Best COI tracking software for small general contractors (2026)

A small general contractor usually has the same COI problem as a large one, with a fraction of the people. Thirty to a hundred subcontractors, a few active jobs, and certificates that land in a project manager's inbox between everything else. Nobody's title says compliance, so the review happens when someone has time, which is usually after the trade is already on site.

This guide compares COI tracking software for that situation. It covers the eight tools in our full comparison of COI tracking software for construction, sorted by what a small GC can start on, what it costs, and what the cheaper plans leave for you to do. Every price and feature comes from each vendor's own pages, linked under Sources.

What a small GC actually needs

Skip the feature grid for a minute. For a small general contractor, four things decide whether a tool helps or becomes one more inbox:

1. It reads the endorsements. Expiration reminders are easy. The gaps that cost money are a missing completed operations endorsement or an umbrella below the owner's limit. See how to check a contractor COI against your project requirements.
2. Subcontractors can upload without an account. If the trade's broker has to sign up for something, the COI arrives late or not at all.
3. Someone chases the broker. Either the tool tells the broker exactly what's missing, or a service does it for you.
4. Setup takes days, not a project. You need your standard requirements in, plus a way to handle the one owner who asks for more.

Small-GC options at a glance

The options, by how you'd start

Start free: bcs, TrustLayer or Certificial

bcs is free up to 25 vendors with every software feature, which makes it the easiest way to test real COI tracking on a small job list. Past that, self-service is $11.40 per vendor per year, so 60 subcontractors runs about $684 a year at the published rate. Full service, where bcs analysts call vendors and their agents, starts at $17.80 per vendor per year with a $10,000 annual minimum, which puts it out of reach for most small GCs. bcs isn't built only for construction.

TrustLayer is free up to 50 vendors. Paid tiers are by quote, and the Procore, CMiC and Vista integrations start at the Pro tier. Their endorsement review shows the page behind each result and a person confirms it.

Certificial is free up to 5 suppliers, with Professional from $99 a month. It works differently: certificates come from the vendor's insurance agent, and Certificial flags cancellations and limit changes as they happen. That only works when the agent is on their network, and the product is aimed more at enterprise procurement than construction.

Start cheap and construction-specific: Billy or PINS Advantage

Billy is built for construction only and starts at $500 a year, with a free trial. Requirements are set per project, renewal requests go out three months, one month and the day before a policy expires, and Billy also tracks lien waivers and certified payroll if you need them. A managed plan puts their reviewers on every certificate.

PINS Advantage starts around $300 a month with unlimited users and onboarding, and most annual contracts come in at $7,500 or less. There are no feature tiers. It reads endorsement wording against your contract requirements and your team approves each result. It's the most expensive published option here, and the deepest on wording.

Quote only: Forsured, Jones and illumend

Forsured reads each COI and endorsement against the requirements of the project the subcontractor is on, and puts the broker in a shared workspace where they see the gap, the requirement and the project. A person on your team approves or waives every result. Onboarding is by waitlist, pricing is by quote, and there's no managed review service. You can test it free with a free COI risk check: send one project's requirements and a contractor COI or two.

Jones prices per vendor record per property, billed annually, and never charges vendors or subcontractors. It fits small GCs that also own property. Most broker follow-up sits in the Operator tier.

illumend, the AI platform from myCOI, lets AI make the compliance call and escalates only what it can't resolve. Pricing isn't published.

The cost a small GC forgets

The subscription is the small number. The big one is time. bcs, which sells COI tracking software, estimates manual tracking at about $36,400 a year: 20 hours a week at $35 an hour. That's a vendor's estimate built on assumptions, and our COI Journal report takes the math apart and shows how to build your own. The point holds either way: if a free plan still leaves a project manager reading endorsements and emailing brokers, it isn't free.

Two quick ways to size it:

• Count the COIs. Subcontractors times active projects times policies that renew in a year. That's how many certificates someone has to read.
• Count the chases. How many came back wrong the first time last year? Each one is a round trip with a broker.

How to pick in a week

1. List your next three projects and what each owner requires.
2. Pick two tools from the table: one free or low-priced, one that reads endorsements against each project.
3. Send both the same three real COIs, including one you know is short on completed operations or umbrella limits. See which COI tracking software checks endorsements.
4. Watch who catches the gap, how the broker hears about it, and how long the fix takes.

Check contractor insurance requirements by state too. Workers' comp thresholds and anti-indemnity rules change what you can ask for.

About this guide

This guide was written by the Forsured team. Forsured makes one of the tools described here. No vendor paid to be included or saw this page before it was published. Product and pricing facts come from each vendor's own public pages as of Nov 11, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with each vendor.