Search this question and page one of Google is a forum thread, a YouTube video and three legal-clause pages. Nobody answers it with evidence. Here is what I publish on my own site and why, what the homeowner surveys say, and the one campaign I have measured that bears on it.
Yes. Publish a starting price, a range or a priced menu for the jobs you do the same way every time, and keep the fixed written quote for everything else.
A price on the page qualifies the visitor before the phone rings. That is the same mechanism that made a booked time slot beat a "free estimate" form in the one campaign I have measured: 47 leads at $3.82 against an industry median near $17.
I publish my own prices, and I have not measured what that did to my inquiry volume. This page says plainly which claims are mine, which are surveys, and which are opinion.
I read the top results for this question on 15 September 2026 so you do not have to. The short version: the forum thread is split along one line, the marketing pages all say yes, and the only people who ran a survey were in roofing.
The ContractorTalk thread. "Should We Put Prices on our Websites?" was started on 6 December 2011 by a web designer asking contractors whether price ranges would stop her wasting time on estimates for people who could not afford her (contractortalk.com, read 15 September 2026). The replies are the whole argument in miniature. An electrician: "I would appreciate seeing a price range … I know what I have budgeted and don't want to waste someones time if it is not possible to get started with what I have allowed." A handyman: "I put pricing info on my site to give folks a general idea of what a project might cost. So many people that call for an estimate are just dreaming and have no clue what it will actually cost." A cabinet maker who had just added a priced package: "many times I have used it to get rid of tire kickers … it worked to get rid of a number of people who only wanted to spend a couple grand." Against: "Not me.....too many variables." And: "No way. I'm not selling happy meals." A remodeler who wanted to publish and could not see how: "This year I did a kitchen for $78k (low for the year) and another for well over $450k (high for my career). That range of information does not provide much descision making info." And the reply that quietly settles it, from a contractor doing both at once: "I only post our 'minimum charge' for service calls which is calculated by the hour on our website. Remodeling, and extensive repairs are only quoted after a site visit."
Read it closely and nobody in that thread disagrees about the mechanism. The contractors for and against say the same thing: a price gets rid of the people who cannot afford you. They differ on whether their own work can carry a number at all, which is a different question, and the one the middle path below answers.
The marketing pages. The other page-one results are written by people who sell websites, which includes me, so weigh accordingly. Patrick Iverson's "Should You Show Prices on Your Website?" (patrickiverson.com, 3 August 2026, read 15 September 2026) puts it as "A number, any number, is a filter. It tells a stranger in five seconds whether the conversation you would have is worth either of your time," and "Publishing a range does not lock you in. It filters." It also quotes two percentages I am not repeating, because the page attributes them only to "a widely cited survey" and "a separate B2B study" without naming either. Karyn Greenstreet's older piece (passionforbusiness.com, undated, read 15 September 2026) makes the competitor point directly, "Your competition already knows what you charge... You'll have a tough time keeping your pricing private," and ends where the forum thread did: "The best thing you can do is test it. Put your prices on your site for four weeks, and compare the results." A remodeling-SEO agency's page dated 9 April 2026 (kitchenremodelingseo.com, read 15 September 2026) answers "Yes. Service businesses should include pricing context on their website — not exact quotes, but ranges, starting prices, and the factors that affect cost," and claims businesses that do so "report fewer unqualified sales calls, shorter sales cycles, and higher close rates," without saying who reported it.
The surveys. The only measured consumer data I could verify comes from Roofing Contractor magazine's annual homeowner survey. The 2024 report, from a Clear Seas Research survey run in fall 2023 (roofingcontractor.com, 13 May 2024, read 15 September 2026): "Roughly two-thirds of homeowners (66%) said they're more likely to call a roofing contractor that offers pricing on the company website," while "Barely one-quarter of roofers (28%) said they offer pricing online." By generation: "About 74% of millennials and 72% of Gen Xers said they're more likely to call roofers with pricing available online, while 61% of boomers agreed." The 2025 report, from a fall 2024 survey (roofingcontractor.com, 1 April 2025, read 15 September 2026): "More than three-quarters of respondents (78%) said they're more likely to call a roofing contractor that offers pricing on its website," and "Only one-quarter of the contractors surveyed said they feature pricing online, while the overwhelming majority do not." Two cautions. Neither page states a sample size, and the 2025 survey was run in partnership with ROOFLE Technologies, which sells instant roof-quote software, and Owens Corning, so the people asking the question had a stake in the answer.
