💸 The Average Price Quote Hides $1,741 in Overcharges (2026 Data)
The Average Quote Hides $1,741 in Overcharges
When a homeowner or driver uploads a real price quote to QuoteScore, our system compares the quoted total against a fair-value range for that specific job, then flags the dollar gap. Add up every gap we have flagged since February and the total is $5,231,295 across 3,005 quotes.
Divide the pile by the number of quotes and you get the number that matters to a household: $1,741 of identified overcharge for the average quote we see. The average QuoteScore across those quotes is 57 out of 100, where 100 is a clean, fairly priced quote and anything under 50 signals meaningful overcharging or missing detail.
The $1,741 average is a conservative way to state the problem, not an inflated one. It is dragged down by the many quotes that come back fair, and dragged up by a smaller number of large exterior and structural jobs. Because the average includes fairly priced quotes with zero flagged overcharge, the typical overpriced quote hides considerably more.
What $1,741 Looks Like in Real Quotes
Averages hide the texture. Here are real, anonymized quotes consumers submitted to QuoteScore in the last few weeks, from smallest flagged overcharge to largest.
A dealer quoted $440 to replace a Honda sun visor that typically runs $120 to $340 (overcharge $224, score 25). A plumber quoted $650 for a kitchen faucet install worth about $300 (overcharge $350, score 30). A shop quoted $2,000 to replace a 2018 Camry windshield worth about $400 (overcharge $1,600, score 10). A contractor billed $15,000 for a 22-foot driveway channel drain that fair-values at $3,300 to $5,500 (overcharge $11,700, score 5). A roofer quoted $42,500 for a roof under 700 square feet worth about $15,750 (overcharge $26,750, score 15). A general contractor quoted $38,000 to finish a 950-square-foot basement worth about $11,400 (overcharge $26,600, score 10).
The $440 sun visor and the $42,500 roof are the same story at two scales: a number that sounds plausible if you have never priced the job, sitting far above what the work actually costs. Most people price a given job exactly once in their life, so they have no baseline, and the gap between the quote and fair value is invisible until someone measures it.
Where the Dollars Concentrate
Auto repair is the single most-submitted category in our dataset at 585 quotes, roughly one in five of every quote we see. It is also one of the worst-scoring, averaging 50 out of 100. The lowest-scoring categories overall are a mix of vehicle and exterior work: siding (49, from 47 quotes), auto (50, from 585 quotes), paving (53, from 57 quotes), roofing (53, from 254 quotes), and concrete (54, from 83 quotes).
The through-line is opacity. Nobody hands you a window sticker for a siding job or a radiator replacement, and opacity is exactly where an inflated number survives. The biggest single overcharges we flag cluster in exterior and structural trades, because that is where the base numbers are largest and the homeowner's ability to price-check is weakest.
Methodology: QuoteScore rates each quote 0 to 100 for fairness, weighing the quoted total against a fair-value range plus itemization quality. For each quote, the flagged overcharge is the dollar gap between the quote and the top of the fair-value range, and the $5,231,295 total is the sum of those gaps across all 3,005 analyzed quotes. Quotes that come back fair contribute zero. The sample is 3,005 real quotes uploaded by consumers between February and July 2026. Quotes are self-submitted, so the sample skews toward quotes people already found questionable, which makes it useful for studying overcharging patterns and unsuitable as a census of average prices.