Real unit prices from completed jobs — contributed anonymously by working contractors, published free. Not catalog averages. Not a national guess.
Every estimate in this industry gets priced off the same thing: a cost book of periodic regional averages that excludes the contractor's own margin — sold by subscription, commonly for thousands of dollars per user each year. Contractors will tell you those numbers can be well off in their market.
The only genuinely accurate cost data is what contractors actually paid on real jobs. Nobody published it, because nobody had it. MAGE ID's cost engine learns exactly that from every job our contractors close — so we're giving the aggregate away.
Contractors build a private price book from their real invoices, receipts, sub commitments and labor hours. If they choose to contribute — it's off by default — their learned rate joins the index anonymously.
A trade only appears once five or more independent contractors have contributed, and only the median and quartiles are ever released. No individual price, no contractor, no company, no job is identified — and below that threshold nothing is published at all.
Homeowners: get a real quote from a contractor who prices off their own history. Contractors: your price book is free, and it's built from your jobs — not a catalog.