Price transparency: why the trade's biggest names show their prices

Your suppliers already do it

Think about the last time you bought fixings, a radiator or a pack of tiles. You probably checked the price online first. Screwfix, Toolstation, B&Q and Wickes all show their prices online, and Screwfix now promises to match a cheaper price on identical products.

A merchant that made you ring for every price would soon lose you to one that doesn't. Customers trust a price they can see.

Trade services are going the same way

It isn't only products. Some of the best-known names in home services now show a price before anyone visits:

• BOXT gives a fixed price for a new boiler online in minutes, from a few questions about the home. No home visit is needed for the quote.
• British Gas shows its boiler service prices on its website and lets customers book online.
• Pimlico Plumbers publishes hourly rates for its trades, from plumbing and electrics to roofing.
• Checkatrade publishes cost guides for many common jobs, such as what a roof replacement typically costs.

So your customer may well have seen a figure before they ring you. The question isn't whether they see a price. It's whether the price they see is yours.

What customers want is trust

Checkatrade's State of Trust in Trades report, a survey of 3,000 UK adults in 2024, found that only about half (52%) trusted the tradespeople they had used. Only 37% had received an itemised written quote, and the report called cost transparency a significant concern.

That's an opportunity for a small firm. A clear price up front, for the customer's own job, is one of the simplest ways to stand out from the firms that make people wait.

Speed wins the job

Without a price, a customer's path is a call, a wait for a visit, then a wait for a written quote. It can take two or three weeks, and they may be asking other firms at the same time. The firm that answers first, with a clear figure, has a head start.

With a price on your website, the customer knows roughly what the job will cost in a couple of minutes, at any hour. The ones who get in touch already know the cost and are ready to talk. See what slow quoting costs you.

Being open about price helps

Researchers from Harvard Business School and the University of San Francisco found that when businesses showed customers what an item cost them to make, sales rose by about a fifth. They tested it on a university canteen's soup and an online wallet shop, not trades, but it suggests that being open about price builds trust.

"But won't it give my prices away?"

Not your price list. A guide price for one customer's job isn't your rate list, your day rate or your margins. Someone could type in made-up jobs to get a feel for your prices, but they could already do that by ringing you for a quote. What they can't see is which customers are talking to you, what those customers' jobs are, or the figures you give them.

We go through this and the other common worries in Should you put prices on your trade website?

Where Build A Quote fits

Build A Quote puts a price calculator on your own website. Your customer answers the questions you'd ask on a visit and sees a guide price for their own job, worked out on your rates. Your price list is never shown. You get the enquiry by text and email with all their answers, and you still confirm the price once you've seen the job.

It's the same idea, on your own rates and under your own name.

Sources

Checked on 1 November 2026. Company details are what each business publishes on its own website, and may change. Build A Quote has no connection with the firms named.

• Screwfix launches Price Promise, Retail Gazette, July 2026
• Boiler installation: fixed-price quote online, BOXT
• Boiler service prices, book online, British Gas
• Our trade rates, Pimlico Plumbers
• Roof replacement cost guide, Checkatrade
• Nearly 50% of consumers don't trust the tradespeople they employ, Fix Radio, on Checkatrade's State of Trust in Trades report, September 2024
• New research finds cost transparency can increase sales 20%, INFORMS, on Mohan, Buell and John, Marketing Science, April 2020