What Is a Good Close Rate on Contractor Estimates?

A good close rate on contractor estimates is roughly 40-60% for residential service and repair work (plumbing, HVAC, electrical, fencing, small remodels), and 15-35% for larger bid-based projects like full kitchen remodels, additions, or commercial contracts where homeowners routinely collect three or more competing quotes. If your number is far outside those bands, the fix usually isn't your pricing — it's your speed, your follow-up, or your presentation.

Contractors ask this question expecting a single magic number, and chasing one is how you make bad decisions. A roofer closing 70% of estimates might be underpriced. A remodeler closing 20% on six-figure jobs might be running a healthy, profitable business. The number only means something next to your margin, your lead source, and what kind of job you quoted.

Why the Right Number Depends on What You Sell

Close rate is really a proxy for how much shopping around a homeowner does before they sign. Small, urgent, or lower-dollar jobs get one or two quotes, if that — whoever shows up fast and looks competent usually wins. Big-ticket, discretionary projects get shopped hard, sometimes to five or six contractors, which mechanically caps everyone's close rate even when every bid is solid.

If you quote a mix of urgent repairs and big remodels, blend your numbers by job type before you judge yourself against any single benchmark. A 35% overall close rate could mean you're winning almost every small job and almost no large ones — a very different problem than winning half of everything.

Mix Matters More Than the Number

Two contractors can both close 45% of estimates and be in completely different positions. One is closing 45% at full margin on jobs sourced from repeat customers and referrals. The other is closing 45% only after discounting every bid 10-15% to beat a competitor, sourced entirely from marketplace leads where price is the only differentiator. Same close rate, very different business.

Before you worry about raising your percentage, segment it: close rate by lead source, by job size, and by whether you discounted to win. The 7 most common estimating mistakes that eat contractor profit often show up right here — a high close rate propped up by underpricing looks like success until you check the job costing at the end.

What Actually Moves Close Rate

If you want to move the number, these three levers matter far more than tweaking your price:

• Speed to quote. Estimates sent the same day close measurably more often than ones sent 3-5 days later — by then the homeowner has usually already talked to two other contractors. See how long it should take a contractor to send an estimate for realistic turnaround targets by job type.
• Follow-up. Most estimates don't get rejected — they get ignored. A single follow-up call or text 2-3 days after sending can lift close rate noticeably because it's often the only contractor who bothers to ask. How to follow up after sending an estimate covers the cadence and scripts that work without sounding pushy.
• Professional presentation. A clean, itemized, branded estimate that arrives as a PDF with your logo and clear scope reads as more trustworthy than a text message with a number in it — even at the same price. Presentation doesn't change the math, but it changes whether the homeowner believes the math.

Of the three, follow-up is the one contractors skip most and the one with the clearest payoff. If a homeowner hasn't responded in 48-72 hours, that's not a no — it's usually a maybe that needs a nudge.

How to Calculate It Without Fooling Yourself

Close rate = estimates accepted ÷ estimates sent, over a fixed window (monthly is usually enough to see a trend without noise from one big job skewing things). A few rules keep the number honest:

• Count an estimate as "sent" only once it actually reaches the customer — not every quote you started and abandoned in a notebook or spreadsheet.
• Track it by job type and lead source, not as one blended figure, for the reasons above.
• Give estimates a decision deadline (2-4 weeks is typical) before marking them lost, so stale quotes don't inflate your pending pipeline and hide a declining close rate.

If you're estimating out of text threads or a mix of paper and spreadsheets, this kind of tracking is genuinely hard — you have no single list of what went out and what came back. Why contractors lose money on jobs they estimated digs into a related version of this problem: you can't manage what you can't see.

When a High or Low Close Rate Is a Warning Sign

A close rate above 80% on jobs larger than basic repairs is usually a pricing problem, not a sales win — you're very likely leaving margin on the table and the market would bear a higher number. A close rate below 20% on routine service work, on the other hand, points to something fixable: slow response time, a confusing estimate, or lack of follow-up, more often than it points to being "too expensive."

Where Trusso Fits

Trusso won't change what you charge, but it removes the two levers contractors control most easily: speed and follow-up. AI estimates are built from your own price book so you can send a professional, itemized quote from the jobsite instead of days later from the office, and every estimate's status — sent, viewed, accepted, expired — lives in one pipeline instead of scattered texts, so follow-up actually happens instead of getting forgotten. Trusso runs flat at $29/mo for an owner plus 2 crew, $59/mo for up to 10, or $99/mo unlimited, with a 14-day free trial and no contract.

These ranges are general rules of thumb drawn from how residential service and remodeling work typically gets bid and shopped, not a formal study — your own close rate by job type and lead source is the number that should actually guide your decisions.