The house
Start from a common job, then replace every figure with your takeoff. Changing system type never overwrites a rate you already typed.
Your crew rates
A $36/h tech loaded at 32% is $47.52. Quoting the raw wage on a published $8/ft special is how a micromesh colonial that looked fine turns into a loss after the first extra story.
Your bid
- Feet, stories, and miters
- Access and extras
- Crew hours
- Loaded labor
- Coil + kits + fascia
- Travel + equipment
- Overhead
- Total cost
- Profit at this price
- Price per foot
- Effective hourly rate
- Walk-away price
A bid link carries your own rates — wage, burden, overhead, and target margin — so the page reopens exactly as you left it. Send it to yourself or your crew. The customer should get the price, not the link.
Where the hours go
Where the cost goes
Transparent arithmetic from your own inputs. Starting hours and coil rates are common ballpark figures, not an industry standard, a leak warranty, or a building-code determination — replace them with your own takeoff.
Hand the customer a proposal
The price above is for you. This is the page you print or save as a PDF and give to the customer — your details, their details, the scope, the deposit split, and a line for them to sign. Your business details are saved on this device so you only type them once; the customer’s details are never saved.
Everything on the printed page is text you typed or a number this calculator worked out. It contains no warranty, lien, or cancellation wording — those depend on your jurisdiction and your contract, and this tool is not the place to invent them.
Common questions
Why can a competitor advertise “$8 a foot installed”?
Because that number is written around one specific house, and that house is the first preset here: a one-story ranch with 140 lineal feet of empty 5″ K-style, four miters, no extra downspouts, nobody home to work around. Priced honestly it really is cheap. What a per-foot special cannot see is the second story, the miter count, the downspouts, a clean-first pass, rotten fascia, and which guard is actually going on. Price your real house beside the special and the gap stops being an argument about who is honest and becomes a list of line items you can show the homeowner.
What actually changes between screen, foam, reverse-curve, and micromesh?
The setup time and the coil, and they move together. Perforated screen — the “$8-a-foot special” system — starts at 1.5 hours of base setup and $2.25 a foot of material. Foam inserts start at 1.7 hours and $3.40. Reverse-curve or helmet is 2.1 hours and $6.25 because it is fitted under the shingle course. Micromesh or leaf-filter is 2.4 hours and $8.50, which is most of why a mesh quote lands at three or four times a screen quote on the identical gutter run. Changing the system refills those two starting numbers and leaves every rate you have already typed alone.
Why does a second story cost more than the same footage on a ranch?
Because height is not footage, and the calculator bills them separately. Every extra 10 feet past the 120 included in a base setup adds 0.35 hours. A whole extra story adds 1.2 hours on its own, before a single extra foot is counted, and a steep roof adds another 0.9. That is ladder setting, walking the plank, and working off a roof edge instead of off a step ladder — the part a per-foot price silently averages away, and the reason a 180-foot colonial is not just “180 times the ranch rate.”
Why are miters and downspouts priced separately from the run?
Because a base setup already includes some of each — 120 feet, one story, four miters, and three downspouts by default — and only what is beyond that is billed. Each extra miter adds 0.15 hours plus an $8 kit; each extra downspout adds 0.25 hours plus a $22 adapter. A house with twelve corners is a different job from a rectangle with four, and this is where that shows up instead of quietly eating the margin.
Should I clean the gutters before fitting, and what does it add?
If they are full, fitting over the debris is how a guard job comes back as a callback. Ticking clean-first bills it: 0.2 hours per 10 feet across the whole run, plus a $35 disposal cost. On the 220-foot mesh preset that is 4.4 hours of crew time — real money that a homeowner comparing your bid to a coupon price will not have in theirs, which is exactly why it belongs on the proposal as its own line rather than folded into a rate.
Is my data uploaded anywhere?
No account and no network requests — the calculator runs entirely in your browser. Your bid is saved in this browser’s local storage so it is still here next visit, and a bid link you copy carries those same numbers in the page’s address rather than sending anything to a server. The optional usage counter records only which features were used and the day, never your footage, wages, or prices.
What’s the difference between the bid price and the walk-away price?
The bid price already carries your target margin on top of labor, coil, kits, and overhead. The walk-away price is the total cost underneath it — crew hours, guard material, miter kits, downspout adapters, fascia, disposal, travel and equipment — the point below which the install stops being profitable at all. Typing a number into “Price you’re considering” shows you the margin, or the loss, before you send it.