Is my window quote fair?
We cannot tell you, and we are not going to print a range wide enough that any quote falls inside it. For window replacement, we have not measured a single component of it yet — so there is not one of the 530 US metro areas we hold wage data for where we would give you a price verdict. Our own rule withholds below 34% measured coverage, and this is what that rule looks like pointed at us.
What we can do for a window quote today is read the document: what it fails to say, what conflicts with the rules where you live, and what to ask before you sign. That half does not depend on the cost model at all. Check a quote.
Where the number comes from
We price window work bottom-up: a published material price for each component, a Bureau of Labor Statistics wage for your metro, a range of labour hours, and a margin band. We do not average other people’s cost guides, and we never write a figure we cannot point at.
| Jobs we can price in this trade | 2 |
|---|---|
| Metros where we give a verdict on window replacement | 0 of 530 — we have no measured material price for this job yet, so there is nowhere we can price it honestly |
| Metro wage series held | 194 of 530 — below our 70% threshold, so many ZIPs fall back to a national wage, and the result page says so when yours does |
| National median wage, windows | $27.97 per hour |
| National median wage, carpentry | $30.05 per hour |
| Margin band applied | 33% to 42% — substituted from NAICS 238220, which does not cover this trade |
| Window replacement: inputs we measured | 0 of 4 |
| Window replacement: inputs we had to assume | 4 (window unit, Labor, Consumables and permit, Overhead and profit) |
Margin: 2022 Economic Census, verified 2026-09-13 — Census sector 23 tables. Wages: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics. Every figure on this page is read from those files when the page is built, not typed into it — see our method and the open dataset.
Why this is a different kind of answer
Search this question and most of what comes back is written by people who sell window work. A free second opinion from a contractor is a sales call with a diagnosis attached, and it is not dishonest of them — it is what they do. We take no money from window contractors, run no lead marketplace, and never show your quote to a contractor. Our disclosures page names every way we could make money and what we would not do for it.
The other difference is that we will refuse. Three tests decide it: a range wider than 3.2×, measured coverage below 34%, or one unmeasured input moving the answer more than 40%. The arithmetic behind those three is published, and it is what produced the 0-of-530 figure at the top of this page rather than a number we felt comfortable with.
What makes an honest window quote look expensive
Per-window prices vary several-fold on frame material and glazing alone, before anyone touches labour. A vinyl double-pane and a clad-wood triple-pane are not the same product and should not carry the same number.
What actually goes wrong in a window quote
A quote that does not say whether it is a full-frame replacement or an insert. An insert is a different, cheaper job, and quotes for the two are routinely compared as if they were the same work.
We price window work from real material and wage data, but we have not built the window compliance checks yet. Nothing here says the work itself is correct or lawful — only what it should cost. Why those are different jobs.
Questions people actually ask
- Is my window quote fair?
- We cannot answer that for window replacement yet, and we would rather say so than guess. We have not measured a single component of it yet, and an interval made mostly of assumptions is wide enough that nearly any quote falls inside it. We still read the document and tell you what it fails to say.
- Who else will tell me whether a window quote is fair?
- Mostly other contractors, offering a free second opinion on work they would like to sell you. We take no money from window contractors, run no lead marketplace, and never show your quote to a contractor. That is a structural difference, not a claim about anyone's character — the incentive is simply not there.
- What makes an honest window quote look expensive?
- Per-window prices vary several-fold on frame material and glazing alone, before anyone touches labour. A vinyl double-pane and a clad-wood triple-pane are not the same product and should not carry the same number.
- What actually goes wrong in a window quote?
- A quote that does not say whether it is a full-frame replacement or an insert. An insert is a different, cheaper job, and quotes for the two are routinely compared as if they were the same work.
- How much of the price is the contractor's margin?
- We do not have a federal margin figure for this trade. The only NAICS code we verified is 238220 (Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors), so we apply its 37% figure here as a stated substitution and label it that way wherever it appears. We attempted the other codes and the parses failed our identity checks, so we did not publish them.