Xactimate is Verisk's property claims estimating software — a platform restoration companies use to sketch damaged structures, price work line by line from local price lists and send the estimate to the adjuster or program reviewing it.
Why do restoration jobs require it?
The practical answer is shared data: Verisk says insurers responsible for at least one in two U.S. and Canadian property claims use its cost data.
What is Xactimate and who makes it?
Xactimate is Verisk's property claims estimating software for producing restoration estimates with sketches and project costs.
Verisk owns the platform and brands it inside its Xactware product family, and the estimates it produces are the priced scopes a restoration company sends to the adjuster or program reviewing the claim.
That shared data works in the other direction too: Verisk says more than 80% of contractors in the repair and remodeling industries who use computerized estimating use its cost data.
When the reviewer on the other side of the claim works from the same price data, an estimate built in their platform is one they can open, read and check line by line.
Both figures come from Verisk's own pricing research paper, not an independent survey, so treat them as the company's description of its market position.
The platform has also grown an AI layer.
Verisk markets XactAI inside Xactimate for line-item recommendations, automatic photo labeling and Sketch Scan floor-plan capture, plus XactRebuild for turning mitigation estimates into rebuild estimates.
Verisk describes its AI tools as built to support professionals rather than replace them, with a human-in-the-loop approach.
One boundary worth stating early: Xactimate is commercial software, not a license and not a school.
Using it is a job skill, and the credential around it is a vendor certification issued by Verisk — a different thing from a state license or a trade certification.
The restoration estimator career guide covers the role this software sits inside.
How the pricing database and line items work
The price database is the heart of the platform.
Verisk publishes separate localized Xactimate price lists for more than 460 areas across all 50 U.S. states and 10 Canadian provinces, with U.S. markets built from five-digit ZIP codes.
The lists are published monthly, and as often as biweekly during demand surges.
Each line item in a price list carries its cost parts with it.
Verisk's documentation says every price-list item contains the labor, material and equipment components behind the unit cost, and unit costs can include activities such as installation, tear-out or detach-and-reset.
The estimator selects the line for the work the loss requires, and the software prices it from the local list.
Verisk builds those numbers from two directions at once.
Its price research combines top-down unit-cost surveys — the primary method — with bottom-up time-and-material surveys.
The panel behind the bottom-up side is more than 50,000 suppliers, contractors and servicers, and Verisk also reviews submitted estimates, using cluster analysis to report a figure it calls a market price.
Where the top-down price exceeds the sum of the bottom-up costs, the difference is placed in a field called Market Conditions.
Two implications matter to the person writing estimates.
First, Verisk describes its published price as a reported market price for the area, and says Xactimate lets users create or modify any costs to match the job in front of them.
Second, users who believe a published price is wrong can file an Independent Verification Request with Verisk's pricing team, which may trigger a random-sample survey of local contractors.
Repeatable scope has its own mechanism: Verisk defines macros as saved lists of line items that can be retrieved and added to a room with a few keystrokes — a way to pull a repeatable scope into a sketch without rebuilding it line by line.
Which restoration roles use Xactimate daily?
The estimator is the seat that works in the platform day to day.
Restoration estimators scope the loss, sketch the structure, select line items and produce the estimate the company sends out for review — in mitigation, contents and rebuild work alike.
The platform's specialized modules map to the lanes that estimating work splits into.
Verisk describes XactScope as guided scoping, estimating and audit for water mitigation, roof and exterior projects.
On the personal-property side, XactContents is Verisk's contents estimating tool, with millions of vendor-specific items, tens of thousands of discontinued products, and automatic depreciation calculated from each item's life expectancy.
Field work has its own surface.
Verisk says Xactimate mobile lets a user receive an assignment, sketch the structure, estimate structure and contents, settle on site and upload from an iOS or Android device — a workflow that moves scoping onto the job site, where the damage is.
Who has to know it, then?
Treat that as a posting question rather than an industry rule — our research found no primary source for how many restoration jobs require the software.