Even discounted for that, the gap is the useful fact: somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of homeowners say a price makes them more likely to call, and about a quarter of roofers give them one. "More likely to call" is not "hired", and saying it in a survey is not doing it. But if you are one of the three-quarters without a number, the survey says the number is what most of your visitors came looking for.
Four things happen when a price appears on a contractor's website, and only one of them is the thing contractors are afraid of.
It qualifies the visitor before the call. Someone who reads "from $999" and does not have $999 does not fill in the form. That is not a lost lead; it is a lead you would have paid for in phone time and then lost anyway. The person who does fill in the form has already accepted the floor, so the first conversation starts at "what does your job involve" instead of "what do you charge".
It saves estimate visits. Every "free estimate" is an unpaid drive, an unpaid walk-around and an unpaid write-up, and the price question is usually the reason half of them never turn into work. A published starting point moves that question to before the drive. You still visit the jobs that are worth visiting. You stop visiting the ones that were never going to close on price.
It signals competence. A contractor who can write "a standard job starts here, and these five things move it" knows their costs. A site that says "every job is different, call us" may be true, but it reads the same whether it was written by a twenty-year veteran or someone who has never priced a job in their life. Specificity is evidence. I wrote about that mechanism in why a calendar link beats a free estimate: a claim anyone could make is worth less than a detail only someone who has the thing would know.
It is what I do, and I do it for the reasons above. My own site says Starter Site from $999 (or $149/mo for twelve months, after which it stops and the site is yours); Business Site from $2,499; Growth Site plus a working tool from $4,999; Care Plan from $199/mo; and a Site & Business Audit at $750 one-off. Every one of those is a starting point; every project gets a fixed quote in writing before work starts. Next to the prices I say what is not included (photography, logo design, your domain and third-party fees, regulated copy that needs a specialist to sign off) and what moves the price (page count, custom tools and integrations, whether the content already exists, and the deadline). A Grand Rapids business owner comparing me with an agency should be able to rule me in or out in thirty seconds, without a discovery call. That is the job the prices do.
I have not measured what publishing prices did to my own inquiries. I do not have a before-and-after, and I am not going to pretend the surveys below are a substitute for one.
What I have measured is one Meta lead campaign for a housing property: $179 of total spend, 47 tour-scheduled leads at $3.82 each, against a real-estate industry median near $17 (WordStream's 2025 benchmark puts it at $16.61). The ask was a booked time slot instead of a "free estimate"-style form. The form conversion rate fell from 16.6% to 11.3% and the cost per click fell from $0.69 to $0.33. The full arithmetic is in what moves cost per lead.
The lesson I published from it is that a specific, scheduled, bounded offer beats an open-ended one, and the offer carries the campaign. A price on a page is a bounded offer. That is the connection, and it is an inference, not a result.
The forum answer is "every job is different". It is not wrong; it is just the beginning of the argument rather than the end of it. Three objections deserve a straight response.
Custom jobs. A kitchen remodel is not a product. Publish a number for it and you have handed the homeowner an anchor that has nothing to do with their kitchen, and every conversation after that is you explaining why theirs is not the number on the site. This is a real problem, and the answer is not to publish a price for the remodel. It is to publish the price of the things that are products, which nearly every contractor has: the inspection, the service call, the standard replacement, the minimum job.
Competitors undercutting you. The fear is that the shop down the road reads your page and prices one dollar under it. Two things are true here. First, they can already get your number by asking a neighbour who used you, or by sending a friend to request a quote; a published price makes it easier, not possible. Second, if the only thing that separates you from the shop down the road is price, a published number does become the whole battlefield, and you should fix the first problem before worrying about the second. A contractor who competes on turning up, finishing, and a clean site is not undercut by a number.
Regional variance. A price that is right in Grand Rapids is wrong in Detroit and absurd in Chicago. This is a serious problem for a franchise running one website across thirty markets. It is not a problem for a contractor who works Kent and Ottawa counties, which is most of the people asking this question. Your prices are already regional. Your website is already regional. Say the region.
There is a fourth objection nobody raises and everybody suffers from: prices go stale. Material costs move, and a page that still shows the number you were charging two years ago is worse than no number at all, because it sets an expectation you cannot meet. If you publish prices, somebody has to own updating them. On my own site that is me, and it is one of the things a care plan exists to do.
