Paste your furnace, AC or plumbing quote. We tell you what it actually says — the equipment, the scope, what's missing — and where the price lands against 312 real quotes from other homeowners.
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| Job type | Location | Quotes | Quoted range | Median per unit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC only: outdoor unit + indoor coil or air handler (furnace stays) | Various | 31 | $5,450 – $14,900 | $3,225/tonfrom 29 that state a size |
| Full system with new ductwork | TX, VA | 3 | $20,000 – $26,700 | too few to say |
| Ductless mini-split, multi-zone system | Various | 19 | $7,700 – $32,800 | $474/kBTUfrom 16 that state a size |
| Ductless mini-split, single-zone system | Various | 20 | $2,000 – $12,150 | $427/kBTU |
| Full system with an air handler, reusing ductwork | Various | 75 | $7,850 – $27,920 | $4,671/tonfrom 73 that state a size |
| Full system with a furnace, reusing ductwork | Various | 127 | $8,925 – $29,000 | $4,317/tonfrom 119 that state a size |
Ranges are the highest and lowest quote received for that job, not an average. Median per unit divides those same quotes by what they actually buy — tons of cooling, thousands of BTU, or gallons — which is usually why a range looks wide: it is a range of sizes as much as of prices. Only quotes that state a size can be counted that way, so where fewer did, the number of them is shown. Permit records are public filings and are never mixed into quote figures.
Median price per ton across the 190 full systems that state a usable size, so a brand cannot look dear merely by selling larger systems. 62 further quotes from these brands sit outside that cut — 22 ductless, where price per head is the honest divisor; 2 with new ductwork, a bigger job than the equipment — so a bar is not a brand's whole presence in the database. It moves the number by 111%.
Equipment that can throttle costs more than equipment that is only ever on or off — here by 28%.
Every group with at least 3 quotes on record. The figure beside each bar is how many it rests on.See what else moves a quote →
This week's numbers, frozen and compared with the week before: Weekly Data Update, Monday, October 12, 2026. Or the running HVAC price index.
There's a real moment of unease right before a contractor hands you a proposal for HVAC or plumbing work — you're about to make a five-figure decision on the word of someone who does this every day, and you don't. That gap, not the contractor, is the actual problem. Pricing varies for real reasons — how busy a contractor is, how complicated the job is, the time of year — and a rushed estimate often becomes a quick per-ton or per-fixture number instead of a real one. Read the Nameplate exists to close that gap and put you, the homeowner, on level footing.
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See where your money is going
Equipment
$4,516
details on hover
Piping (refrigerant, gas, condensate)
$2,000
Source: an MEP rule of thumb, not this quote
Labor
$5,084
Source: an MEP rule of thumb, not this quote
Overhead and profit
$2,900
Source: an MEP rule of thumb, not this quote
No comparable equipment pricing exists in the catalog for this scope yet.
This proposal accounts for its whole total in its own line items — which is more than most do.
The allocated figures are a model, and it's still being built. Anything marked allocated isn't from your proposal — it's this quote's own total divided up using rates measured on real installations. That gets more accurate as the database grows: every proposal that comes through sharpens the rates behind it. Read those branches as the shape of the job, not as line items your contractor wrote.
A worked example, not a real customer's proposal — built from a real matched furnace-and-AC system in the equipment catalog, run through the site's own pricing logic exactly the way a pasted quote would be.
Where this is going
What your neighbor paid for the same furnace is not written down anywhere you can reach. Public permit records and quotes homeowners send in are the closest thing that exists, and nobody had put them together.
Every furnace, boiler and condenser carries a metal plate stating what it is, when it was built and what it is rated for. It is the closest thing your house has to a VIN, and most homeowners have never looked at one.
No lead generation, no referral fee, no contractor paying to be recommended. That is the only reason this site's reading of your quote is worth anything.
We are building the largest independent database of what homeowners actually pay for HVAC and plumbing work.
The permits are what applicants declared their work was worth, which is not the same quantity as what a contractor charges — so they are read as a separate second opinion and never averaged into the rest. The only source for what a job was actually quoted at is homeowners sending in the quote. That is the part being built, and it is why the tool is free.
Recent reading, and real prices to check yours against
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Browse all 12 articles → · the dataset behind the comparisons
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