What you get · free on Android
Four things that decide whether this goes well.
Building a home is the largest purchase most people ever make, and almost everyone makes it with less information than they would use to buy a phone. Archst gives you the four things that actually change the outcome.
1. Know the number before you are committed
You will be asked for a budget on day one, by an architect, a contractor, or your family. Most people answer with a figure they got from a relative who built in another city three years ago, and spend the next two years finding out what it was worth.
Answer seven ordinary questions and you get an itemised cost band for the house you actually want — structure, finishes, electrical, plumbing, kitchen, each priced separately, adjusted for your city and the way you want it built. Before you have spoken to anyone, and without giving anybody your phone number.
You can argue with a quote
A contractor's figure means nothing on its own. Against an itemised band you can say your carpentry is 40% above market and be right.
You can size the loan properly
Borrowing against a guess is how people end up ₹15 lakh short with a roof half on. A band gives you a top end to plan against.
You find out early if it does not fit
If your budget will not build what you have drawn, the app says so on day one — when changing the design is still free.
You can compare two plots
Plan the same house in two cities and see what the location alone costs you. It is a 45% swing between the dearest and cheapest cities.
2. Stop paying ahead of the work
This is the one that saves real money, and almost nobody is told about it. The usual way people lose money on an Indian site is not an inflated rate — it is having paid 70% of the budget for 40% of the work. A contractor in that position has no reason left to finish, and every reason to move his crew to the next job.
Type a payment into Archst before you make it and it tells you whether that payment puts you ahead of the site, what should be visibly finished first, and whether it breaks one of your budget lines. If the answer is no, there is a button that says so.
Before the build starts
It judges the mobilisation advance instead: around 10% is customary, 20% is high, past 25% you are funding somebody else's business.
At every stage after
You get the specific things to look at before releasing money — the ones that cannot be checked once concrete has gone in.
3. Get three quotes you can actually compare
Everyone is told to get three quotes. Nobody is told why theirs come back incomparable. One is a rate per square foot, one is a single all-in number, one is eleven lines on a letterhead — and none of them says whether the compound wall is included. So you pick the lowest, and find out over the next year that it was lowest because it contained the least.
Archst writes the brief for you out of your own plan, and you send the same one to all three on WhatsApp. Your budget is deliberately left out of it, because a contractor told the budget quotes the budget.
4. Know where you are, all the way through
The estimate is the easy half. The hard half is the eighteen months after, when money leaves in pieces and nobody is adding it up until it is too late to do anything.
Logging a payment takes about ten seconds — type 1.2L or 85000, whichever you would say out loud. Then one screen tells you how much has gone, what is left, and which trades are running hot.
A stage guide on your real dates
What is happening on site this month, what to check, and what usually goes wrong with it — bound to the day you actually started.
Decisions priced before you make them
Granite or vitrified tile, veneer or laminate: see what changing your mind costs, and how many days it adds, before you say yes.
Advice for your plot
Overhang depths, whether the roof is worth insulating and which wall takes the rain — from your city's own climate.
Vastu, reported not preached
Every prescription next to what building science says and whether the two agree. Nothing is blocked or scored. You decide.
Who it is for
- Building your first house
- You have a plot, a rough idea and no way to sanity-check any number you are given. Start here — the plan takes four minutes.
- Already under construction
- Log what you have paid so far and find out immediately whether you are running ahead of the work. This is the most common reason people install it.
- Doing up a flat
- Interiors are priced as their own project, with their own trades and stages — not as a fraction of a house.
- Comparing plots or cities
- Plan the same house twice and see what the location costs you, before you buy the land.
- Working with an architect already
- Use it to check the figures you are given and to keep your own record of what has been paid. It does not need to be your only source.
Nothing you type leaves your phone
No account, no sign-up, no server. Your budget, your payments and your checklists live in one file on your device, and we cannot read them because we never receive them. Device backup is switched off deliberately, and one button erases everything.
Questions
Will it work for my project?
If you are building a house, furnishing a new flat, renovating, or doing up a single room in India, yes — those are the four project types, and each is priced with its own trades and stages rather than as a smaller version of a new build.
Is it accurate for my city?
There are 21 Indian cities with their own rates, and two general bands for everywhere else, so a plot in a town that is not on the list still gets a real figure. Labour and cartage vary by close to 50% across the country, which is why a national average is wrong almost everywhere.
Do I need to be technical to use it?
No. It asks seven ordinary questions — what you are building, the style you like, your city, how many bedrooms, what you want in the house, how well finished, and your budget if you have one. Everything technical happens behind that.
What does it cost?
Nothing. The estimate, the tracker, the payment checks, the scope sheet, the stage guide and the handbook are free, with no account, no ads and nothing to unlock. You only pay if you ask a person to do something for you.
Four minutes, and you will know
No sign-up, no email, nothing to cancel. Answer seven questions and the last screen is your whole plan — yours to keep whether or not you ever open it again.