Methodology

Every number on this site was produced in one of a few specific ways. This page says which, so you can judge a figure before you rely on it.

Payroll and tax constants

Rates, wage bases and thresholds used in the labor burden and bid calculators come from the agency that sets them: the IRS for federal withholding and FUTA, the SSA for the Social Security wage base, and the relevant state agency for state unemployment insurance. We take the figure from the current official publication or agency page, cite it, and record the date we retrieved it.

We re-check these at each new IRS or SSA release rather than on a fixed calendar. Where a constant differs by state, each state's figure carries its own citation; we do not average states or publish a national "typical" rate as though it were data.

State rules

State reference pages, which cover contractor license bonds and retainage, are built from the statute or regulation itself, plus the administering agency's own published guidance. We read the official text, quote the operative language, cite the section, and date it.

Where a statute is ambiguous, or where agency practice is clearly narrower or broader than the text, we say so instead of resolving it for you. Where a rule turns on facts we cannot know (project type, contract value, public or private work), we lay out the branches rather than give one answer. Statutes are re-checked at least quarterly.

We describe rules; we never decide which one applies to your project. A page that says a license bond is $25,000 for a license class is a description of the statute, not an opinion that your business needs that bond. That call turns on facts only you, your contract and the agency have, and it is the kind of call a licensed professional in your state is for.

Software prices

Software prices come from the vendor's own public pricing page on the date shown. We record the plan name, the billing period (monthly or annual), the per-seat or per-user basis, and anything that changes the real cost: minimum seats, setup fees, required add-ons, annual-only discounts.

We do not publish prices obtained under a quote, an NDA, or a sales call, because you cannot check those. When a vendor publishes no price ("contact sales"), we say exactly that rather than estimating. Prices are re-checked at least monthly, and the retrieval date is shown next to every figure.

Calculator formulas

Every calculator shows its formula and a worked example on the page. No hidden constants, no unexplained fudge factors. If a tool needs an assumption to work, the assumption is an input you can change, and its default is stated.

Calculators run entirely in your browser, so the arithmetic you see is the arithmetic that ran.

Worked example: markup and margin

These two are not the same number, and confusing them is how bids lose money.

• margin = markup ÷ (1 + markup)
• markup = margin ÷ (1 − margin)

A 25% markup gives a 20% margin: 0.25 ÷ 1.25 = 0.20. Run it the other way and a 20% margin needs a 25% markup: 0.20 ÷ 0.80 = 0.25.

In dollars: cost of $10,000 with a 25% markup prices the job at $12,500. The $2,500 of gross profit is 25% of your cost but only 20% of the price you collect. Price off margin, not off markup, when you are protecting a percentage of revenue.

What "verified on" means

A verified on date is the day the figure was last confirmed against the source cited beside it: the live page, or, where the Sources list says "archived copy, captured" with a date, that copy of the official text. Our verification process runs the checks; the editor is responsible for them. It is a statement about checking, not about editing: the date can be recent even though the number has not changed in years.

It is also not a guarantee for today. A state can amend a statute or a vendor can reprice the day after we check. Treat the date as the age of our evidence.

What "illustrative" means

An illustrative number is an example, like the $10,000 job above, used to show how a formula or a rule works. It is not data.

Illustrative numbers are labeled as illustrative, never appear in a data table, never carry a "verified on" date, and are never presented as a rate, price or requirement you can rely on. Where a figure is genuinely an estimate rather than a published fact, we label it an estimate and show the method used to produce it, including its inputs.

Confidence labels

Each record in our downloadable datasets carries a confidence label. It describes the evidence, not our enthusiasm.

• High. Taken directly from a primary source that states the figure as a number: a statute, an agency table, an IRS or SSA publication, or a vendor's public pricing page. Verified on the date shown.
• Medium. Derived from a primary source that needed interpretation or combination: a rule stated in prose that we reduced to a number, a price that depends on tiers or minimums, or a figure valid only under stated conditions. The derivation is shown on the page.
• Low. A range or typical value where the primary source is silent, ambiguous, or older than our re-check window. Low-confidence figures say what is missing and what would raise the confidence, and they are never used as the basis of a headline claim.

If we cannot honestly give a figure at least a low label, we do not publish it.

Last updated September 23, 2026.