About
The home improvement industry runs on information asymmetry. We're closing it.
A roofer replaces roofs every week. You replace one twice in your life. That gap — not dishonesty — is why homeowners overpay. CostSquared exists to close it.
Our mission
Give every homeowner the same information their contractor has — what the work actually costs, what the materials actually cost, and what a fair price looks like where they live. Before the conversation, not after.
Transparency promise
We never simulate reality when we can transparently communicate what the system actually knows. No invented activity feeds, no fabricated confidence percentages, no fake review counts. If a number isn't real yet, we don't show it.
Values
Three rules we don't break
We show our sources
Labor comes from published government wage data. Materials come from tracked supplier prices. If we can't cite it, we don't publish it.
We don't sell roofs
We have no contractor arm and no incentive for your project to cost more. Our estimates would be worthless if we did.
We show the geometry
Your roof is not your floor plan. We apply the true pitch multiplier \u2014 the secant of the roof angle \u2014 so the area we price is the area you actually have.
How it works
How an estimate is built
Four inputs, one number, every step documented.
Your measurements
Footprint, pitch and shape → true roof area
Your state
BLS wage data → labor per square
Your material
Tracked supplier prices
Your options
Tear-off, permit, disposal, ventilation
The cost engine
Pitch multiplier (sec of angle) → roof area → squares → materials × waste + labor × complexity + add-ons + permit
See the formulas →Your estimate
$11,240 – $13,830
With the data quality shown
Sources · confidence · last updated
And a quote grader
Is the bid you got fair?
Meet the platform
There's no sales team. There are four data systems.
Government data
Published BLS occupational wage data sets the labor rate for your state — the single biggest variable in any quote.
BLS OES data →Real roof geometry
We convert the footprint and pitch you enter into true roof surface area using the exact secant of the roof angle \u2014 no approximations, no fudge factors.
BLS wage data →Material database
Supplier pricing for every material and quality tier, refreshed monthly and stamped with its update date.
AI quote analysis
Grades a contractor bid against your local range and scans the terms for the eight things that cost homeowners money.
Timeline
How we got here
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✓
2026 · Q1
The problem
Three roofing quotes for the same house came back $8,900, $12,850 and $18,200. Nobody could explain why. That gap is the entire product.
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✓
2026 · Q2
The data engine
Built the cost engine on published BLS wage data and tracked material prices — with every formula public.
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→
2026 \u00b7 Q3
Roofing launch
Fifteen calculators, the full cost engine, and the AI Quote Decoder \u2014 roofing only, done properly.
Roadmap
What's next
Permit price database
Real prices seeded from public building-permit records — always labelled as permit-derived, never presented as user activity.
Windows & siding
The second and third categories. Each launches only when its data passes the same bar as roofing.
Plumbing & HVAC
Where the surprise bills live. Requires a different labor model — worth doing slowly.
Open API
The cost engine, available to anyone building something honest with it.
How we make money
Plainly, because you deserve to know: advertising on our guide pages, an optional paid plan for homeowners who want project tracking, and referral fees when you choose to request contractor quotes.
What we never do: change an estimate because a partner would prefer a bigger number, sell your details to lead brokers, or put a lending CTA in front of someone who just told us they can't afford a roof.
Read the methodology
Every formula, every data source, every assumption — published in full. If you find something wrong, tell us and we'll fix it.
Open Methodology →Corrections: hello@costsquared.com