About HowMuchTrades

Hello everyone,

I started HowMuchTrades for a simple reason: I was tired of guessing what home repairs should cost.

Anyone who owns a home knows the feeling. The water heater dies, you call two plumbers in the same city, and the quotes are hundreds of dollars apart. Nobody can tell you the fair price, because nobody publishes it. You find out what things cost after you've already paid, which is exactly backwards.

So here's the idea: homeowners report what they actually paid (contractor, trade, service, price) and everyone can see the real numbers.

How it works:

• You tell us the trade, the service, your contractor, and what you paid, plus a few job details like whether it was an emergency callout and what you were originally quoted. It takes about 30 seconds, and there's no account to create.
• We turn reports into medians and ranges per contractor and per city, so you can see what's typical and what's an outlier before you book. We also record what you were originally quoted, so we can show the gap between quotes and final bills as reports come in. It's often the whole story.
• Contractor listings come from public map data. Where homeowners haven't reported yet, you'll see a clearly labeled national estimate. Real local reports always take over the moment they arrive.

A few promises: HowMuchTrades doesn't sell anything, doesn't book jobs, and doesn't give trade or legal advice. Reports are anonymous. And a guess is never blended in with real reported prices without being clearly labeled.

This site gets better every time someone shares a bill. Thanks for being part of it, and please share it with a fellow homeowner.

Questions? Get in touch. I read everything. If you spot a translation mistake in the French or Spanish version of the site, email me about that too.