in Frankfurt, Germany, in the EU, with daily backups kept for 14 days. Payments go through PayPal, so we never store card details. Written AI reports are off until your company turns them on; they send a project’s work packages and ratings, without names, to our AI provider Anthropic. On request, we delete your company’s data. The privacy policy has the details.
All traffic is encrypted, passwords are stored hashed, and every company only sees its own projects. AI assistants connected through MCP never get more rights than the user who connected them. EstiMate support can only look into your account when your company owner or an admin allows it, for at most 24 hours, and every support session is logged.
No. Estimators are invited by email with a unique link and estimate directly — no login required. Only project managers and company admins need accounts.
Registration is free and needs no upfront payment, and your first project estimation is free too. After that you pay €250 per project estimation, or €350 per month for unlimited estimations (excl. VAT). The pricing page has the details.
Yes. EstiMate has a built-in MCP server, so any AI agent or tool that supports MCP can work with your projects on your behalf — never with more rights than you have yourself. The connection details are available under AI connections after registration.
Yes — the full user manual covers registration, roles, projects, estimating and the calculation in detail. See the link below.
Register your company and invite your team in minutes.