Qobra vs Compa Comparison: Everything You Need to Know Before Choosing

Compa is a cloud-based software solution that helps architecture and engineering firms estimate and manage project costs. Design practices commonly face difficulty in pricing their services accurately, since fees must reflect the time of different professionals across project phases, and overruns are often only discovered when it is too late to correct them. Compa addresses this problem by linking fee estimation to ongoing project control, so that firms can prepare credible proposals based on historical data and then monitor actual effort and costs against the original budget throughout delivery, improving profitability and decision-making. The estimating function enables firms to break projects into phases and tasks, assign roles and hourly rates, and calculate fees using structured templates that reflect how the practice typically works. Past project data can inform new estimates, helping teams become more consistent and realistic over time. Once a project is won, the budget becomes the baseline for tracking, and team members record time against tasks, allowing managers to compare planned and actual hours and identify deviations early. Dashboards summarise the financial status of each project and of the portfolio as a whole, highlighting margin, progress and resource usage. Invoicing support helps firms bill according to agreed milestones or progress, while reports provide insight into which project types, clients and phases are most profitable. Resource planning features help practice leaders understand workload across the team and schedule staff effectively. As a cloud application, Compa is accessible from a browser without local installation, and data is stored centrally for collaboration among partners, project managers and administrative staff. The product is aimed primarily at small and mid-sized architecture studios, engineering consultancies and related design practices, particularly in European markets, that want a focused alternative to generic accounting tools or spreadsheets for fee management. Buyers should confirm integrations with accounting software and language support during evaluation. Pricing starts from around EUR 79 per month with a free trial; there is no permanently free version.