What the verified record supports is the platform's footprint: Verisk's market claim about insurers and computerized-estimating contractors, and product surfaces built for mitigation scoping, contents pricing and rebuild estimating.
That combination is the practical logic behind a posting requirement: the estimate has to reach the reviewer in a form the reviewer works with.
How estimates flow between restorer, adjuster and TPA
Writing the estimate is half the job; moving it is the other half.
XactAnalysis is Verisk's claims-data and assignment platform: it monitors claims data to catch errors, report progress and benchmark performance, and the XactAnalysis Network exchanges estimate data between industry parties.
When an assignment comes through XactAnalysis, that network is the road the estimate travels: the restoration company connects to XactAnalysis, downloads the assignment, builds the estimate and the network exchanges the estimate data with the other party.
Verisk's own Level 1 certification objectives treat the first steps as entry-level knowledge: connecting to XactAnalysis and downloading assignments, working with claim information including the price list, tax jurisdiction and overhead and profit, and completing and printing an estimate.
The receiving side sees the same file.
Verisk says XactAnalysis for Service Providers lets assignment receivers — insurance repair contractors, cleaning specialists and independent adjusters — see the same details as senders, including photos and sketched floor plans.
Quality review runs through the platform as well: the Review Queue manages quality assurance and re-inspection with digital images, sketched floor plans and estimate reports, and electronic audits flag items during the initial estimate.
For the writer, that flow is the reason documentation discipline carries as much weight as pricing.
Photos, sketched floor plans and line items travel together, so the estimate a reviewer reads arrives alongside the documentation behind it.
Desktop vs online vs mobile
Xactimate runs on three platforms: desktop — which Verisk describes as the original, full-featured version — online in a web browser, and mobile on iOS and Android.
Xactimate Pro includes all three.
In its certification documents, Verisk refers to the desktop product as Xactimate X1.
The mobile platform is the one field work runs on.
Verisk says Xactimate mobile lets users receive an assignment, sketch the structure, estimate structure and contents, settle on site and upload, from an iOS or Android device.
Measurement tooling spans the platforms.
Sketch AR uses augmented reality on a mobile device for direct-to-Sketch room measurements — faster with a LiDAR-enabled Apple device — and Xactimate integrates Leica DISTO laser measuring devices.
For a job seeker, the practical read is that a posting naming Xactimate may mean any of the three platforms, and the mobile one is built for settling and uploading on site.
How to show Xactimate skills on a resume
Xactimate is one of the easier skills to prove on a resume, because it can be named, demonstrated and certified.
Write the line so a hiring manager can picture the seat you filled: the platforms you have used — desktop, online or mobile — and the estimating lanes you have worked in: mitigation, contents or rebuild.
Name the concrete motions, not just the tool:
- Sketching the structure accurately, so the measurements behind the estimate hold up.
- Selecting line items that match the loss, and adjusting costs where the published price does not fit the job.
- Working the local price list, and building macros for repeatable scopes.
- Sending the finished estimate through the assignment platform, with its photos and sketch attached.
Certification is the verifiable layer.
Verisk offers three levels of user certification — Level 1 Fundamentals, Level 2 Proficiency and Level 3 Mastery — each level a prerequisite for the next, with certification valid for two years.
Each exam combines an untimed Sketch and Scope Lab built in your own copy of Xactimate with two timed 30-question exams.
The passing grade for each timed section is 70%, so a level on a resume says the writer built a real estimate under test conditions.
If you are still building the skill, Verisk says an annual subscription includes unlimited online access to more than 100 hours of self-paced training content through Xactware Classroom.
Whatever the line says, what sits under it is what makes it checkable: screenshots of estimates you have built, sketch samples and a plain description of the loss types you have priced give the certification claim a floor.
On the listing side, the restoration estimator jobs page shows the seats restoration companies are hiring for.
Career information, not licensing, legal or insurance advice. Certification details are set by Verisk — confirm current levels, exams and terms with Verisk before you act on them.
Confirm certification details with Verisk