Methodology

What Counts as a Valid Submission

For a submission to be included in our dataset, it must meet the following criteria:

• A recognized service category must be selected
• Price must be a positive number in Canadian dollars
• Province and city must be specified
• Experience ratings (1-5) must be provided for satisfaction, timeliness, and quality

Submissions with incomplete data or obviously invalid prices (e.g., negative numbers, extreme outliers) are filtered out to maintain data quality.

What "Price Paid" Means

The "price paid" field represents the total amount you paid for a service, including:

• Labor costs
• Materials (if included in the final invoice)
• Applicable taxes

We ask for the final amount on your receipt or invoice, not estimates or quotes. This ensures our benchmarks reflect what people actually paid, not what was quoted.

How Benchmarks Are Calculated

Our benchmarking system uses percentile-based statistics:

• Median (50th percentile): The middle value — half of submissions are above this price, half are below
• 25th percentile: 75% of submissions are above this price
• 75th percentile: 25% of submissions are above this price
• Your percentile: Shows where your price falls relative to others

We use percentiles rather than simple averages because they're more resistant to outliers and give you a clearer picture of the typical price range.

Geographic Aggregation

Benchmarks are calculated at multiple geographic levels:

1. Postal code area (FSA): Most granular, using the first 3 characters of your postal code
2. City level: Aggregated across a city
3. Province level: Aggregated across a province
4. Canada-wide: All submissions for a category

The system automatically selects the most granular level that meets minimum thresholds, then falls back to broader aggregations if needed.

Why Aggregation Thresholds Exist

We require minimum submission counts before displaying benchmarks:

• Privacy protection: Prevents individual transactions from being identifiable
• Statistical reliability: Ensures benchmarks are based on enough data points to be meaningful
• Outlier resistance: With more data points, extreme values have less impact on the statistics

Canadian Focus

Initial benchmarks focus on Canadian markets to ensure pricing comparability, privacy protection, and statistical reliability. Prices vary significantly by country due to currency, labor costs, and regulatory differences. By focusing on Canada first, we can provide more accurate and actionable insights.