Every other roof calculator wants something before it answers. An email, a phone number, an SMS code, a callback from a contractor who paid for your details.
This one answers first, shows the arithmetic, and asks for nothing. That refusal is the entire product.
Why it exists
A roof is one of the largest single payments most households ever make on their home, and it is almost always bought under time pressure by someone who has never bought one before.
The information that would let you judge a quote is not secret. It is a per-square rate, a pitch multiplier, and a tear-off line. It is withheld because a homeowner who cannot price the job is a more valuable lead than one who can.
The site that ranks first for the phrase "roofing calculator" has no calculator on its calculator page. Seventy visible words, no heading, and not one dollar figure in the page its server sends. That is the standard this is measured against.
What it does
It takes your building's footprint and your roof pitch, works out the real surface area, and prices the work at published rates, with every step shown so you can check it on a pocket calculator. Address lookup, which will read the footprint from your building's outline instead of asking you for it, is being built.
Then you have a number to hold a contractor's quote against. That is all it is for. It does not replace an inspection, and it never will.
What it will not do
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Never ask for a phone number Not for a callback, not for a "free quote", not ever. The site has no field for one, and a build check fails if anyone adds it.
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Never sell your details to a contractor There is no lead business here. Nobody pays us for your address.
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Never put anything above the calculator No advertisement, no banner, no announcement bar. The tool is the content, and nothing goes in front of it.
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Never hide the arithmetic Every rate is published with the publisher it was read from, including the ones that disagree with each other.
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Never publish a number we cannot source Where the data does not exist, the page says so. That is why the calculator has no regional adjustment and no surcharge for tall houses.
How the numbers are made
Rates are gathered from published sources, and every figure is then re-checked by a second reader whose job is to disprove it: refetch the page, confirm the quoted sentence carries the claimed number, and check what the number actually includes.
Of the 197 figures gathered for the roof calculator, 175 survived and 22 were thrown out. All 22 were real numbers that did not mean what they appeared to mean, which is the way cost data usually goes wrong.
The full working, the sources, and the list of things we could not establish are on the rates and sources page.
How it is paid for
It is not. The site earns nothing today: no advertising, no affiliate links, no lead sales, no sponsored contractors.
That may not be permanent, because hosting and data cost money. If it ever changes, this page will say exactly how before it happens, and the five commitments above will still hold. An advertisement above the calculator or a phone field in the form would make this a different site, and at that point it would not be worth running.
Who runs it
This is an independent site. It is not run by a roofing company, it is not owned by one, and it has no commercial relationship with any contractor, manufacturer or supplier.
Nobody here is a roofer. Everything on this site is worked out from published sources rather than from trade experience, which is exactly why every source is listed and every gap is named. If a working roofer tells you something here is wrong, they are probably right, and we would like to hear it.
Corrections
If a rate here is wrong, or a source says something different from what we report, tell us at hello@roofcostbyaddress.com. Point at the figure and the page you read it on and it will be checked and changed.
A correction is worth more to this site than a compliment. The only thing it has to offer is that its numbers can be checked, and that is worth nothing if nobody checks them.