CostCandor

= published prices × your house

Cost calculators

  • formulas published
  • data sources
  • no lead forms

Know what a fair price looks like
before the first contractor calls back.

CostCandor builds cost estimates the way an honest estimator would — and then shows you the worksheet. Every calculator publishes its formula, its data sources, and the date the pricing was pulled. No lead forms, no "enter your phone number to see results."

  • Formulas published on every tool
  • Data sources and pull dates disclosed
  • No sign-up, no phone number, ever
Aerial view of a suburban single-storey house with a newly shingled grey asphalt roof, with its ridge, eave, rake and valley edges marked — the four boundaries a roofer measures when pricing a replacement.
The four edges every roofing quote is built fromA re-shingled cross-gable ranch, seen the way an estimator sees it — from above.
  • Ridge — the high line where two planes meet — capped with its own shingles
  • Valley — an inside corner — every one is a flashing detail and a labour line
  • Rake — the sloped end edge, where the roof runs out past the gable wall
  • Eave — the low edge, overhanging the wall — the overhang alone adds roughly 14% area on a 1,500 sq ft footprint
We have not measured this roof and do not claim any figures for it — the labels name the parts, not the numbers.Photo by Paragon Exterior on Unsplash (Unsplash License). Edge labels added by CostCandor.

Cost calculators

Ten calculators across five trades — roofing, painting, plumbing, HVAC, and electrical — each built on the same rule: published data in, itemized worksheet out.

Roof replacement cost

Low / typical / high replacement cost from your home's footprint, roof pitch, and material — with the formula shown.

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Interior painting cost

Low / typical / high cost to paint a room or a whole home interior — walls, ceilings, trim, and doors, with the formula shown.

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Exterior painting cost

Low / typical / high painting cost from footprint, stories, and siding type — vinyl to brick — with the wall-area math shown.

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Water heater cost

Itemized low / typical / high cost for a 40, 50, or 75 gallon tank swap, a heat pump (hybrid) upgrade, or a tank-to-tankless conversion — unit, labor, code upgrades, gas line, and venting priced separately.

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Sewer & water line cost

Per-foot pricing for open trench vs. trenchless replacement, with surface restoration, cast iron, inspection, and permit itemized.

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Whole-house repipe cost

Fixture-count repipe estimate with PEX and copper side by side — per-fixture math, drywall repair, and permit all itemized.

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HVAC sizing & SEER savings

BTU/h and tonnage range from square footage, climate, and insulation — plus what a higher-SEER2 unit saves per year, math shown.

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AC replacement cost

Itemized low / typical / high installed cost by tonnage, SEER2 tier, and replacement scope — equipment, labor, and add-ons shown separately.

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Full HVAC replacement cost

Furnace + AC change-out priced in the open — equipment by efficiency package, labor, and duct work itemized to a low / typical / high total and $/sq ft.

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Electrical panel cost

Itemized low / typical / high cost for a panel swap, 100-to-200 amp service upgrade, FPE/Zinsco replacement, or subpanel — with the math shown.

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Roofing quote check

Paste the line items from a roofing bid and see which ones sit above, inside, or below our published per-square bands — entirely in your browser.

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Why we show the math

Most "cost estimator" sites work backwards: they exist to sell your contact details to contractors, so the numbers are bait — vague, wide, and impossible to verify. We work forwards. We start from published price data (retail material prices, federal wage and producer-price series, and contractor cost surveys), write down a formula, and let you run it yourself with your own house's numbers.

That means two things. First, you can check us: the methodology page documents where every input comes from and when it was last pulled — for every trade we cover. Second, you can argue with us: if a bid comes in far above our high band, you'll know which assumption to ask the contractor about — roof pitch, duct condition, fixture count, siding prep — instead of just feeling uneasy.

Built for real decisions

Our estimates are planning ranges, not quotes. Regional labor rates, job complexity, and material availability move real prices — which is why we always give a low/typical/high band instead of one false-precision number, and why every tool links to guides like reading contractor quotes so the estimate becomes leverage, not just trivia.

Latest price records

We take a public pricing record — permit data, a state audit, a bid tabulation — and ask whether it can check the band we already published. Often it cannot, and we publish that too. Each card carries its verdict.

