Time and cost
AutoMEP vs hiring drafters: where MEP teams save time and money
A drafter in the US earns a median of $34.40 an hour in mechanical work and $36.96 in electrical work, before benefits. Hiring a freelance AutoCAD designer generally costs $25 to $50 an hour, according to Upwork. AutoMEP is a monthly subscription, from $39 a month, that makes the edits MEP drafters spend most of their week on: device layouts, duct and pipe runs, tags, revision clouds, schedules and sheets. You describe the change in plain English, and it edits your DWG or RVT file. It won't replace the drafter who produces a full set from an engineer's sketches, but it can take the revision work off their desk.
Every figure on this page links to its public source, with the period the data covers. The scenarios further down are illustrations, not promises: your own rates, drawings and review time decide what you save.
What does an MEP drafter cost?
Median US wages for drafters, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS, May 2025). Half of drafters earn more and half earn less, and pay varies a lot by city and experience.
The wage isn't the whole cost of an employee. Across private industry, benefits make up 30% of what an employer spends on each worker, on top of the wage (BLS, June 2026). On the freelance side, hiring an AutoCAD designer generally costs $25 to $50 an hour (Upwork, October 2026).
| Role | Per hour | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Mechanical drafters | $34.40 | $71,550 |
| Electrical and electronics drafters | $36.96 | $76,870 |
| All drafters | $32.74 | $68,090 |
Median wages, before benefits. Source: BLS, May 2025.
Where drafting time goes on an MEP job, and what AutoMEP does with it
Most of an MEP drafter's week isn't spent on new design. It goes to placing, routing, tagging and redrawing on drawings that already exist. AutoMEP takes a request in plain English for each of these and edits your DWG or RVT.
- Device layouts
- By handPlacing receptacles, lights, detectors and diffusers room by room, keeping them off doors and walls, then doing it again when the plan changes.
- With AutoMEPName the rooms and the devices. AutoMEP places them along the walls of each room, out of doorways and clear of door swings, and reuses the symbols already in your drawing when it has them. Power plans with receptacles and homeruns
- Circuiting and homeruns
- By handWiring devices together, drawing homeruns back to the panel around walls and furniture, and writing circuit call-outs.
- With AutoMEPAsk for the devices and the panel in one sentence. The devices in a room are wired together and the homerun runs back to the panel with an arrow and a circuit call-out. Power plans with receptacles and homeruns
- Duct and pipe routing
- By handRouting supply, return and water lines around walls, stairs and furniture, sizing each run and labeling it.
- With AutoMEPName the rooms and the airflow or the fixtures. AutoMEP routes around what's on the plan in straight runs, sizes each run and labels it on standard layers. Routing around walls and furniture
- Tags, labels and notes
- By handTagging every terminal, duct or fixture, then moving tags that land on top of each other.
- With AutoMEPAsk for the tags in your own words, such as every air terminal on a level with its flow. In Revit it loads a matching tag family first if the model doesn't have one. Tagging elements in a Revit model
- Revisions after the backgrounds change
- By handMoving runs and devices after the architect moves a wall, then clouding the change for the next issue.
- With AutoMEPDescribe what moved and what should follow it. Ask for a revision cloud as part of the change and AutoMEP clouds the area it actually touched. Revision clouds
- Sheets and PDFs
- By handSetting up layouts, viewports, scales and a legend sheet, then plotting the set.
- With AutoMEPAsk for sheets, or for permit drawings. You get sheets at a standard scale with a viewport framed to the drawing, plus a plotted PDF. Sheet setup and PDFs
- Schedules and bills of materials
- By handCounting devices and measuring runs by hand to fill in a table, then recounting after every change.
- With AutoMEPOn AutoCAD drawings, ask for a bill of materials. AutoMEP counts devices and blocks, adds up run lengths by layer, and adds the table plus a CSV. Bills of materials and schedules
The costs an hourly rate leaves out
Hiring in-house
- Benefits. Across private industry, benefits make up 30% of what an employer spends on each worker, on top of the wage.
- Recruiting and onboarding. Job ads, interviews, and the weeks before a new drafter knows your CAD standard and your engineers' habits.
