Launched this week
Costwise UK
Free UK home improvement cost data, 150 jobs, no signup
7 followers
Free UK home improvement cost data, 150 jobs, no signup
7 followers
Honest price ranges for 150 UK home improvement jobs, from a new boiler to a loft conversion. Free calculators, regional figures, and the whole dataset under CC BY 4.0 with a DOI. No sign-up, no paywall, and no lead form before you get to see a price.
honestly this is super useful, especially the regional breakdown which a lot of sites hide behind a form. one thing i'd love to see is a way to compare two quotes side by side, like if a builder gives me a price i can plug it in and see if it's fair for my area and job type. would basically turn it into a sanity check tool instead of just a reference.
@senatemizi79650
Thanks, that's useful feedback.
There's a half-version of it already at costwiseuk.co.uk/compare-quotes/ but it solves a different problem: put two or three quotes in and it works out which are actually comparable once VAT, waste removal and scaffolding are accounted for. It assumes you already have a few.
What you're describing is better for the more common case, where you've got one quote and nothing to judge it against. The data to do it exists (150 jobs, four regional bands), so it's mostly a question of building the front end. Noted properly rather than politely.
One thing I'd want to get right: the honest output is "this sits at the top of the normal range for your region", not "you're being ripped off". The spread on some jobs is genuinely enormous, painting runs £150 to £5,000, and most of that is scope rather than anyone trying it on. A tool that cried foul on every above-median quote would be worse than useless.
Love that I can see actual regional price ranges before hitting any paywall or sign-up wall, the loft conversion numbers were really useful for budgeting. The CC BY 4.0 license with a DOI is a genuinely thoughtful touch for anyone wanting to cite or build on the data.
@aykutq0yd
Thanks, and glad the licence registered, most people scroll past it.
That was the deliberate bit. Any cost site can publish numbers; almost none will let you check them. Publishing the whole set as a CSV under CC BY 4.0 with a DOI means anyone can audit the working or reuse it, and it means I can't quietly revise a figure later without it being visible.
If you ever want the raw data it's at costwiseuk.co.uk/cost-index/ with the CSV linked from there.
Finally something that just shows you the numbers without a quiz or email signup first, super refreshing honestly. The regional pricing split is genuinely useful since quotes in London versus Leeds are basically different industries.
@elanurjjly
Thanks. And you're closer to right than you might think on London versus Leeds.
They're in different bands: London runs 1.3 times the UK average, the North, Scotland and Wales 0.92. So the same job is about 41% dearer in London than in the cheapest regions. On a full three-bed refresh that's roughly £46,500 against £33,000.
The no-signup thing was the whole reason I built it. Every site I looked at made you hand over a phone number before showing a number, which tells you what the number is for.