How our cost data works

The short version: every price on Quotsey comes from what contractors actually quoted through our platform. Not what manufacturers suggest. Not what we scraped off someone else's website. Real quotes from real contractors on real projects.

Here's the longer version.

Where the numbers come from

Quotsey is a quoting platform. Homeowners describe their project, contractors send quotes. Those quotes are the prices contractors actually charge for the work. That's our data set. When we say “a kitchen remodel costs $12,000 to $45,000,” that range comes from the quotes contractors submitted to homeowners through Quotsey.

We show the sample size on every guide. Our HVAC cost guide pulls from 1,844 quotes. Our roofing guide has 546. Some categories have more data behind them than others, and we think you should know that when you're looking at the numbers.

How city pricing works

National cost guides show pricing across all quotes in our database. City pages take those national numbers and adjust them with a per-city multiplier. Boston's multiplier is 1.25× (25% above average), because labor costs more there. Phoenix is 0.92× (8% below), because it doesn't.

We set these multipliers using labor cost indices, local permit fee data, and pricing patterns from our own quote database. They're not perfect. A 1.25× multiplier doesn't mean every HVAC job in Boston costs exactly 25% more than the national number. But it gets you closer to the right ballpark than a raw national average would.

What we report

Each guide shows the median, average, low end, and high end of quoted prices. We break costs down by project scope too. For HVAC, that means separate numbers for central AC, furnace, full system, and heat pump. You can see both the national range and your city's adjusted range side by side.

We report the median separately from the average because averages get pulled up by big jobs. The median is usually the more useful number if you want to know what a “typical” project costs.

What this data won't tell you

A few things worth being upfront about:

These are quotes, not final invoices. The number a contractor puts on a quote and the number on the final bill aren't always the same. Change orders happen. Surprises behind walls happen. The quote is the starting point, not a guarantee.

City-level data uses multiplier adjustments, not city-specific quote pools (for most cities). Boston and Providence are exceptions — we have enough local quote data in New England to write hand-written context for those markets. For other cities, we're adjusting national numbers. It's a solid approximation, not a local survey.

Construction costs move. Material prices shift, labor markets tighten and loosen, and local conditions change. We update guides periodically, but a number from six months ago might not match what you'd see today. Check the date on the guide.

Who writes these guides

The Quotsey team. Nobody pays us to rank higher or to recommend their product. When we mention a rebate program like Mass Save or Rhode Island Energy, it's because the rebate affects what the project actually costs, not because we have a deal with them.