- Software, hardware and a desk. A CAD seat and a workstation for every drafter, paid whether or not there's work that week.
- Idle time between projects. Salaried hours are paid in the quiet weeks too, and a busy week still has only so many of them.
Freelance or outsourced
- Briefing and handover. An NDA, your CAD standard, sample sheets, and often a paid pilot before the work comes back the way you want it.
- Packaging every request. Markups, a written brief and a file transfer for each round, however small the change.
- The queue. Work starts on their schedule and in their workday, so a small change can take days to come back.
- Checking the return. Someone on your team still reviews every package and sends corrections, which starts another cycle.
Side by side
| In-house drafter | Freelance or outsourced | AutoMEP | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How you pay | In-house drafter:Salary or hourly wage, plus benefits | Freelance or outsourced:By the hour, the sheet or the project | AutoMEP:A flat monthly plan |
| Typical cost | In-house drafter:Median $34.40 an hour for mechanical drafters, before benefits | Freelance or outsourced:$25 to $50 an hour for a freelance AutoCAD designer on Upwork | AutoMEP:Starter $39, Pro $99 or Team $249 a month |
| Getting started | In-house drafter:Recruiting, onboarding and a CAD seat | Freelance or outsourced:NDA, standards handover, often a pilot | AutoMEP:Sign up, upload a DWG or RVT, start a free trial |
| When work starts | In-house drafter:When the drafter is free | Freelance or outsourced:When the request reaches the front of their queue | AutoMEP:When you send the request, nights and weekends included |
| Your files | In-house drafter:Stay in the office | Freelance or outsourced:Go to an outside firm's workstations | AutoMEP:Stay in your AutoMEP account |
| Best at | In-house drafter:Full sets, judgment calls, coordination meetings | Freelance or outsourced:Large one-off production packages | AutoMEP:Repeat edits, revision rounds, tags, schedules and sheets |
| Who checks the work | In-house drafter:The engineer of record | Freelance or outsourced:The engineer of record | AutoMEP:The engineer of record |
AutoMEP's Starter plan is $39 a month, a little more than one hour of a mechanical drafter's median wage ($34.40) and less than two hours at the low end of freelance rates. Team, at $249 a month, costs less than a single working day of that median wage, and the wage leaves out benefits. A failed job, or one that changes nothing, doesn't count against your usage.
See all three plans on the pricing section, or read how usage works in How does usage work?
Three everyday scenarios
These are illustrations of common MEP work, not measurements. What you save depends on your drawings, your rates and how long your review takes. For real results on real drawings, see the before and after examples.
A revision round after the architect moves walls
The architect issues new backgrounds. Two rooms changed shape, and the supply run and the receptacles in them no longer fit.
With a drafter
A drafter compares the backgrounds, moves the run, resizes it, moves the devices, retags, and clouds each change. With an outside firm, add writing the brief, sending the files and waiting for the return before anyone can check it.
With AutoMEP
You type what moved and what should follow it, for example "move the supply run to the north wall of the Kitchen, keep the receptacles out of the new doorway, and cloud both changes for the next revision." AutoMEP makes the edit on your file and writes notes on what to check.
What still takes your time
Reviewing the result in the viewer or in AutoCAD before it goes out, the same check you'd give a drafter's work.
A day of device layouts
A tenant fit-out needs receptacles in every office on the floor, with homeruns back to a new panel.
With a drafter
For a drafter this can take most of a day: placing each receptacle, keeping it out of doorways, wiring the rooms, drawing the homeruns and writing every call-out. Billed hourly, every one of those hours is on the invoice.
With AutoMEP
You name the rooms, the device and the panel in one request. AutoMEP places the receptacles along the walls, wires each room and runs the homerun back to the panel with its call-out.
What still takes your time
Checking that the device count and the circuiting match your design intent.
Tags and a schedule before an issue
The set goes out tomorrow. Every air terminal on the level needs a flow tag, and the electrical sheets need a bill of materials.
With a drafter
Tagging is slow, careful work, and a bill of materials means counting every device and measuring every run by hand, then counting again if anything changes before the issue.
With AutoMEP
Ask for the tags and the bill of materials in plain words. AutoMEP places the tags with their values, and on AutoCAD drawings it adds the table and a CSV you can open in Excel.