Permit data

Sewer footage, San Francisco & Everett

Every price record here has ended the same way: the public file carried a dollar figure and no denominator. San Francisco and Everett carry both — plumbers type the run length into the sewer permit. The denominator turns out not to price the job, which is a worse problem than not having one.

Comparison rejected — the two files that state a run length show the declared price barely tracking it, so a per-foot band has nothing to be checked against

Records retrieved 2026-08-11 · published 2026-08-11

Utility program data

Water service lines, Cincinnati

A city water utility publishes the contracted amount for thousands of completed private-side service line replacements — the exact job our water calculator prices. Sixteen columns, and not one of them is a length. Our per-foot band reproduces its middle half at any run between 25 and 105 feet, which is every service line in America.

Comparison rejected — the file that has the price has no length, and the file that has the length is pricing municipal mains rather than a house service

Records retrieved 2026-08-11 · published 2026-08-11

Permit data

Furnace permits, Seattle

Seattle keeps a permit type called Single-Family/Duplex Furnace, and 5,887 recent filings under it describe a furnace replacement and nothing else. Their median declared cost is $6,100 — above the top of every efficiency tier we publish except the most expensive one. What the file will not tell us is which tier any of them bought.

Band moved — 87.2% of the filings clear the top of our 80% AFUE band, but the file states an efficiency on 1.9% of them, so it cannot say which of our three tiers is wrong

Records retrieved 2026-08-11 · published 2026-08-11

All 22 price records, including the ones that could not check us →

Latest guides

Roofing

What drives roof replacement cost

Size, pitch, material, tear-off, complexity, region, and timing — ranked by how hard each one moves your final bill.

Reviewed 2026-07-05

Roofing

Asphalt vs. metal roofing

Metal costs 2-3x more up front but can last 2-3x longer. The honest comparison is dollars per year of roof life — here's that math.

Reviewed 2026-07-05

Quotes

Reading a roofing quote

What a legitimate roofing bid must itemize, the red flags that predict change orders, and the questions that separate pros from pretenders.

Reviewed 2026-07-05

Painting

Cabinet painting vs. replacement

Professional cabinet painting runs $2,000–$6,500; replacement runs $8,000–$25,000 installed. Here's the math and the honest tradeoffs.

Reviewed 2026-07-04

Painting

Deck staining cost

Professional deck staining runs $2–$6 per square foot in 2026 — about $900–$1,500 for a typical 300 sq ft deck. Here's the line-by-line math.

Reviewed 2026-07-28

Plumbing

Sump pump costs

Replacing a sump pump in an existing pit runs $650-$1,200; first-time installs $800-$3,000. The submersible vs pedestal math, itemized.

Reviewed 2026-07-22

Plumbing

Sewer camera inspection

What a sewer scope costs in 2026, what roots, bellies, and cast-iron scale on the video actually mean, and the repair-or-replace decision tree.

Reviewed 2026-07-22

Plumbing

Slab leak repair cost

What detection, a tunneled spot repair, and a full repipe each cost — and the math for deciding which one your house actually needs.

Reviewed 2026-07-22

HVAC

Heat pump vs. gas furnace cost

Installed heat-pump costs from published 2026 equipment prices, and the cost-per-million-BTU math that shows when leaving gas or oil actually pays.

Reviewed 2026-07-28

HVAC

Ductwork replacement cost

About $1-2 per square foot of home for whole-home replacement, $25-55 per linear foot of duct — and when sealing beats replacing.

Reviewed 2026-07-28

HVAC

Furnace replacement cost

Installed gas-furnace costs from published 2026 list prices — 80%, 96%, and 97% AFUE — plus the fuel math that says which efficiency tier actually pays.

Reviewed 2026-08-11

Electrical

EV charger installation cost

What a Level 2 charger really costs installed — $800–$2,200 for most garages, $1,500–$3,500 with panel work — itemized down to the outlet and permit.

Reviewed 2026-07-05

Plumbing

Trenchless vs open trench

Pipe bursting, CIPP lining, and the dig priced on the same 50-foot run — and how lawn, driveway, or slab above the pipe picks the cheaper method.

Reviewed 2026-07-22

Cost math by CostCandor ↗