Quote comparison
Three quotes, and probably three different jobs
When two hardwood quotes are thousands of dollars apart, the usual reason is not that one company is expensive. It is that one of them is pricing subfloor preparation, disposal of the old floor and four coats, and the other is not — and nothing on either page says so. Tick what each document actually contains and find out whether the totals can be compared at all.
Nothing is uploaded and nothing is stored. This runs entirely in your browser; the quotes never leave this page.
| Line item | ||
|---|---|---|
| Total on the document | ||
| Area it covers (sq ft) | ||
| Before the price | ||
| Moisture readings, with the date they were taken why | ||
| What the subfloor is, and its condition why | ||
| The floor itself | ||
| Species, grade and board width — all three why | ||
| The area being covered, in square feet | ||
| Whether the material quantity includes a cutting allowance | ||
| The work | ||
| Removal and disposal of the existing floor | ||
| Subfloor preparation — levelling, fastening, patching why | ||
| The installation method, and the reason for it why | ||
| Acclimation — how long, and in the actual space why | ||
| Who moves the furniture and the appliances | ||
| Stairs and transitions, itemised separately why | ||
| Baseboard or quarter-round — removed and reinstalled, or new | ||
| Dust containment and extraction | ||
| The finish | ||
| The sanding grit sequence why | ||
| The finish product, by name why | ||
| How many coats why | ||
| Whether stain is included, and whether a sample will be made on your floor | ||
| The paperwork | ||
| The schedule — start date and working days why | ||
| Whether the price is fixed in writing, with no open-ended change-order clause why | ||
| Workmanship warranty language in the contract itself, not on a website why | ||
| Who performs the work — employees or subcontracted crews why | ||
| Condominium logistics — elevator booking, hours, deposits | ||
What the arithmetic supports
Enter what at least two of the quotes contain. With one, there is nothing to compare it to.
This tool prices nothing. It cannot tell you what subfloor preparation should cost, because no honest source publishes that figure for your house — which is the same reason the quotes differ. The output is the question to put back to each company.
What this will not do
It will not tell you which quote to accept, and it will not put a dollar figure on anything a quote leaves out. Both are things we would have to invent. Nobody — us included — can publish what subfloor preparation costs in your house without seeing it, and a number we made up is the one number here you would actually act on.
It also names nobody. We never see the documents, and this page contains no judgement about any company, including the ones you are comparing us against.
14 of the 22 line items are the ones we already publish as belonging in a hardwood quote, in how to evaluate a hardwood quote. The rest are plain scope questions — who moves the furniture, who takes the old floor away — where including the item is not better, it is simply a different job.
If you would rather someone read them
A senior estimator will read the actual documents and tell you what is missing, what is unusual and what is fine — including where our own quote is the weaker one. Send the quotes you are holding. They are attached to one internal email and never stored.
If you want to test the companies rather than the paperwork, the twenty-four-criterion framework scores the process behind a quote, and the movement calculator and equipment reference cover the two things quotes most often get silently wrong.