How NailIt pricing works
Every NailIt estimate is a materials-only cost range for doing the project yourself. This page explains exactly where the numbers come from, including the parts that are weaker than we would like.
Two different numbers, produced two different ways
It matters which one you are looking at, because they are not built the same way.
- The estimator at asknailitai.com prices your described project. It returns a materials list, then looks up real listings at Amazon, Walmart and Home Depot for those materials. The products and prices you see in the shopping list are live retail listings retrieved at the time you run it.
- The project pages — the 137 pages under /estimator/ — carry a pre-generated range for a typical version of that project. Those figures were produced by a language model (Anthropic's Claude) reasoning about U.S. retail material costs for a standard scope. They are not pulled from a live price feed, and they are not recalculated when retail prices move.
So: the shopping list is real retail data. The headline range on a project page is a model's estimate. We would rather say that plainly than imply a pricing pipeline we do not yet run behind those pages. Connecting the live retail data to the project pages is work in progress.
What the estimate includes
Materials and consumables a typical DIY homeowner buys to finish the job — lumber, hardware, paint, adhesives, fixtures, fasteners, and the small parts in between.
What it does not include
- Labor. You supply the work, so there is no contractor charge in the number. This is the single biggest difference between our figure and most cost guides, which quote installed prices.
- Permits, delivery, disposal and tool rental, unless a project page calls them out.
- Regional variation. We publish one national figure. Materials in rural Montana and central San Francisco are not the same price, and we do not currently adjust by ZIP code.
- Waste and over-ordering. Unless a page states a waste factor, assume you will buy 5–10% more than the calculated quantity.
Low / Average / High
Low is budget-grade materials, often on sale. Average is the typical mid-grade basket. High is premium materials or a larger-than-typical scope. The spread is intentionally wide because material choice moves the total more than anything else on a DIY job.
Where a project page range can be wrong
Being specific, because vague reassurance is not useful:
- It can be stale. A model-generated figure does not move when lumber or copper does.
- Similar projects can share a range. Where two projects genuinely differ but our published range is identical, that is a limitation of how the figure was produced, not a claim that they cost the same.
- Derived quantities can be wrong. In August 2026 a reader-facing error on our concrete patio page overstated the concrete volume by a factor of ten. We fixed it, then re-checked every volume, bag-count and coverage figure on every project page with a script rather than by eye. We would rather publish that we got one badly wrong than quietly correct it.
If a number here looks wrong to you, it might be. Tell us and we will check the arithmetic and correct the page.
How to use these numbers
Treat a project page as a planning figure — enough to decide whether a job is a few hundred dollars or a few thousand, and worth starting. Before you buy, run the estimator for your actual dimensions and check the live retail prices in the shopping list. Those are the ones to budget against.
NailIt does not sell leads, does not pass your details to contractors, and has no incentive to inflate a number. We earn a commission if you buy through a retailer link, which is disclosed in full in our affiliate disclosure, and it does not change which products we show or what we estimate.