Home improvement cost calculators
Know what it costs before you call anyone.
Free home improvement cost calculators with transparent formulas, regional pricing, and no lead forms. Enter your project dimensions and get an itemized estimate instantly, materials, labor, permits and waste broken out line by line, priced for your state.
- No email required
- No phone number
- No contractor calls
- No signup
Five calculators, 50 states
Each one applies your state's construction labor rate, local frost depth and permitting rules to an itemized breakdown.
Fence cost calculator
9 inputsSix materials, four heights, terrain, gates and corners. Posts and concrete counted, not guessed.
150 ft wood privacy fence · $4,220 to $5,720
Open calculatorDeck cost calculator
8 inputsDecking, substructure, railing and stairs priced as separate lines. The substructure is 35-45% and nobody shows it.
16 × 12 composite deck · $6,800 to $9,200
Open calculatorConcrete calculator
6 shapesSix shapes, bag counts for all three sizes at once, and a direct bags-versus-ready-mix comparison.
20 × 20 slab at 4 in · 5.43 yd³ · 245 × 80 lb bags
Open calculatorInsulation R-value calculator
DOE zones 1-7Your DOE climate zone, the R-value your state actually needs, the gap you have, and the payback period.
1,200 sq ft attic R-19 → R-49 · $2,370 to $3,200
Open calculatorSeptic system calculator
6 system typesSizes tank and drain field from your bedrooms and soil, then ranks which of the six system types your site can actually permit, before it shows a price.
3-bedroom conventional · $7,960 to $14,960
Open calculatorGuides
The calculators tell you what a project costs. These take a position on the questions the numbers raise, and every figure in them is computed from the same data the tools run on.
The real cost of fencing your yard
Why the same fence differs by a third between states, and what wood costs once you count the stain.
What nobody tells you about deck costs
Decking boards are about a fifth of the budget. Where the rest goes, and composite against wood over 25 years.
Bags versus ready-mix
Where bagged concrete stops being cheaper, and the three errors that make most calculators understate your pour.
R-values, payback and the foam question
Why the first R-19 pays back in years and the next R-30 takes decades, and where spray foam earns its premium.
Septic: the drain field is the project
How your soil sets the budget before anyone quotes you, and how little choice you get over system type.
How we calculate everything
Every formula, every constant, which release of each federal dataset this build is running, and what these estimates cannot do.
Why this is different
Most cost calculators are lead-generation funnels wearing a calculator costume, or they show you a national average that applies to nobody. Neither helps you plan a project.
No lead forms, ever
No email, no phone number, no zip code gate, no signup. Enter your dimensions and the estimate appears. Your details are never sold to contractors because we never collect them.
Itemized, not a single number
Every estimate breaks out materials, posts, concrete, hardware, waste, labor and permits as separate lines, each with the assumption behind it stated. You can check our arithmetic.
Real government data, fetched not typed
Labor comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' published construction wage for your state, refreshed on every deploy. Material trends come from the Federal Reserve's Producer Price Index. We show you the source and the date.
Ranges, not false precision
Every estimate is a range, because a single figure for a project nobody has surveyed would be dishonest. The low end assumes easy access; the high end assumes obstacles.
Where the numbers come from
Bureau of Labor Statistics
Regional construction trade wage data, converted into the labor multiplier applied to every estimate.
US Department of Energy
Climate zone assignments and recommended R-values by zone and building assembly.
Manufacturer specifications
Published bag yields from QUIKRETE and Sakrete, material R-values, and warranty lifespans.
Every calculator page includes a "How we calculated this" section showing the formula and the assumptions. Every formula, constant and dataset is written up on the methodology page, and the about page covers who builds this and why.