How we calculate

Labor rates: what shops in your area charge

Our hourly labor-rate bands are built from a professionally compiled national database of real shop door rates covering more than 1,100 independent repair shops across 49 states. We compute a fair band per state, and where the survey has enough local shops, a tighter band for your city — because a fair hourly rate in Houston is not a fair hourly rate in rural Texas. When we can't place you, we fall back to the national band and say so.

Repair times: how long the job takes

Labor lines are checked two ways: the hours billed against published book times for your specific vehicle (sourced from the Open Labor Project), and the implied hourly rate against the regional band above. Padded hours and an inflated rate are different tricks — we flag each separately.

Parts prices: what the part really costs

Part lines are compared against real aftermarket retail — including live marketplace listings on eBay that fit your exact year, make, and model, reduced to a middle-of-the-market band (we drop the cheapest and priciest outliers). Your report links straight to search results so you can verify the number yourself in one click.

Your vehicle

VINs are decoded through the U.S. government's NHTSA vPIC database — that's how we pin down the exact vehicle before pricing anything against it.

What we never do

We never invent a price. If a line on your estimate has no reference data — an unusual part, an uncommon job — the report says “can't verify” rather than pretending. A fairness score only counts overcharges we can substantiate against data.

The honest caveats

Ranges are references, not quotes. A price above our band isn't automatically a ripoff — special-order parts, dealer-only procedures, or a rusted-solid bolt can all justify it. The point is that you should be able to see why, and now you have the numbers to ask. Terms · Privacy