About this site

Local Service Calculator publishes free cost calculators for home services across the United States. Every figure is built up from federal wage and producer price data and adjusted to your ZIP code, rather than collected from contractor directories or submitted quotes.

Why it exists

Most home improvement cost guides repeat each other. A figure appears on one site, gets cited by a second, and is quoted as established fact by a third, with nobody along the chain able to say where it came from. A homeowner trying to work out whether a $9,000 roofing quote is reasonable gets a number with no derivation behind it.

This site takes the opposite approach. Labor is priced from what the relevant trade is actually paid, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Materials are priced from observed retail prices and kept current by Producer Price Index movement. Regional variation comes from Bureau of Economic Analysis price parities, resolved from a ZIP code through the HUD crosswalk. Every page shows its full working and names its sources, so you can check the figure rather than trust it.

What we are not

We are not contractors and we do not perform any of the work these calculators price. We do not provide quotes, and nothing here is professional advice. The disclaimer sets this out in full.

We are also not a lead generation business dressed as a publisher. Contractors can be listed, and some pay for placement, but that is labeled on the listing and explained in the advertising disclosure. It has no effect on the figures, which come from federal data that no advertiser can influence.

How the figures are produced

The methodology page shows the whole calculation, including the handful of assumptions that are editorial judgment rather than measurement. Those are stated openly, because a cost model whose assumptions are hidden cannot be checked by anyone.

Content is written and reviewed under our editorial policy. Pages that have not been reviewed are not published, and figures that have not been sourced block the page that depends on them from publishing at all.

Getting in touch

If a figure looks wrong, we would rather hear about it than not. Contact us or write to hello@localservicecalculator.com.