About What's The Damage
What's The Damage is Australia's independent home services cost guide. We publish researched pricing data for 35+ trades across 14 capital cities and major regional centres — what Australian homeowners are actually paying for plumbers, electricians, kitchen renovations, roof replacements, and everything in between. Updated monthly. Free. No sign-up.
We exist because the alternative — googling “how much does X cost” and getting six different answers from six different marketplaces all trying to sell you a lead — wasn't serving homeowners.
We're not a marketplace. We don't take a cut when you book a tradie. We don't accept payment from service providers to inflate or hide prices. The site is an editorially independent publication, funded separately from the cost guides themselves.
35+ trade-specific cost guides
Low / average / high pricing for plumbers through landscapers. Updated monthly across all cities.
14 city-specific variants
Calibrated against local labour rates, demand pressure, and licensing costs in each metro market.
The 2026 Tradie Pricing Report
Our annual analysis of where Australian trade prices have moved this year, and why.
The Quote Checker
A free tool to benchmark any tradie's quote against verified market rates in seconds.
The Homeowner Hub
Practical guides on getting quotes, checking licences, and avoiding overpaying.
Full methodology & sources
The complete editorial process and source list backing every figure we publish.
Every figure published must be cross-referenced against three or more independent Australian sources before going live. That's the difference between a real cost guide and one person's guess copied across a network of competitor sites.
What this means in practice
We're not affiliated with Hipages, Oneflare, ServiceSeeking, Airtasker, or any trade marketplace. Our editorial output and our advertising business are operated as separate functions.
- ✗ No referral commissions when you contact a tradie through us
- ✗ No payment accepted from service providers to inflate or hide prices
- ✗ No marketplace affiliation — Hipages, Oneflare, ServiceSeeking, Airtasker
- ✓ Cost guide editorial output funded separately from advertising
- ✓ Full source list and methodology published openly on the methodology page
Sam is the chat widget you'll see on cost guide pages. Sam is an AI assistant — not a human — built to help homeowners describe a job in their own words so we can match them to the right tradie.
Sam is transparently disclosed as an AI throughout every conversation. Anything substantive on this site — pricing data, recommendations, methodology — is editorial content from the team, not from Sam.
Spot a price that's wrong?
If you find a figure that's out of date or doesn't match what local tradies are actually quoting, we'd like to hear. We review every correction and update affected guides in the next monthly cycle.
contact@whatsthedamage.com.au