about lowriskquotes — Canada
LowRiskQuotes is a free cost estimation tool for contractors, tradespeople, and anyone who needs to quote a job without underpricing it. All outputs are in Canadian dollars with Canadian labour rates and market conditions.
Instead of adding a flat contingency percentage to your quote, LowRiskQuotes runs a Monte Carlo simulation — thousands of randomised cost scenarios based on the uncertainty levels you assign to each line item, your job duration, and your travel. The result is a probability distribution showing what your job is likely to actually cost.
For each item in your estimate, you tell us how uncertain you are about the cost (from "certain" at +/-2% to "wild guess" at +/-40%). We do the same for your job duration and travel time.
The engine then runs 1,000 to 10,000 simulated versions of your project, each with randomised costs drawn from your uncertainty ranges. The simulations are skewed toward overages — because in the real world, projects tend to go over budget more often than under.
The output tells you: at the 80th percentile (our recommended quote level), there is an 80% chance your actual costs will be lower than this number. That is a much safer basis for a quote than a gut feeling plus 10%.
Canadian construction has its own realities: harsh winters that shorten outdoor work seasons, provincial building codes, HST/GST on labour and materials, and the CRA mileage rate of $0.70/km for travel. Our Canadian guides reflect these conditions with realistic CAD pricing.
Whether you are working in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, or rural Nova Scotia, the simulation adapts to whatever costs you feed in. The method works everywhere — the numbers are yours.
Everything runs in your browser. Your estimates are saved to your device only (localStorage). No data is sent to any server. No account needed. No tracking beyond basic analytics.