Ask ten tradespeople what the difference is between a quote and an estimate and you’ll get a fairly confident answer from about three of them. The other seven use the words interchangeably, which is fine until the day someone doesn’t want to pay the difference.
Here’s the short version: a quote is a fixed price you’re bound to. An estimate is an informed guess you can revise. That distinction is the reason one of them can cost you money and the other can protect you.
The legal bit, briefly
When a customer accepts a quote, that’s a contract. You’ve named a price for a defined piece of work, they’ve said yes, and you’re both held to it. If the job takes twice as long as you thought, that’s your problem. You can’t quietly add it to the invoice.
An estimate is different. It’s your best assessment of what the work will cost, given what you know at the time. If the real figure moves, the estimate can move with it. What you can’t do is treat that as a blank cheque. The general expectation is that a final bill lands somewhere near the estimate, and a customer who gets an invoice wildly above one has grounds to challenge it.
There’s no magic number that makes an increase acceptable, which is exactly why the wording and the paper trail matter more than the label.
When to send a quote
Send a quote when you can see the whole job.
- The scope is clear and unlikely to move
- You’ve seen the site, not just photos
- You know what’s behind the wall, under the floor, or up the ladder
- You’ve done this type of work often enough to price it confidently
Fixed prices are good for you when you’re quick and good at your job. If you can do in a day what you priced at a day and a half, the gain is yours. That’s the reward for being experienced, and it’s the reason day rates quietly punish good tradespeople.
Customers also prefer quotes. A fixed number is easy to compare and easy to say yes to. If you can quote, quote.
When to send an estimate
Send an estimate when the job has genuine unknowns.
- Renovation and older properties, where opening things up changes the story
- Damp, rot, wiring and anything else you can’t see until you start
- Work where the customer hasn’t fully decided what they want
- Anything priced by time on site, where the duration depends on conditions
Quoting a fixed price on a job you can’t fully see is how people end up working for free. An estimate is the honest answer when the honest answer is “it depends”.
How to word it so it doesn’t bite you
Whichever you send, the document does the work. A few things worth including every time:
Say which it is. Put the word “Quote” or “Estimate” at the top. Not “Price”, not “Costing”. If it ends up in front of a third party, that one word does a lot.
Define the scope. What’s included, and just as importantly what isn’t. Most disputes aren’t about the price, they’re about two people who thought they’d agreed on different work.
List the assumptions. “Assumes existing plaster is sound.” “Assumes access via the driveway.” Assumptions are how an estimate stays honest and how a quote stays fixed.
Put a date on it. Materials move. A quote from four months ago shouldn’t still be binding you at last quarter’s prices. Thirty days is common.
Say what happens if things change. On an estimate, explain how variations are handled and that you’ll confirm before doing extra work. On a quote, say the same about anything outside the scope. Nobody minds a variation they were told about in advance. Everybody minds one that appears on the invoice.
The mistake most people make
It isn’t picking the wrong one. It’s sending a document that doesn’t say which it is, with a scope loose enough to argue about.
A tightly written estimate is safer than a vague quote. If your paperwork lists what’s included, what you’ve assumed, and how changes get handled, you’re covered either way. If it says “£2,400 to do the bathroom”, you’re relying on everyone remembering the same conversation in six weeks’ time.
Which should you send?
Quote where you can, estimate where you must, and be explicit about which one it is.
If you find yourself estimating everything because jobs keep changing, that’s usually a scoping problem rather than a pricing one. Better questions up front, before you price, turn more of your estimates into quotes. Fixed prices are where the margin is.
Our quote templates are built around that: structured questions that pin the scope down first, so the number you send is one you can stand behind. Pick your trade, put your own rates in, and it does the maths.