Calculate what you can afford to spend based on your target profit margin.
What you're charging the customer
Industry average is 20-35%
Before you price a job, know your target margin. Then work backwards: if you can't deliver it for the max cost, you need to either raise your price or walk away.
Rule of thumb: If your total costs (materials + labor + overhead) are more than $3,750 on a $5,000 job, you're not making 25% margin, you're working for less.
Check out our other calculators to help you price jobs right.
Most contractors bid for jobs the way you'd guess: "what's everyone else charging, minus a little to win?" The result is a portfolio of work that pays the bills only if the volume stays high. The contractor who walks away from low-margin work and only bids jobs that clear a real target margin tends to do less work, win fewer bids, and make more money than the one who chases everything.
This calculator runs the math in the opposite direction from a normal estimate. Instead of starting from cost and adding markup, you start from the selling price you'd actually quote (or that the customer's budget allows), pick the margin you need, and read out the maximum cost you can afford to spend on the job. If your real cost comes in higher, the bid doesn't make sense.
If you don't know your overhead-loaded labor rate yet, start with the Labor Rate Calculator — most contractors realize they're underpricing once they build the rate up from real numbers.
