Type an address and Draftly reads the flood overlays your council and state actually publish — then hands you the whole site brief, not a teaser. No account, no per-report fee, no sales call.
Free, no account, not metered. Runs the full site brief — zone, overlays, verified lot boundary, easements and design wind — and gives you the PDF.
Every free brief returns the whole picture — not just the one line you came for. (Your check lands in the brief's Overlays & Controls — flood section.)
| Check | Property-data platforms | Draftly site brief |
|---|---|---|
| Flood report | $39–$69 | Free |
| Bushfire pre-screen | $39–$69 | Free |
| Planning PDF | around $9 | Free |
| Geotechnical desktop study | around $119 | Free |
| State heritage certificate | $63.04 | Free |
Source: Draftly's public comparison audit, last updated 2026-08-12 — the same figures shown at /compare/. Figures are point-in-time and describe the property-data category generally, not any one named vendor; verify current pricing with the vendor. A state heritage certificate fee is set by the state heritage body.
Flood is the constraint most likely to change what a backyard build costs — and the one most people discover last, usually from a council officer after the design is already drawn.
The information itself is public. Every Australian state publishes flood-related planning overlays, and many councils expose them through open-data services. The problem has never been secrecy; it is that the data lives in a different portal in every jurisdiction, under a different name, behind a map interface built for a desktop browser in 2011. Finding out whether a Land Subject to Inundation Overlay touches your lot can genuinely mean trawling a planning scheme PDF and a schedule.
That gap is why a market grew for paid per-address flood reports. They are selling aggregation and convenience over free government data — a reasonable business, and a real cost to anyone checking more than one site.
Draftly reads the same government services and returns the flood overlays alongside everything else the site brief carries: the zone, your verified lot boundary from the cadastre, easements, design wind region and nearby DA activity. It arrives in one pass, on one screen, on a phone, in about the time it takes to type the address.
It is free because the research is not what Draftly sells. The paid work is downstream — turning the answer into an engineered, documented, lodgement-ready structure.
It will not issue a flood certificate, model a flood level, or replace a catchment authority referral. Where a government service does not publish a layer for an address, the brief says the layer is unavailable rather than implying the site is clear. Every figure in the brief is named with its source so you can check it against the portal it came from.
| Dimension | Draftly | Canibuild | Buildertrend / CoConstruct | Archistar | Property-data platforms | ClearCalcs | Council & state portals |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Address-to-answer speedType an address → a useful answer, with nothing in between. | 4 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 4.5 | 1.5 | 1 |
| Planning data reliabilityHow much of the planning answer is real government data vs inference. | 4 | 4 | 1 | 4.5 | 4 | 1 | 5 |
| Visual UXMap, drag-and-drop, live feedback — how it feels to use. | 4 | 5 | 3.5 | 4 | 3 | 3.5 | 1 |
| Drafting & exportDrawings, DXF/PDF sets, documents a council or certifier accepts. | 4.5 | 2 | 1.5 | 1 | 1 | 2.5 | 1 |
| Engineering defensibilityStructural calculations, member schedules, AS/NZS-referenced outputs. | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4.5 | 1 |
| Commercial readinessPricing clarity, payments, onboarding, market maturity. | 3.5 | 3.5 | 4.5 | 4 | 3.5 | 3.5 | — |
| Partner / trade ecosystemPartner programs, integrations, API access, white-label. | 4.5 | 3 | 3.5 | 2.5 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Running the buildSchedule of works, trade dispatch, purchase orders, and what the homeowner can see. | 3 | 1.5 | 4.5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | — |
| What you get before payingHow much of a usable answer arrives without a subscription, a per-report fee, or a sales call. | 5 | 1 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 2.5 | 2 | 3 |
Scores are calibrated for ONE job: the address-to-permit-to-built workflow for Australian backyard structures and small residential builds (pergolas, decks, sheds, carports, granny flats) — for trades, builders and homeowners. They are not a verdict on general construction software. A tool can score low here and be excellent at what it is actually built for.
Scored 1–5. “—” means the dimension does not apply to that product. Last updated 2026-08-12. See the full comparison · Report an error.
This table is an audit, not a brochure. These are our own limitations, published because a comparison that only flatters us is worth nothing.
Free, no account, not metered. Runs the full site brief — zone, overlays, verified lot boundary, easements and design wind — and gives you the PDF.