Editorial Policy

This policy sets out how DIY vs Pros is produced and paid for, and what you can hold us to. It applies to every page on the site. Where this page and any other page disagree, this page is wrong and should be corrected — tell us.

Purpose

The site exists to answer one question per home service — do it yourself or hire a pro, and what does each cost — with numbers that are sourced, dated, and calculated the same way for every service. Our loyalty is to the reader deciding, not to either answer. Some pages say "do it yourself," some say "hire a pro," and the method that decides is published in full.

Independence

• We don't accept sponsored content, paid placements, or payment of any kind for coverage, position, or a verdict.
• We don't take referral fees or commissions from contractors, service marketplaces, or lead-generation networks. When a page says "hire a pro," nobody pays us for that.
• We don't rank, list, review or recommend specific companies, and we don't accept free work or products from them.
• No advertiser, retailer, manufacturer or contractor sees content before publication or has any input into it.

Advertising

The site is funded by display advertising, served by Google AdSense and other display networks. The rules we apply:

• Ads are clearly distinguishable from content and are never written to look like part of an article.
• We don't choose which ads appear or beside which page, and ad revenue does not vary with which verdict a page gives.
• Ads never alter the content itself: the numbers, tables, verdicts and calculator results are the same whether or not an ad appears near them.
• Advertisers have no access to editorial decisions and no ability to have content changed.

No affiliate links

We don't use affiliate links. When a DIY breakdown names a tool or material, it's because the job needs it, at the retail price we found — we earn nothing if you buy it, so we have no reason to tell you to. Tools most people already own are flagged so you don't buy what you don't need. If this ever changes, it will be disclosed on every page where it applies, next to the links, and this policy will be updated first.

Accuracy and sourcing

• Every cost figure has a source and a date. Sources are listed at the bottom of each service page with the month the figure was observed. If we can't point to where a number came from, we don't publish it.
• Primary sources first. Government statistics (Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data, Department of Energy guidance), retailer and rental-counter listings, and professional-society standards outrank other cost guides, which we use only to calibrate and cross-check. When sources disagree, we widen the range rather than pick a side.
• Ranges, not false precision. Every figure carries a low, typical and high, and the page says what moves it.
• Data first, prose second. Each service's numbers live in one data file; the tables, calculator and structured data are generated from it. When a number changes, the article text is checked against it so the two can't contradict each other.
• National figures, stated as such. Prices are U.S. national estimates. Every page says so and tells you to get three written quotes.

Verdicts

Every job size gets one of two verdicts — do it yourself or hire a pro — and the headline verdict is the call for a regular house. They are decided by the same criteria in the same order: risk to you and your property, the skill a first-timer can bring, whether the law requires a professional, what your time has to be worth for DIY to pay, and what a failed attempt costs to put right. The criteria are spelled out on the methodology page and applied the same way to a job that favors DIY as to one that doesn't. We don't soften a "hire a pro" to keep a reader on the site, and we don't inflate savings to make DIY look better than it is. Where the honest answer is that DIY costs more than a contractor, the page says exactly that.

Safety

Where a project carries real risk of injury, we say so before the savings, we say plainly when not to attempt it, and every DIY guide includes the point at which to stop and call a professional. We would rather lose a reader to a contractor than publish a how-to that gets someone hurt. We don't publish instructions for work that requires a license or that is unsafe for a first-timer regardless of skill — climbing tree work, anything near power lines — and we say why.

Not professional advice

Our pages are general information for planning. They aren't quotes, and they aren't legal, financial, engineering or safety advice for your specific situation. Building codes, permit rules, and licensing requirements vary by state, county and city; where we describe them, we describe common practice and tell you to check locally. Only a contractor who has seen your job can quote it, and only your local authority can tell you what your permit requires.

What we won't publish

• A cost figure without a source and a date.
• Rankings, reviews or recommendations of specific contractors or companies.
• Content paid for, supplied by, or reviewed in advance by a commercial interest.
• A DIY guide for work that is legally restricted to licensed professionals, or that we wouldn't attempt ourselves.
• Pages that exist to rank for a search term rather than to answer a question. Every page must add information a reader can act on.

Updates and corrections

• Every service page shows the date its figures were last reviewed. Data is re-checked at least quarterly and whenever a source publishes new figures.
• When a figure changes, the review date moves and the generated tables, calculator and structured data update with it.
• If we get something wrong, we correct it on the page and update the date. We don't quietly edit numbers, and we don't remove a page to hide an error.
• Errors can be reported through the contact form or to [email protected]. Every report is read and checked against sources before a change is made.

Reader contributions

Readers send us local prices, quotes they've received, and tools we've missed. We welcome all of it, and we treat it as a lead, not a source: nothing goes into the data until we've verified it against a source we can cite. We don't publish reader submissions as content, and we don't share what readers send us.

This policy was last updated September 18, 2026.