How to Quote Building Jobs in the UK (2026)
Why Most Builders Lose Jobs Before They Even Start
Learning how to quote building jobs properly in the UK is one of the most valuable skills a builder can develop. A bad quote loses you work before you’ve picked up a tool. An underpriced quote costs you money on every hour you work. A slow quote hands the job to someone else while you’re still measuring up.
What Goes Into a Building Job Quote
A solid building quote is made up of four components. Get all four right and you protect your margin on every job.
1. Labour Costs
Work out how many hours the job will realistically take, including time for prep, cleanup, and anything that typically overruns on jobs like this one. Multiply by your hourly rate or day rate. Most builders underestimate time, especially on jobs with unknowns like older properties or customer-supplied materials that arrive late or wrong.
2. Materials Costs
Price materials accurately, not from memory. Get current trade prices from your supplier for the specific job. Add a materials markup of 15–20 percent to cover the time spent sourcing, ordering, and managing returns.
3. Overheads
Your van, fuel, insurance, tools, phone, software, and fixed costs all need to be covered by the jobs you price. Work out your monthly overhead figure and divide it across your billable hours each month.
4. Profit Margin
Labour plus materials plus overheads gets you to your break-even point. Aim for a minimum net profit margin of 15–20 percent on building work.
How to Work Out Your Day Rate as a Builder
Take your target annual income, add your business overheads for the year, then divide by the number of billable days you can realistically work. Most sole traders work around 220 billable days per year. If you want to take home £50,000 and your overheads run to £15,000 a year, you need to generate £65,000 from roughly 220 days – a day rate of around £295 before profit margin. Add 20 percent and you’re looking at £354 per day as your minimum viable rate.
Most experienced builders in the UK are charging between £250 and £450 per day depending on trade, location, and specialism.
How to Present a Quote That Wins Work
Use Proper Quoting Software
A quote sent as a Word document or a handwritten note does not look professional. Tools like Tradify and Jobber let you build quotes from a saved price list, send them to clients as branded PDFs with an online approval link, and convert approved quotes directly into jobs. That flow alone removes significant friction from the sales process.
Break It Down Clearly
Show the client what they’re paying for. Separate labour and materials. List the key tasks. A clear breakdown builds confidence and makes it much harder for clients to haggle without understanding what they’re asking you to cut.
Include a Scope of Works
Specify exactly what is and is not included in the price. This protects you from scope creep and disputes about what was and wasn’t included. Disputes are almost always avoidable with a clear scope statement upfront.
Set a Clear Validity Period
Material prices change. Your availability changes. Put a validity period on every quote, typically 30 days.
State Your Payment Terms
Include your payment terms in the quote itself, not just on the invoice. For larger jobs, include a deposit requirement – 25–30 percent upfront is standard practice and filters out clients who were never serious about proceeding.
Common Quoting Mistakes Builders Make
- Underpricing to win work. Winning a job at a loss is worse than not winning it at all.
- Not allowing for waste and overages. Always add a 10 percent contingency to your materials estimate.
- Forgetting non-billable time. Site visits, measuring up, quote writing, materials sourcing – all have a cost.
- No written scope. A verbal agreement on scope is not worth arguing about.
- Not following up. Tradify shows you when a customer has opened your quote. Follow up within 3–5 days if they haven’t responded.
Frequently Asked Questions
Price the job in four parts: labour (hours × day rate), materials (at current trade prices plus a 15–20% markup), overheads (your monthly fixed costs spread across billable hours), and profit margin (minimum 15–20% on top of your total costs). Send a written quote including a scope of works, your payment terms, a deposit requirement for larger jobs, and a 30-day validity period.
Most experienced builders in the UK charge between £250 and £450 per day depending on trade, specialism, and location. London and the South East command the highest rates. The right day rate for you is calculated from your target income plus overheads, divided by realistic billable days per year – not from what the person next to you on a job charges.
A professional building quote should include your business name and contact details, quote number and date, customer name and site address, a detailed scope of works specifying what is and is not included, materials itemised or subtotalled, your labour cost, total price including VAT if applicable, a validity period (typically 30 days), your payment terms including any deposit requirement, and a clear exclusions clause.
Same day is the standard to aim for – ideally within a few hours of the site visit. Homeowners comparing multiple builders frequently go with whoever responds first, assuming prices are in a similar range. Quoting software like Tradify lets you build and send a professional quote from your phone before you drive away from the site.
A materials markup of 15–20% on top of your trade prices is standard for UK builders. This covers the time spent sourcing and ordering materials, transporting them to site, managing returns or damaged items, and any wastage beyond your estimate. It is a legitimate and widely accepted part of how builders price their work.
Tradify and Jobber are the two most widely used quoting apps among UK builders. Both let you build professional quotes on your phone using saved materials and labour rates, send them by email from the site visit, and convert accepted quotes to jobs and invoices in one tap. Tradify is the better fit for sole traders and small firms; Jobber suits growing teams who need a full client approval portal.
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