"Prices or no prices" is a false choice. Between a blank "call us" and a full rate card there are four approaches, and most contractors should use two of them at once.
| Approach | What the visitor sees | What it does to lead quality | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| No prices, "call for a quote" | A phone number and a form | Nothing is filtered. Every caller has to be qualified by phone or on site, including the ones who cannot afford the minimum. | Avoid, unless genuinely every job is bespoke |
| Starting-at price | "Roof replacements from …" with a line on what moves it | Filters out the people below the floor. Keeps the fixed quote for the actual job. | Do this. It is what I do. |
| Range | "Most of our jobs land between … and …" | Filters both ends: the too-small and the people expecting a luxury build at a starter price. Less precise, but honest about spread. | Do this for custom work |
| Priced menu for standard jobs | A list: inspection, service call, standard replacement, each with a fixed price | Turns the standard jobs into things people can decide on alone. The custom jobs still get a quote. | Do this if you have any repeatable job |
| Instant-quote calculator | Picks job type, size and options; gets an estimate range and a time slot | Qualifies and books in one step. Needs honest ranges behind it and somebody watching the calendar. | For higher-volume standard work |
| Full fixed prices for everything | A complete rate card | Maximum filtering, minimum flexibility. Only works when the product is genuinely the same each time. | Only for productised work |
The two rows I would send most contractors to are the starting-at price and the priced menu. Together they cover the fear and the opportunity: the custom job keeps its written quote, and the standard job stops needing a phone call to sell.
The calculator row is the tool I build as part of the Growth Site. It does one thing: the visitor picks the job type, answers a few questions about size and options, sees an estimate range built from ranges you supply, and is asked to pick a time for the site visit. It does not replace the quote. It moves the price conversation to before the visit and the booking to the same moment. I am describing what it does, not what it has done: I have no results from one to report.
If you want to see the two ends of the spectrum on a page, my demonstration builds show both. The roofing demonstration uses an estimate form, and the salon demonstration uses a priced service list. Both are fictional businesses built to show the approach. They are demonstrations, not client work, and no result is claimed for either.
You do not need a study to answer this for your own business. You need three honest answers.
1. Is there a job you do the same way every time? A furnace check, a gutter clean, a service call, a standard shingle tear-off on a ranch. If yes, that job has a price and the price belongs on the site. If you honestly cannot name one, publish a starting point and a "what moves it" line instead.
2. Who do you want to lose? Every website loses somebody. A site with no prices loses the people who will not call a business that hides its number, and the surveys above suggest that is most of them. A site with prices loses the people who cannot afford the floor. Decide which group you would rather never hear from, and remember that the second group costs you a drive and an hour before you find out who they are.
3. What does a wasted estimate visit actually cost you? Put a number on it: the hours, the fuel, the write-up, the follow-up call that goes nowhere. If a starting price on your page removes even one of those a week, it has paid for the ten minutes it took to write, many times over. If your estimate visits nearly all close, your price is not the problem and you can leave the page alone.
"Standard [job] from $[floor]. What moves the price: [size], [access], [material], [timing]. Every job gets a fixed quote in writing before we start." Four things: a floor, the variables, the promise of a fixed number, and the order they come in. That is the whole page.
Yes, for the jobs you do the same way every time. Publish a starting price or a priced menu for the standard work, a range for the custom work, and a line saying what moves the price, then give every job a fixed quote in writing before you start. That is what I do on my own site. Roofing Contractor magazine's homeowner surveys found 66% of homeowners in the 2024 survey and 78% in the 2025 survey were more likely to call a roofer that offers pricing on its website, while only about a quarter of roofers did.
They can already find out what you charge by asking a neighbour who used you or by having a friend request a quote, so a published price makes that easier rather than possible. If the shop down the road can take your work by pricing one dollar under you, price was already the only thing separating you, and that is the problem to fix. Publish a starting price, not your whole cost structure, and compete on turning up, finishing and leaving a clean site.
Then do not publish a price for the custom job. Publish the price of the things that are products, which nearly every contractor has: the inspection, the service call, the standard replacement, the minimum job. For the custom work, publish a starting point or a range and say plainly what moves the price, such as size, access, materials and timing, and promise a fixed quote in writing before work starts. A visitor who knows the floor and the variables can decide whether to call without you driving out.
I have not measured it on my own inquiries, and I would not trust anyone who claims a universal answer. The mechanism is that a price filters out people below your floor, so raw volume can fall while the share of callers who can afford the job rises. That is the same trade I measured in a housing ad campaign, where a booked time slot instead of a free-estimate-style form produced 47 leads at $3.82 each against an industry median near $17 (with a lower form conversion rate and cheaper clicks). Judge on jobs won and wasted visits avoided, not on the number of forms.
Send me the URL of your current site. I'll tell you which of your jobs can carry a published price, which should stay on a written quote, and how I'd word the "what moves it" line for your trade.
If your page is already doing this well, I'll say so.