should tradesmen charge for quotes

Should You Charge for Quotes? (How to Weed Out Tyre-Kickers)

By Eddie · 9 March 2026 · 6 min read

You've done three quotes this week, driven to all of them, heard nothing back from any. Now you're wondering if you should start charging just to stop wasting Saturdays. Fair question. Short answer: charge for diagnostic or complex design work, but keep standard quotes free. Charging for a routine estimate mostly just sends good customers to the competitor who didn't.

The real goal isn't to make money from quotes, it's to filter out tyre-kickers without scaring off the people ready to book. There's a smarter way to do both.

When a quote should be free

Most quotes. If a customer can describe the job, or you can eyeball it in 15 minutes and price it, that's the cost of doing business. It's marketing. Charging for it puts a barrier between you and work you'd have won.

Free quotes are right when:

• It's a standard job you can price from a visit or photos
• The work is straightforward and well-defined
• You're competing for domestic work where free quotes are the norm
• The quote takes you minutes, not hours

When you're right to charge

There's a clear line, and it's this: are you giving them a price, or are you giving them work? If you're doing genuine labour, like fault-finding, a full survey, or designing a solution, that has value whether they book you or not, and you're within your rights to charge.

• Diagnostic visits. Fault-finding, leak tracing, intermittent electrical faults. That's a paid call-out, not a quote.
• Complex design work. Detailed drawings, heat-loss calcs, bespoke specs. You're producing something they could take elsewhere.
• Long-distance or all-day surveys. If it costs you half a day and a tank of diesel, price the survey.

A free script to weed out tyre-kickers

You don't need to charge to spot a time-waster. You need the right questions up front. Qualify them on the phone before you ever get in the van. Copy this, tweak it, keep it by the phone.

Thanks for getting in touch. Before I pop round, just a few quick questions so I don't waste your time:

1) What exactly needs doing, in your own words?
2) Is this something you're looking to get sorted soon, or planning for later?
3) Have you had other quotes, or am I the first to look?
4) Roughly what budget did you have in mind for this?
5) Are you the homeowner / decision-maker, or is someone else involved?

If it's a fault that needs tracing down, there's a small diagnostic fee for that visit, which I take off the job if you go ahead. Standard quotes are free. Does that sound fair?

Where new tradies get this wrong

• Charging for everything out of frustration. A run of dead-end quotes stings, but blanket-charging just hands easy work to your competitors. Filter smarter instead.
• Not qualifying before they drive out. The fuel and the hour gone is the real cost of a tyre-kicker, not the quote itself. Five questions on the phone saves you the trip.
• Giving away real design work for free. If they could hand your drawings to a cheaper bloke and have him build it, you've been done. That's paid work.

Make free quotes cost you almost nothing

Here's the thing: the reason quotes feel expensive isn't the quote, it's the time. If a quote takes you two minutes instead of an evening at the kitchen table, charging for it becomes pointless. That's where fast digital quoting earns its keep. With Quotato you can build an itemised quote from a voice note or a few photos on the spot, so the free estimate stops being a chore.

Quote that quick and you can afford to be generous with free quotes while everyone else is putting up barriers.

So: keep standard quotes free, charge only for genuine diagnostic or design work, and qualify hard on the phone. That's how you stop wasting weekends without losing the jobs worth having.

Make free quotes painless so they never cost you a Saturday.
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