Is My Contractor Quote Too High? How to Tell in 5 Minutes

It is 11 pm. You just opened the PDF your contractor sent over. The number at the bottom is bigger than you expected — maybe a lot bigger — and now you are trying to figure out whether you are being overcharged or whether kitchens just cost this much. You are not an expert. You do not have three other bids to compare. You just need a fast, honest answer.

Here it is: there is no single number that makes a quote "too high." But there are five tests you can run right now, tonight, with nothing but the quote and a calculator. Any one of them will tell you whether the number is in the neighborhood or on a different planet.

Test 1: The per-square-foot sanity check

Every type of home improvement project has a rough cost-per-square-foot range. These are not precise — a bathroom in Manhattan costs more than a bathroom in Memphis — but they catch the obvious outliers, which is all you need at this stage.

Take the total on your quote. Divide it by the square footage of the space being worked on. If the result lands inside the range, the number is at least plausible. If it is 50% above the top of the range and you are not in a high-cost metro area with premium materials specified, something needs explaining.

This test takes thirty seconds and eliminates the extreme cases — the $90,000 kitchen remodel for a 120-square-foot galley, the $45,000 deck quote for 400 square feet of composite. Numbers like those are not competitive bids. They are prayers that you will not check.

Test 2: The labor rate check

If the quote separates labor from materials — and it should — look at the hourly labor rate. Contractors do not always list it explicitly, but you can extract it: divide the total labor charge by the estimated hours, or call the contractor and ask directly. Nobody who charges a fair rate is embarrassed to say it out loud.

Rates vary by region. A plumber in San Francisco at $160/hr is not overcharging you. A plumber in rural Arkansas at $160/hr probably is. The point is not that one number is right. The point is that a rate wildly outside the range for your area needs justification — specialty work, after-hours scheduling, or unusual site access. If none of those apply and the rate is still 40% above market, you are subsidizing something other than expertise.

Test 3: The material markup

Contractors buy materials at wholesale or contractor pricing, mark them up, and sell them to you at retail-plus. That markup is how they cover procurement, delivery, warranty handling, and profit. Reasonable markup runs 15–35% over the contractor's cost, which typically puts materials at or slightly above retail pricing you would find at a home improvement store.

Pick any material line item on your quote — a specific faucet model, a flooring SKU, a panel brand. Search for it. If the retail price at a big-box store is $280 and your quote lists it at $340, that is a 21% markup over retail. Fine. If the quote lists it at $560, someone doubled the price and is hoping you will not spend ninety seconds on your phone.

Test 4: The three-bid comparison

You may not have three bids yet. Get them. This is the single most effective thing you can do, and it requires no expertise at all. Call two more contractors. Describe the same scope. Wait for the numbers.

Three bids for the same project will almost never match. But they will cluster. If two come in at $28,000 and $31,000 and the third comes in at $52,000, the outlier is not "the quality option." It is the one testing whether you will pay a 70% premium because their website looked nicer. Clustering tells you where the market actually is. A single bid tells you nothing except what one contractor decided to charge you.

Test 5: What is not on the quote

A quote can be perfectly reasonable on every line and still be too high — because it includes work you did not ask for. Or it can look attractively low because it excludes work that will inevitably need to happen, which gets billed later as a change order at a higher rate.

Scan the quote for two things:

• Scope you did not request. A bathroom remodel quote that includes replacing the subfloor when you never mentioned water damage. A kitchen quote that includes a full electrical panel upgrade when you just want new outlets on one wall. These additions may be legitimately necessary — or they may be padding. Ask why each one is there. If the answer is "code requires it," ask which code and verify.
• Standard work that is missing. A deck quote with no mention of footings or permits. A roofing quote that excludes the drip edge and ice shield. A bathroom quote that does not address plumbing rough-in. These omissions mean the "total" on the quote is not actually the total. The real number is higher, and you will find out after demo has started and your leverage has evaporated.

What "too high" actually means

A quote is not too high because the number is big. Renovations are expensive. Materials cost what they cost. Skilled labor in a tight market commands a premium. None of that makes a quote unfair.

A quote is too high when the number cannot be explained. When the labor rate is 40% above the area average and the contractor shrugs. When material costs are double retail and there is no spec sheet. When the scope includes $6,000 in work you never discussed and the justification is "trust me, you'll need it." When the per-square-foot cost is 60% above range and the only differentiator is a glossy proposal with stock photos of kitchens you did not ask for.

The difference between a fair premium and an inflated quote is documentation. A contractor who charges more and shows you exactly why — better materials, licensed subcontractors, longer warranties, complex site conditions — is worth the premium. A contractor who charges more and shows you nothing is charging more because they think you will not check.

You just checked.