Free Carpentry Estimate Calculator

Add up your true direct costs — labor including burden, materials with markup, and job extras like equipment or disposal. Add a contingency for surprises if the job has any. That's your break-even, the floor you never quote below. Then add your profit on top: price = break-even × (1 + profit%). This calculator runs exactly that math as you type, and shows the result both ways — what you added on to your costs, and what share of the final price that leaves you — because the two numbers are easy to confuse and quoting on the wrong one is how a job loses money.

Burden is everything an hour of labor costs beyond the paycheck: payroll taxes (typically 8–10% of wages), workers' compensation (a few percent for low-risk trades, well over 15% for high-risk ones like roofing or concrete), liability insurance, and paid time off. All-in burden commonly lands between 15% and 40% on top of base pay — and forgetting it is one of the most common ways a profitable-looking job loses money. If you're solo and paying yourself, you can leave it at 0%.

Markup is a percentage added on top of your cost; margin is your share of the final price. Adding 100% on top — charging double your costs — is the same thing as a 50% margin. Quoting a markup when you mean a margin is one of the most common ways contractors underprice a job, so this calculator keeps it simple: you enter what you add on top — no cap — and it always shows what share of the final price that leaves you.

Work backward from your own numbers instead of copying competitors: add up what you want to earn in a year plus every cost of being in business, then divide by your realistic billable hours — most carpenters bill far fewer hours than they work. That result is your floor. Local demand, licensing, and skill decide how far above it you can go.

Somewhere between 15% and 50% is common practice across the trades, and it isn't padding: the markup pays for sourcing time, supply runs, returns, warranty callbacks, and the money you float between buying materials and getting paid. If the customer supplies materials, price the labor accordingly — you still carry the workmanship risk.

The hours go once the trim comes off. Rot that looked like a sill runs on into the subfloor and out to the rim joist. The wall nobody thought was load bearing has a point load sitting on it. Joists were notched for a waste line by whoever came before you.

Old houses are not square or plumb, so every piece gets scribed instead of cut to a number, and plaster fights back where drywall would not. Access adds up: a second-story window, a deck over a slope, a crawl space you work in on your back. Exterior glue, filler and finish stop cooperating in cold and wet.

Then the supply house, where a prehung in an odd width or the wrong swing is a special order, a composite color is back-ordered, and a delivered lift of framing lumber holds enough twisted sticks to cost you an hour culling. Custom work carries its own delay: a cabinet or a stair part that has to be made is made on somebody else's schedule, and the install day moves with it.

Carpentry carries real material, and it is bought by the stick and the sheet rather than the box. Order ten percent extra on a trim run for cuts and bad ends, and more where the work is miter heavy. Long crown and casing waste more than the tape suggests, because the offcut left after a miter is rarely long enough for the next opening, so linear feet measured wall to wall always undercount.

Lumber grade varies board to board, which makes a takeoff a minimum and means you cull at the yard. Framing lumber and sheet goods move week to week, and treated and cedar stock moves harder and faster than either.

Customers supply doors, cabinets and flat-pack kits, and those arrive short of hardware. What falls off a list every time is fasteners, shims, construction adhesive, hidden deck clips, joist hangers and the hanger nails that go with them — and hidden fastener systems are priced by the square foot of deck rather than by the box, which is a different number than most people estimate. Anything that must match existing millwork is an order, a mill run or a compromise, and the customer should hear that before it is cut.

Free and unlimited, no account needed. The math runs in your browser and your pricing setup saves only on your own device — we never see your numbers. Printing or sending the estimate it makes counts as a document: your first 2 are free, with no account.