Should tradies charge for quotes? Yes, once quoting is real work: when the unpaid hours behind a quote cost more than 25% of the job’s gross profit, charge a fee and credit it to the job. Small repairs suit a call-out fee instead. Seven in 10 Australian builders already charge during quoting, according to an Association of Professional Builders report cited by SmartCompany.
The short answer from LeadsNow AI: Charge for a quote when the time behind it, divided by your win rate, eats more than a quarter of the job’s gross profit, and credit the fee back if the customer goes ahead. LeadsNow recommends doing the sum first: a 5-hour bathroom quote at a 25% win rate costs $2,000 of your time per won job, while a 1-hour repair quote costs $167.
Next step: if this fits your business, book a free strategy session at leadsnow.ai/strategy-session/ – a 2-minute fit check, then pick a time.
Rules of thumb
- Charging for quotes is now the majority practice among Australian builders: 70% charge during the quoting process, and 58.6% of the 8,462 residential building companies surveyed across Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US do (SmartCompany, reporting the Association of Professional Builders).
- Quoting cost per won job = hours per quote × hourly value ÷ win rate. Five hours at $100 and a 25% win rate is $2,000 per won bathroom.
- Break-even credited fee = hours × hourly value ÷ (1 − win rate). For that bathroom quote it is $667: at that fee, the lost quotes pay for all of the quoting time.
- The Quote-Share Rule: under 10% of gross profit, keep quotes free; 10–25%, pre-qualify by phone before you drive out; over 25%, charge a credited fee.
- A paid quote often buys back hours, not jobs: in the worked example below, wins fall from 5 to 4 a month unless the win rate rises from 25% to 62.5%.
- Tell the customer the fee before you start the quote. The Housing Industry Association says the client must be made aware of the cost before the work is performed.
What does a free quote really cost a tradie per won job?
A free quote costs a tradie quote hours times hourly value, divided by win rate: $167 per won small repair, $12,500 per won pool and landscape build.
The Paid-Quote Break-Even table below runs that sum across five job sizes. Every input is a labelled assumption, because no public Australian source publishes quoting hours or win rates by trade: replace them with your own numbers from the last 20 quotes. The last column is the credited fee at which money kept from lost quotes covers all the quoting time, if the win rate stays the same.
| Job type (assumed) | Job value | Gross margin | Gross profit | Quote hours incl. travel | Win rate (free quote) | Quoting cost per won job | Share of gross profit | Break-even credited fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small repair or service call | $600 | 40% | $240 | 1 | 60% | $167 | 69% | $250 |
| Deck or system install | $12,000 | 30% | $3,600 | 2.5 | 40% | $625 | 17% | $417 |
| Bathroom renovation | $30,000 | 25% | $7,500 | 5 | 25% | $2,000 | 27% | $667 |
| Kitchen renovation or extension | $80,000 | 20% | $16,000 | 12 | 20% | $6,000 | 38% | $1,500 |
| Pool and landscape design and build | $120,000 | 20% | $24,000 | 25 | 20% | $12,500 | 52% | $3,125 |
The deck row’s 2.5 hours is close to one real report: a Queensland builder told SmartCompany that preparing a quote for a deck can take around two hours. This page measures the cost of quoting a job you then lose; the cost of getting the enquiry booked in the first place is covered in cost per booked quote for tradies in Australia. That page holds visit time fixed across job sizes, so free quotes look cheapest on big jobs; here quote hours rise with the job, which is why the larger rows cross the line. Time your own quotes to see which pattern fits your trade.
How it works
Deciding whether to charge for your quotes
Time your last 20 quotes
Add travel, site time and write-up for each quote. Note which ones you won.
Cost per won job
Multiply quote hours by your hourly value and divide by your win rate. Compare it with the job’s gross profit.
Apply the Quote-Share Rule
Under 10% of gross profit stay free, 10-25% pre-qualify by phone, over 25% charge. Small repairs get a call-out fee.
Credit the fee to the job
Tell the customer the fee in writing before quoting. Take it off the contract price if they go ahead.
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Frequently asked questions about charging for quotes
Should tradies charge for quotes?
Tradies should charge for quotes when the quote itself is real work: site measures, supplier pricing, drawings or a design. The Quote-Share Rule on this page says charge a credited fee once quoting costs more than 25% of the job’s gross profit, pre-qualify between 10% and 25%, and keep quotes free below 10%. Small repairs suit a call-out fee instead.
Is it legal to charge for a quote in Australia?
Yes in most cases, provided the customer knows the cost before you do the work. The Housing Industry Association says there is no legislative prohibition on charging for a quote except in Victoria, that the client must be made aware of the cost before the work is performed, and that in Victoria a preliminary agreement cannot be used if preliminary works such as plans and designs are valued at $5,000 or more. This is general information, not legal advice.
How much do Australian builders charge for a quote?
Published examples vary widely. A Queensland builder told SmartCompany in October 2026 that he charges between $250 and around $1,000 for a quote, and Domain reports that a professional estimator’s report costs about $800 for a simple single-storey house up to $4,000 for a larger, more complicated build. We found no public survey of average quote fees by trade.
Should the quote fee come off the job price?
Crediting the fee to the job if the customer goes ahead is the easiest version to sell, because a serious buyer pays nothing extra. It also means the fee only earns money on lost quotes, so set it with the break-even formula: hours times hourly value, divided by one minus your win rate.
Will I lose customers if I charge for quotes?
