Scope one bid prices and another never mentions
Permits, dumpsters, supervision, subfloor levelling. The gap is marked in the column where it is missing, not buried in a paragraph beside the table.
$29,300 apart.
Same house.
Upload 2–5 contractor bids. RehabRocket lines them up trade by trade, flags what each one leaves out, and writes the questions to ask before you sign.
$99 per project. No subscription. The demo needs no account.
Whole-house rehab — 1408 Sycamore St3 bids
| Scope | DelgadoDelgado Construction2questions | VanceVance Remodeling4questions | KowalskiKowalski & Sons1question |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plumbing | $7,800 | $6,900 | $9,400 |
| Flooring | $8,200 | $6,800 | $11,200 |
| Fixtures & appliances | $2,400 | excluded | $3,900 |
| Permits & fees | $1,850 | not mentioned | $2,100 |
| Dumpster & haul-away | $1,650 | not mentioned | $1,900 |
| Items total | $61,400 | $48,900 | $81,000 |
The actual problem
The cheapest bid is cheapest for a reason nobody has told you yet.
Bid A comes in at $61,400. Bid B is $48,900. You are about to pick B, because $12,500 is real money and both bids say “whole-house rehab” at the top.
B does not mention permits. B does not mention dumpsters. B marks appliances as yours to buy. None of that is on the page as a warning — it is on the page as an absence, and absences do not catch your eye at 11pm on the third read.
You find out in week three, when the inspector asks who pulled the permit.
What goes wrong, in order
- 1Three bids arrive in three formats — a four-page PDF, a photo of a legal pad, and a text message.
- 2No two of them break the job into the same trades, so no two lines are comparable.
- 3You build a spreadsheet. It takes three hours and you give up on splitting the $18,400 "kitchen" line.
- 4You pick on the total, because the total is the only number that lines up.
No signup, no upload
Try it on three real bids right now.
A whole-house rehab, three contractors, already loaded. It is the live comparison view — not a video, not a screenshot. Hover a gap marker. Open a questions panel.
Whole-house rehab — 1408 Sycamore St3 bids
Questions to ask Vance Remodeling
- Your bid does not mention permits. Are you pulling them, or am I — and is the fee inside your $48,900?
- Who supplies and pays for the dumpsters and debris hauling?
- "Appliances by owner" — does that cover the range hood and the microwave, or just the big four?
| Scope | DelgadoDelgado Construction2questions | VanceVance Remodeling4questions | KowalskiKowalski & Sons1question |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flooring | $8,200 | $6,800 | $11,200 |
| Fixtures & appliances | $2,400 | excluded | $3,900 |
| Permits & fees | $1,850 | not mentioned | $2,100 |
| Dumpster & haul-away | $1,650 | not mentioned | $1,900 |
| Items total | $61,400 | $48,900 | $81,000 |
Everything above is live on the demo — the badges open, the markers explain themselves on hover.
How it works
Upload, compare, then track what you spend.
The comparison is the wedge. What keeps you in it is that the winning bid becomes the budget.
- Add a bidBid 3 of 3Contractor nameKowalski & SonsUpload a filePaste text
Drop the bid here, or choose a file
PDF, image, spreadsheet, or text
Take a photoStep 1Upload 2–5 bids
PDF, a photo of the one on legal paper, a spreadsheet, or text pasted out of a message. No re-typing.
- Whole-house rehab3 bids
Scope Delgado Vance Kowalski Plumbing $7,800 $6,900 $9,400 Flooring $8,200 $6,800 $11,200 Permits & fees $1,850 not mentioned $2,100 Step 2Get them side by side
Every bid normalised to the same trades, gaps flagged, questions written per contractor, totals checked against what each bid claims.
- Budget vs actualSeeded from Delgado
Trade Budgeted Actual Left Demolition $3,200 $3,410 -$210 Plumbing $7,800 $6,950 $850 Electrical $6,400 $6,400 $0 Flooring $8,200 $4,120 $4,080 Total $25,600 $20,880 $4,720 Step 3Pick the winner
The winning bid seeds a per-trade budget. Log what you actually spend against it as the job runs.
What it flags
The four things that cost people money.
Not a feature list — these are the specific ways two bids on the same house stop being comparable.
Exclusions, kept separate from silence
"Appliances by owner" is a contractor telling you a boundary. Saying nothing about permits is not. Those are different risks and they render differently.
Allowances wearing the costume of a price
A $4/sq ft tile line is a placeholder, not a number. Two bids with identical totals can be $9,000 apart on the day you go to the showroom.
Line items that do not add up to the stated total
When a bid’s own math is off, the totals row says so rather than picking whichever number is more convenient.
On the price hints: Rough gauge from general knowledge — not local pricing data, and not an estimate for your job. They exist to make you ask a question, never to give you a number to hold a contractor to.
Straight answer
What RehabRocket doesn’t do.
Four things it is worth being clear about before you spend $99.
It does not price your job.
It reads the bids you already have. It is not an estimator and it will not hand you a number to take to a contractor.
It does not pick for you.
Cheapest is not a recommendation when one bid excludes permits. It shows you what differs. The call is yours.
It does not replace a professional opinion.
Structural questions, code questions, anything an inspector should see — those still need a person. It replaces the spreadsheet, not the expert.
It is not always right.
It misreads handwriting and occasionally files a line under the wrong trade. Every line item is editable, and the price ranges are rough on purpose. Rough gauge from general knowledge — not local pricing data, and not an estimate for your job.
Who it’s for
Same tool, different reason for using it.
House flippers
The spread between three bids is a quarter of your margin. Compare in an evening, not a weekend.
For flippersRenovating your own home
Three bids that do not say the same thing, and no vocabulary to argue with. Start with the questions.
For homeownersRental & BRRRR investors
Scope that appraises, priced before the holding clock starts running.
For rentalsPricing
$99 per project. Not a subscription.
One property address. Up to 25 bids inside it, grouped into as many comparisons as you need — budget and task tracking included, no expiry.
If you never flip another house, you never pay again. If you flip six a year, you pay per deal — which is how you already think about every other line in the budget.
What’s included- Up to 25 bids on that property, in as many comparisons as you need
- Extraction from PDF, photo, spreadsheet, or pasted text
- Gap flags, generated questions, and price sanity hints
- Per-trade budget seeded from the winning bid
- Expense logging with budget-vs-actual per trade
- A per-project task list
Questions
The six people ask first.
What counts as a project?
One property address. Up to 25 bids inside it, grouped into as many comparisons as you need — budget and task tracking included, no expiry.
Is this a subscription?
No. It is $99 once, per property. If you never flip another house, you never pay again.
What can I upload?
PDFs, photos of a paper quote, spreadsheets, or text pasted straight out of an email or a text message. If a contractor gave you the number verbally, paste what they said.
What if it reads something wrong?
Every line item is editable — scope, label, and amount. Bad handwriting and 40-page PDFs both produce mistakes, so the table shows you a warning when a bid’s line items don’t add up to the total the contractor stated. Fix the line, and the comparison and totals update.
Is my data used to train AI models?
No. Your bids are sent to Anthropic’s API to be read and are not used to train models. They are not sold, and they are not pooled into a dataset.
Does it tell me which bid to pick?
No, and it shouldn’t. Cheapest is not a recommendation when one bid excludes permits and another includes the tile you chose. It shows you what differs, flags what’s missing, and writes the questions — the call is yours.
Free, no account
Not ready to buy anything?
Two tools and three templates for the part that happens before the bids come back — including the scope sheet that makes them comparable in the first place.
You are about to commit $60,000 on a hunch.
Spend twenty minutes and $99 first. The demo costs nothing and needs no account.