How we price

Guide prices, not quotations

Every price on this site is a guide range compiled from published UK trade sources. It is not a quotation, and it cannot be: your cost depends on your property, the access, the specification you choose and who you hire. Quotes for what sounds like the same job routinely differ by a wide margin for entirely legitimate reasons.

We round guide prices deliberately. A figure like £5,500 is honest about its own precision in a way that £5,483 is not.

Three figures, not one

Each job carries a from, a typical and an up to price. The typical figure is what most people pay for a standard version of the job. The outer two cover the simplest and the most involved versions, and the gap between them is usually the most informative thing on the page.

How regional prices are worked out

We hold one national figure per job and scale it by a regional multiplier. The multipliers are domestic trade labour differentials rather than commercial tender indices, because this is a domestic site, and they run from 1.25 in London to 0.88 in Northern Ireland against an East Midlands baseline.

Materials cost much the same wherever you buy them. Labour does not, and it accounts for most of the regional variation you see on these pages.

VAT

Prices are held excluding VAT and the applicable rate is applied when the page is built, because the rate is not the same for every job. Installing energy-saving materials is currently zero-rated; ordinary repair and improvement work is standard-rated. Where a rate is time-limited, the page shows the date it changes.

Every VAT figure is checked against the relevant HMRC notice and the page links to it with the date last checked. This is general information, not tax advice — confirm your own position with your contractor or HMRC.

Grants

Only a grant that is fixed, universal and paid per job is deducted from a price. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme and the Home Energy Scotland grant qualify: everyone installing a heat pump gets the same amount, so the deduction is true for every reader.

Means-tested schemes are shown separately as things you may be eligible for, never subtracted. Taking them off a headline price would tell most readers they are getting money they will never see.

Energy schemes are devolved, so what is available depends on which nation you are in. Scotland runs its own grant rather than the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, and Northern Ireland has no heat pump grant at all.

Finance figures

The repayment illustrations use a standard amortisation on a rate you choose. We name no lender, link to no credit product and earn nothing from finance. The figures are arithmetic, not an offer, and they always show the total repayable and the interest alongside the monthly amount.

How often this is reviewed

Each page carries a review date. Prices are reviewed periodically and whenever something moves the market. VAT rules and grant schemes are checked more often, because they change on fixed dates and a stale figure there is worse than a stale price.

If a price looks wrong to you, tell us. It is the fastest way we find out.