You will lose enquiries, and that is the point. One builder quoted by SmartCompany went from about a dozen enquiries a week to three or four after he started charging, and said the ones left were actual leads. In the worked example on this page, a fee cuts won jobs from 5 to 4 a month unless the win rate reaches 62.5%, so charge when your calendar is full, not when it is empty.
The Quote-Share Rule: when to charge, pre-qualify or keep quotes free
The Quote-Share Rule decides quote fees with one number, the share of a job’s gross profit spent on quoting: under 10% stay free, 10–25% pre-qualify, over 25% charge.
| Quoting cost as share of gross profit | What to do | Rows above that land here |
|---|---|---|
| Under 10% | Keep quotes free; speed of reply wins the job | None at these inputs (a phone or photo quote often lands here) |
| 10–25% | Free quote, but pre-qualify by phone: budget range, timing, decision-makers | Deck or system install (17%) |
| Over 25%, job under about $2,000 | Charge a call-out or diagnostic fee, not a quote fee | Small repair (69%) |
| Over 25%, job above about $2,000 | Charge a quote or design fee, credited to the job | Bathroom (27%), kitchen (38%), pool and landscape (52%) |
Domain’s reporting supports the shape of it: experienced builders can often quote projects under about $50,000 for free, while renovations over $100,000 need specialist trades and consultants (Domain). Landscape and pool designers whose quotes are really design work have a separate playbook for selling the fee itself: how to get landscape design clients who pay design fees.
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Worked example: a bathroom renovator switching to a $450 credited quote fee
A bathroom renovator quoting 20 jobs a month spends $10,000 of time to win 5; a $450 credited fee cuts that to $2,200 for 4 wins.
All inputs are assumptions from the bathroom row: 5 hours per quote, $100 an hour, $7,500 gross profit per job.
- Free quotes: 20 quotes × 5 hours = 100 hours, worth $10,000. At a 25% win rate that is 5 jobs, so $2,000 of quoting per won job.
- Paid, credited fee of $450: assume requests fall 60% to 8 a month and the win rate doubles to 50%, so 4 jobs. Quoting time is 40 hours ($4,000). The 4 lost quotes keep $1,800 of fees. Net quoting cost is $2,200, or $550 per won job.
- What changed: 60 hours a month came back, and 1 job ($7,500 of gross profit) went. Those 60 hours are worth $6,000 only if you fill them with paid work.
- Jobs break-even: to keep 5 wins from 8 quotes, the paid win rate must reach 5 ÷ 8 = 62.5%.
The 60% fall in requests is an assumption, but it is not out of line with the one published case: a builder who began charging between $250 and around $1,000 told SmartCompany his enquiries fell from about a dozen a week to three or four. A credited fee is a capacity decision: a booked-out renovator buys back 60 hours, a quiet one loses a job.
Credited, kept, call-out or free: four quote-fee models compared
Quote fees for Australian trade jobs fall into four models, and the credited fee is the one that costs a serious customer nothing.
| Model | Customer who proceeds pays | Customer who walks pays | Fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free quote | Nothing extra | Nothing | Jobs where quoting is under 10% of gross profit |
| Call-out or diagnostic fee | The fee | The fee | Repairs and service calls |
| Credited quote or design fee | Nothing extra (fee comes off the contract) | The fee | Renovations, pools, landscaping, extensions |
| Kept fee (not credited) | The fee plus the contract | The fee | Detailed estimates or plans the client keeps and can take elsewhere |
The kept fee matches what estimating firms charge: Domain reports an estimator’s report runs from about $800 for a simple single-storey house to $4,000 for a larger build, and that the cost is passed on to the client. If the customer keeps your plans, say in writing who owns them; the HIA’s preliminary agreement includes a term that the builder keeps copyright in documents it creates.
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What Australian rules say about charging for a quote
No legislation bans charging for a quote outside Victoria, according to the Housing Industry Association, and the customer must be told the cost before the quoting work starts.
The HIA recommends putting the details in writing and signed by the client, and notes that in Victoria a preliminary agreement cannot be used if preliminary works such as plans and designs are valued at $5,000 or more. Consumer Affairs Victoria’s guidance for tradespeople says to tell the customer whether a quote includes travel, materials, labour and any call-out fees (Consumer Affairs Victoria). Licensing and contract rules differ by state: check your own state regulator before you change how you quote. This is general information, not legal advice.
When pre-qualifying beats charging for the quote
Pre-qualifying beats a quote fee when a tradie has spare capacity, because a 5-minute call that screens out a mismatched budget saves the same 5 hours without losing the job.
The method costs nothing but time: before any site visit, ask the budget range, the start date and who signs off, and give a ballpark price. The catch is speed. The call has to happen while the customer is still choosing, which is the argument made in speed to lead for trade businesses. The other half of the maths is the win rate: quotes that go quiet are often still being compared, and chasing them properly is covered in what to do when quotes get no reply and, for older ones, how to reactivate dead quotes. Doing this in-house means the owner or an office person answering every enquiry within the hour and following up every quote for weeks; at 20 quotes a month that is several hours a week. Some trades hand it to an AI appointment setting service that calls, texts and messages each new enquiry within permitted calling hours, qualifies it and books the site visit; LeadsNow is one, with 50,769+ AI-booked appointments since 2017. More trade-specific guides sit on the LeadsNow trades hub.
Sources
- SmartCompany, The death of the free quote: Why tradies are charging customers upfront, 1 October 2026
- Domain, Why do builders charge for a quote
- Housing Industry Association, Charging for a quote, 25 March 2021
- Consumer Affairs Victoria, Giving quotes: tradespeople and small works, updated 9 July 2025
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