Guide
"Free" estimate just means you're eating the cost instead of the customer. Here's how to work out that cost, where it hides in your pricing, and the exact point at which you should stop absorbing it.
Every estimate you drive to, walk, measure and write up takes time and fuel. Time and fuel cost money, whether or not you charge the customer for them. "Free estimate" doesn't mean zero cost. It means you've decided to bury the cost somewhere else, usually in your margin on the jobs you win.
The formula for cost per quote is simple:
Cost per quote = (travel time + on-site time + write-up time) × loaded hourly rate + mileage
Your loaded rate isn't your invoice rate. It's what an hour of your time actually costs the business once you account for overhead, not just what you'd bill a customer for labour. If you haven't worked that number out, the hourly rate calculator will get you there in a few minutes.
Take a mid-size job: a kitchen tap swap that needs a look before you can quote it properly.
Cost per quote = (1.25 × $65) + $12 = $81.25 + $12 = $93.25
That's a mid-range figure. Most trades land somewhere between $55 and $150 per estimate depending on drive time, how remote the job is, and how much on-site diagnosis is involved. A quick in-neighbourhood estimate might be $55. A 45-minute drive for a design consult easily hits $150 or more.
Cost per quote only tells you what one visit costs. What matters for pricing is how much quoting cost sits inside each job you actually win, because every quote you lose still cost you money and that cost has to be recovered from the jobs that say yes.
Cost per won job = cost per quote ÷ win rate
If your cost per quote is $93 and you close 30% of the estimates you give, the maths looks like this:
Cost per won job = $93 ÷ 0.30 = $310
So for every job you land, $310 of quoting cost has to be recovered somewhere in that job's price, even though the customer never saw a line item for it. Push the win rate down to 20% and the same $93 quote becomes $465 of buried cost per won job. Push it up to 50% and it drops to $186. Win rate isn't just a sales metric here, it's a direct multiplier on your quoting overhead.
| Win rate | Cost per quote | Cost per won job |
|---|---|---|
| 20% | $93 | $465 |
| 30% | $93 | $310 |
| 40% | $93 | $233 |
| 50% | $93 | $186 |
At typical win rates for free estimates (25%-40%), that lands most trades in the $180-$500 range per won job. That range is your baseline, and it's the number worth checking your own numbers against.
That $180-$500 doesn't disappear. It has to live inside your pricing somewhere. There are three honest places to put it:
Whichever method you use, the point is the same: this cost is real, and if it's not priced in deliberately, it's silently eating your margin.
Flip the formula around and you get a useful sanity check: the close rate below which a job type stops being worth quoting for free.
Break-even close rate = cost per quote ÷ average job gross profit
Say your average job clears $450 gross profit after materials and labour cost (check this on the job profitability calculator if you're not sure of your own number). With a $93 cost per quote:
Break-even close rate = $93 ÷ $450 = 20.7%
If your actual win rate for that job type is above 21%, free estimates are still profitable on average. Below that, you're losing money on the category even when you win, because the quoting overhead eats more than the job's profit can cover.
Use this trigger: charge for the estimate once cost-per-won-estimate passes 25% of average job gross profit.
Using the $450 gross profit example, 25% of that is $112.50. If your cost per won job (cost per quote ÷ win rate) climbs above that, it's time to charge rather than absorb it.
This threshold is usually crossed by specific job types, not your whole business:
For these, charge $75-$250 for the estimate, credited against the job if the customer accepts. That protects you from the tyre-kickers and the wasted mileage on jobs that were never going to convert, while still feeling fair to a genuine customer, since the fee comes straight off their invoice.
Charging for estimates changes the mix of people who ask for one. Expect two things to happen at once:
Run the same maths after the switch: fewer, higher-value quotes with a much better close rate usually means less total time spent quoting and a lower cost per won job overall, even though each individual visit now has a fee attached.
Before you introduce a fee, try tightening your phone or booking-form screening. A few extra questions before you drive anywhere, budget range, timeline, whether they're comparing multiple quotes, whether the job matches your minimum size, can lift your win rate without costing the customer anything or creating friction. It's the cheapest lever you have, because it costs a few minutes of admin time rather than a fee that might put off a good customer.
It's worth checking how many of these calls you're even answering in the first place. A missed call is a missed chance to qualify, and the missed call revenue calculator shows what that's costing you separately from the quoting question.
In practice, most trades should qualify harder first, then reserve a paid estimate for the specific job types where the maths says free quoting genuinely doesn't pay: the multi-visit, design, diagnostic and out-of-zone work where cost per won job is highest.
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