Best AI quoting software in 2026: 12 tools for manufacturers and distributors

Morsa publishes this guide. It ranks its own product first for quotes that stall on supplier prices and follow-up. Morsa is software with an AI agent that works in your ERP, email and Teams: it reads the RFQ, asks suppliers for prices, drafts the quote and follows it up, and a person approves what goes out. We read every other vendor’s features and prices on its own site on 8 November 2026; “quote only” means the vendor publishes no price.

Quick answer

• Quotes that stall on supplier prices, past jobs and follow-up: Morsa (our product). Priced per pilot, not per seat.

• CNC and sheet metal shops quoting new parts from 3D models: Paperless Parts. Quote only [1].

• Shops that only get PDF drawings, specs and BOMs: Customiser, pay as you go, or Mavlon for full bid packages [9][10].

• Distributors matching long, messy RFQs to a catalog: Proton.ai or Distro. Both quote only [3][4].

• Distributors whose quotes arrive by email, phone and at the counter: Canals. Quote only [5].

• Laser cutting job shops: Tempus Tools, $75 to $375 a month per quoting user, billed yearly [11].

• On JobBOSS, E2, ProShop or Global Shop: Paperless Parts lists live integrations with all four [12]; Morsa works with them too.

The 12 best AI quoting tools, ranked

Prices read on 8 November 2026.

1. Morsa

• Best for: Quotes that wait on supplier prices and follow-up

• What the AI does: Reads the RFQ, pulls past jobs and costs, asks suppliers for prices, drafts, writes to the ERP, follows up

• Price: Pilot first, then a share of measured savings

2. Paperless Parts

• Best for: CNC and sheet metal job shops

• What the AI does: Reads 3D part files for setups, features and volume removal, then prices with your rules

• Price: Quote only, not per seat [1]

3. Proton.ai

• Best for: Industrial and MRO distributors

• What the AI does: Matches messy requests to the catalog, applies customer pricing

• Price: Quote only [3]

4. Distro

• Best for: HVAC, plumbing and industrial distributors

• What the AI does: Reads emails, PDFs, Excel and handwritten notes, applies contract pricing from the ERP

• Price: Quote only [4]

5. Canals

• Best for: Distributors quoting by email, phone and counter

• What the AI does: Tells orders from quote requests, turns calls into quotes

• Price: Quote only [5]

6. Mercura

• Best for: Technical distributors and manufacturers

• What the AI does: Turns bills of quantities and tenders into ERP-ready quotes

• Price: Quote only [6]

7. BoltWise

• Best for: Fastener and industrial distributors

• What the AI does: Maps customer and supplier part numbers to yours

• Price: Quote only [7]

8. Customiser

• Best for: Shops quoting from 2D drawings, specs and BOMs

• What the AI does: Reads the documents into a priced draft

• Price: $0.10 a credit [9]

9. Mavlon

• Best for: Custom manufacturers bidding on packages

• What the AI does: Reads bid packages and spec books, ties each line to its page

• Price: Yearly plan sized to bid volume [10]

10. Tempus Tools

• Best for: Laser cutting job shops

• What the AI does: Nests 2D and 3D files, prices cut, fold and coating

• Price: $75 to $375 a user a month, yearly [11]

11. HyperQuote

• Best for: HVAC/R and plumbing distributors

• What the AI does: Turns drawing sets into a takeoff and bill of materials

• Price: $299 to $1,499 a month [8]

12. Arzana

• Best for: Manufacturers who want a custom agent

• What the AI does: Builds an agent per shop that reads RFQs and drafts quotes in the ERP

• Price: Quote only [13]

Why Morsa is first. It does the waiting around the estimate: it asks suppliers and outside processors for prices from your own mailbox, reads their replies, and follows the quote up after it goes out. We make it, so test it on your own RFQs like any other tool here.

What the table cannot carry:

• Paperless Parts prices the part. Supplier sub-quotes and the follow-up still sit with people. It is not priced by seats, and it says price ranges on third-party sites are wrong [1].

• Proton.ai says that in one distributor’s test it matched 85% of parts on the first try, against 68% for another point solution and 40% for an in-house build [3]. That is a vendor-published figure, not an industry number.

• Customiser bills in credits: a credit is its unit of document processing, and a quote uses more credits as the drawings get longer and more complex. No seat licence, no minimum; reading DXF and STEP files needs Enterprise [9].

• Tempus Tools charges per active quoting user ($100, $300 or $500 billed monthly). Extra quoting users are 50% off and non-quoting users are free [11].

• HyperQuote includes 200, 600 or 2,000 pages a month with unlimited users; extra pages cost $0.75 to $1.50 [8].

