Proteus, built by Xergy, is the closest thing on the market to what Bidro is built to be — a system that follows a job from bid to invoice for engineering consultancies. If you've looked at Proteus and felt the fit was right but the scale was wrong, this page is for you.
In short: Proteus is enterprise bid-to-invoice software, built and proven in energy and renewables consultancies running full project delivery. Bidro takes the same starting idea — decide the bid, protect the margin — and builds it for the 3–20 person firm, at a published price, without a sales process. Same thesis, a different scale of company.
Bidro vs Proteus, at a glance
| Capability | bBidro | PProteus |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | 3–20 person UK technical consultancies | Enterprise engineering consultancies, energy & renewables-weighted |
| Buying process | Published price, no demo required | Sales-led — book a demo, no published price |
| Scope | Bid decision and margin floor | Full bid-to-invoice: bidding, delivery, project tracking, invoicing |
| Margin / cost visibility | Built in from the first bid | Built in, and carries through delivery and invoicing |
| Company size fit | 1–20 people, one decision-maker | Enterprise teams and multi-project delivery operations |
| Best for | Deciding what to bid and holding the margin on it | One system running a project end-to-end at scale |
Built for
- Bidro
- 3–20 person UK technical consultancies
- Proteus
- Enterprise engineering consultancies, energy & renewables-weighted
Buying process
- Bidro
- Published price, no demo required
- Proteus
- Sales-led — book a demo, no published price
Scope
- Bidro
- Bid decision and margin floor
- Proteus
- Full bid-to-invoice: bidding, delivery, project tracking, invoicing
Margin / cost visibility
- Bidro
- Built in from the first bid
- Proteus
- Built in, and carries through delivery and invoicing
Company size fit
- Bidro
- 1–20 people, one decision-maker
- Proteus
- Enterprise teams and multi-project delivery operations
Best for
- Bidro
- Deciding what to bid and holding the margin on it
- Proteus
- One system running a project end-to-end at scale
When Proteus is the right fit
If you're a 50-plus person consultancy — Proteus's own customer base skews toward energy, renewables and oil & gas — running enough concurrent projects that you need one system carrying each from bid through delivery to invoice, Proteus is a genuinely strong answer. It's the only product we're aware of purpose-built for that full bid-to-invoice lifecycle in engineering consultancies, and Xergy, the company behind it, was founded by oil & gas industry veterans in Aberdeen — the sector expertise is real, not bolted on.
Where Proteus doesn't fit a smaller consultancy
Buying starts with a demo, not a price. Both the enterprise and consultancy pages route every visitor to "book a demo" — there's no published price and no self-serve option. For a firm that wants to see a number and decide the same afternoon, that's a longer road than it needs to be.
The published case studies weight toward energy and renewables. Xergy's roots are in oil & gas, and its public customers reflect that. A civil, structural or geotech consultancy can still use Proteus — nothing in the product restricts it — but there's less proof it was built with your sector specifically in mind.
It's more system than a small firm needs. Proteus carries a project through delivery and invoicing as well as the bid. That's real capability if you need it. If your actual problem is just deciding which bids to chase and knowing the floor before you quote, it's a bigger system to configure and adopt than the problem requires.
Same thesis, different scale
Bidro isn't a cut-down Proteus — it's the same underlying idea, built for a different company. Where Proteus assumes a team large enough to run bid, delivery and invoicing as connected workflows, Bidro assumes the person pricing the bid is the same person who'll deliver it, and stops there on purpose. Pricing is published on the homepage — no demo required to see it. See who Bidro is built for: 3–20 person firms across civil, structural, M&E, geotech and environmental consulting, not just energy.
The honest trade-off
Proteus does more — genuinely. If you need bid, delivery and invoicing running as one connected system at enterprise scale, it's the more complete product, and Bidro isn't trying to compete with that scope. What Bidro does instead is take the part of the thesis that matters most to a much smaller firm — decide the bid, hold the margin — and make it a same-day decision rather than a sales process.
If you're the size Proteus is built for, it's the right tool. If you're the size Bidro is built for, you shouldn't need an enterprise system to get the same discipline.
Comparison based on publicly available information from xergy.com and public press coverage as of July 2026. Proteus's pricing and features may have changed since. Proteus and Xergy are trademarks of their respective owner; this page is not affiliated with or endorsed by Xergy.