What still takes your time
Spot-checking the tags and the counts against the plan.
Where a drafter is still the better call
- Producing a complete drawing set from an engineer's sketches and markups, start to finish.
- Shop drawings and fabrication detail, where judgment on every connection is the product.
- Coordination between trades. AutoMEP doesn't run clash detection or compare one trade's drawing against another's.
- Sitting in coordination meetings, defending decisions, and owning a package.
- Revit work AutoMEP doesn't do yet: dimensions, hatching, revision clouds and bill of materials tables in a Revit model.
- Repairing a damaged drawing, or converting an AutoCAD drawing into a Revit model.
The full list is in What AutoMEP can't do.
Where AutoMEP saves the most
- Revision rounds on drawings you already have, especially the small ones that aren't worth a briefing package.
- The same edits over and over: reroutes, retags, device layouts, schedules and sheet updates.
- Work that shows up at the end of the day, since AutoMEP starts when you send the request.
- Keeping native files in your own account instead of sending them to an outside firm.
- A steady trickle of edits that would otherwise make every small change an hourly purchasing decision.
How to estimate your own savings
Industry averages only get you so far. Your own timesheets give a better answer, and it doesn't take long to work out.
List last month's edit work
Pull the revision rounds, layout changes, retags, schedules and sheet updates from last month's timesheets or job log.
Put your own hours on each
Use what each task actually took your drafter or your outside firm. Your timesheets beat any industry average.
Price those hours fully
For an employee, start from the wage and add benefits, which average 30% of compensation in private industry, plus software and overhead. For a freelancer or firm, use the invoices.
Keep the review time
Every result still needs an engineer's check, from a drafter or from AutoMEP. Leave that time in on both sides.
Compare against a plan, then test it
Set the remaining cost against a monthly plan, then run a real revision round on the free trial. Each project's time saved report gives a rough, deliberately low estimate of the drafting its delivered requests could have saved.
Read how the report works in What does the time saved report show?
Common questions
In the US, the median wage was $34.40 an hour for mechanical drafters and $36.96 for electrical and electronics drafters, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (May 2025). Across all drafters it was $32.74. Those are wages only. Benefits average 30% of an employer's compensation cost in private industry (June 2026), and recruiting, software and idle time come on top.
The median annual wage was $71,550 for mechanical drafters, $76,870 for electrical and electronics drafters and $68,090 for all drafters (Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025). The cost to the employer is higher once benefits, a CAD seat, hardware and recruiting are added.
Per hour, often yes. Upwork says hiring a freelance AutoCAD designer generally costs $25 to $50 an hour (October 2026), and offshore firms can go lower. The hourly rate leaves out the briefing, the standards handover, the wait in their queue, and your own time checking each return and sending corrections. For full drawing sets, outsourcing can be the better deal. For a steady stream of small edits, those extra steps tend to cost more than the drafting.
Not completely, and not today. AutoMEP takes on the repetitive part of the job: edits to existing DWG and RVT drawings, device layouts, duct and pipe runs, tags, revision clouds, schedules and sheets. It doesn't produce a full set from sketches, run clash detection, or stamp drawings, and every result needs the same review you'd give a drafter's work. Most teams use it so their drafters and engineers spend less of the week on revisions.
Starter is $39 a month, Pro $99 and Team $249, each with a free trial. Every job draws on your monthly usage, and a job that fails or changes nothing doesn't count.
Every project has a time saved report. For each delivered request it gives a rough estimate, in words, of the drafting the same edit would take by hand, and it keeps the estimate low on purpose. You can print it or save it as a PDF for your team or a client.
Yes. It edits DWG drawings and Revit RVT models in your browser, with nothing to install, and gives you back a native file that opens in AutoCAD or Revit. A few edits are DWG only for now, such as dimensions, hatching and bill of materials tables.
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Drafters, data for May 2025.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, data for June 2026.
- Upwork, Hire the Best AutoCAD Designers: how much does hiring an AutoCAD designer cost?, data for October 2026.
Try it on your next revision round
Take the change you'd hand to a drafter this week. Upload the DWG or RVT, describe it the way you'd mark up a print, and compare what comes back. The trial is free.
Start free trial