Also worth a look:

Which AI quoting tools work with JobBOSS, E2, ProShop and Global Shop

From each vendor’s own integrations page on 8 November 2026:

Paperless Parts

• JobBOSS or JobBOSS2: Yes, both

• E2 Shop: Yes (on-premise)

• ProShop: Yes

• Global Shop: Yes

Tempus Tools

• JobBOSS or JobBOSS2: Not listed

• E2 Shop: Not listed

• ProShop: Not listed

• Global Shop: Not listed

Customiser, Mavlon, Arzana

• JobBOSS or JobBOSS2: No ERP list published

• E2 Shop: No ERP list published

• ProShop: No ERP list published

• Global Shop: No ERP list published

Morsa

• JobBOSS or JobBOSS2: Yes

• E2 Shop: Yes

• ProShop: Yes

• Global Shop: Yes

Paperless Parts also lists Epicor, ECI M1, Fulcrum, Infor VISUAL and SyteLine, MIE Trak Pro, Plex and others [12]. Tempus Tools lists Fulcrum, Factory, ECI M1, QuickBooks and Xero, plus Zapier [18]. Mavlon treats ERP integration as extra scope; Arzana says it builds the connection if your ERP is not on its list [10][13]. The distributor tools connect to distributor ERPs instead: BoltWise lists Prophet 21, INxSQL, Infor CloudSuite Distribution and The Business Edge [7].

Where the time goes

Single machined component

• By hand: Up to 2 hours

• With AI: 15 minutes

• Source: Paperless Parts [2]

Complex assembly

• By hand: Up to 4 days

• With AI: 4 hours

• Source: Paperless Parts [2]

Distributor RFQ

• By hand: 45 minutes

• With AI: 90 seconds

• Source: Distro [4]

Tender quote, one named customer

• By hand: 2 days

• With AI: 2 hours

• Source: Mercura [6]

These are vendors’ own figures. The arithmetic is rarely the slow part. Finding the last similar job, waiting on a plating price and retyping lines are. For every quoting tool for job shops, including ERP modules and CAD costing, see manufacturing quoting software; for distributor match rates, see AI quoting software for distributors.

What an AI quote saves: a worked example (our estimate)

A 40-person job shop answers 30 RFQs a week at 2 hours each. This is the best case, using Paperless Parts’ 15-minute figure for a single part [2]. Assemblies and outside processes will save less.

That is about 2,600 estimator hours a year (52.5 hours x 50 weeks). The second number to find is the work you lose to slow quotes: count how many of your last 50 RFQs went out after the customer’s deadline.

How to test AI quoting software on your own RFQs

1. Pull your last 50 RFQs, won and lost, with the quotes you sent.

2. Run them through each finalist. Score the share of lines or parts priced right without edits, and the minutes a person spent reviewing.

3. Check the slow steps. Does the tool ask for the supplier or plating price itself, and read the reply? Does it write the quote into your ERP?

4. Check follow-up. Who chases the quote on day two, and who enters the won order?

5. Decide what always goes to a person: prices below your margin floor, lead times you cannot hit, substitutions on tight specs.

Our free RFQ template and quote template are a starting point for the documents themselves.

Where the remaining manual work goes: supplier prices and follow-up

Example: at 8:00 an RFQ for 200 anodized brackets reaches the estimator’s Outlook.

1. Morsa reads the drawing, finds the three closest past jobs in JobBOSS2 with their actual run times, and prices the bar from the latest supplier quote.

2. Under a rule the estimator approved for outside-process requests, it emails the anodizer for price and lead time from her mailbox.

3. At 10:40 the anodizer replies. Morsa adds freight and margin and drafts the quote; the estimator approves it and it goes out before lunch, saved in the ERP.

4. On Wednesday it drafts her follow-up; when the PO arrives, it enters the order for her to check.

Morsa works with whatever ERP you run, including JobBOSS2, Global Shop, ProShop and E2. It starts with a pilot on one live problem; it is free when no implementation work is needed, then priced as a share of the savings measured in your own numbers. Book a pilot on your own RFQs.

Which one to pick

Sources

1. Paperless Parts, Facts and FAQ: https://www.paperlessparts.com/facts/ (read 8 November 2026)

2. Paperless Parts, homepage: https://www.paperlessparts.com/ (read 8 November 2026)

3. Proton.ai, Quote and order entry automation for distributors: https://www.proton.ai/order-and-quote-entry (read 8 November 2026)

4. Distro, AI quote automation and order entry; Implementation and pricing: https://distro.app/quoting-order-entry and https://distro.app/implementation-and-pricing (read 8 November 2026)

5. Canals, Distributor order entry: https://www.canals.ai/products/distributor-order-entry (read 8 November 2026)

6. Mercura, homepage: https://www.mercura.ai/ (read 8 November 2026)

7. BoltWise, homepage and ERP integrations: https://getboltwise.com/ (read 8 November 2026)

8. HyperQuote, Pricing: https://www.hyperquote.io/pricing (read 8 November 2026)

9. Customiser, Pricing: https://customiser.ai/pricing (read 8 November 2026)

10. Mavlon, Pricing: https://mavlon.co/pricing (read 8 November 2026)

11. Tempus Tools, Pricing: https://www.tempustools.com/pricing (read 8 November 2026)

12. Paperless Parts, Integrations: https://www.paperlessparts.com/integrations/ (read 8 November 2026)

13. Arzana, homepage: https://www.arzana.ai/ (read 8 November 2026)

14. Salesforce, Revenue Cloud pricing: https://www.salesforce.com/sales/revenue-lifecycle-management/pricing/ (read 8 November 2026)

15. DigiFabster, Pricing: https://digifabster.com/pricing/ (read 8 November 2026)

16. Toolpath, Pricing: https://toolpath.com/pricing (read 8 November 2026)

17. Quotable, Pricing: https://getquotable.ai/pricing (read 8 November 2026)

18. Tempus Tools, Integrations: https://www.tempustools.com/integrations (read 8 November 2026)