How Many Bids Should You Get? How to Get Contractor Bids That Compare

For most home remodeling projects in California, get three bids from licensed, insured contractors. Three is enough to tell whether a price is fair and to see how differently each contractor plans to do the work, without stretching your timeline by an extra month. Go to four or five only when the project is large or complicated, like a kitchen you are reconfiguring, an addition, or an ADU.

At GreatBuildz, we talk with homeowners every day who are collecting bids for a home renovation project. We’re a free service that matches California homeowners with vetted general contractors and stays involved through the project. This guide covers how many bids to get, how to get bids that actually compare, and what to check before you sign.

How Many Bids Should You Get?

Three for most projects, four or five for big or complicated ones. Three works because of what the third bid tells you. With two bids, all you learn is which one is cheaper. With three, a pattern shows up: if two contractors land near $60,000 and the third comes in at $38,000, the low one is usually missing work rather than offering you a bargain. Two numbers can’t show you that.

More bids stop helping fairly quickly. Past four, contractors start repeating each other, and you spend weeks scheduling walkthroughs instead of starting the job. Every contractor you meet with is also a couple of hours of your own time.

A rough guide, depending on what you’re building:

• Three bids for a job with a clear, contained scope: a bathroom remodel, flooring, a roof replacement.
• Three to four bids for a kitchen remodel where you’re moving plumbing, electrical, or walls.
• Four to five bids for a home renovation project at the larger end: an addition, a whole-house remodel, or an ADU.

The more decisions a project involves, the more the contractors’ approaches will differ, and the more value there is in seeing another one.

Before You Ask for Bids

The bids you get back are only as good as what you hand the contractors. An hour of prep here saves you weeks of trying to compare numbers that don’t line up.

• Know your budget and how you’ll pay for it. Decide what you can spend before anyone prices the job, and how you’ll fund it: cash, a home equity line of credit, or another loan. If financing isn’t lined up yet, start that now, since it can take longer than collecting bids.
• Rank your priorities. Is the point of the project function, looks, or keeping cost down? Tell every contractor the same thing, so they’re all solving the same problem.
• Write down the scope. A scope of work is a plain-language list of what you want done: the rooms, the layout changes, the materials and finishes you have in mind. It doesn’t need to be fancy. It needs to be identical for every contractor.
• Decide what you’ll buy yourself. Some homeowners buy their own finish materials, like appliances, light fixtures, tile, or plumbing fixtures. That gives you full control over choices and avoids markup, but you need a written list of what you’re supplying and what the contractor is, or the bids won’t compare. Items like insulation, primer, and recessed lights are easy to leave off both lists by accident.
• Sort out the logistics. Your target timeline, whether you’ll live at home during the work, who moves furniture, who picks up materials, and what hours the crew can work all change the price. Contractors can’t guess them.
• Check out the contractors before they come over. Look up each license on the CSLB site, read reviews, and ask whether they’ve built projects like yours. A kitchen specialist bidding your addition because work is slow is worth knowing about early.

How to Get Contractor Bids, Step by Step

1. Reach out to three contractors at once. Contacting them one at a time is the main reason bidding drags on.
2. Walk the project with each one. Show them the space in person and talk through every detail, down to things like a herringbone floor pattern or low-VOC paint. Plans and drawings often leave those out.
3. Share answers with everyone. If one contractor asks a question that changes the scope, send the answer to the others. Then email each contractor a short written summary of the walkthrough, so what you discussed shows up in the bid.
4. Collect written, itemized bids. Ask for labor, materials, permits, and allowances broken out. A verbal number is not a bid.
5. Clarify and follow up. Ask about anything unclear or missing. Some contractors will want a second visit, sometimes with their electrician or plumber, to tighten up their numbers. That’s a good sign.
6. Negotiate the contract with the one you pick. Settle the payment schedule, start date, and details in writing before work begins.

Pay attention to who asks questions during the walkthrough. A contractor who asks about your electrical panel, the age of your pipes, or where the crew should park is thinking about how the job will actually run. One who walks through in five minutes and emails a number is guessing.

Keep notes on every visit, call, and email, including what you liked and what worried you. By the third walkthrough, the details start to blur.

What’s Actually Inside a Contractor’s Bid

A bid is the contractor’s estimate of what your project will cost. It isn’t a fixed price and it isn’t a contract yet. A bid you can actually use shows you where the money goes:

• Labor. The contractor’s own crew, plus any subcontractors, which are the licensed specialists brought in for electrical, plumbing, and heating and air.
• Materials. Lumber, drywall, tile, fixtures, cabinets, and everything else that gets installed.
• Permits. The fees your city charges to review the plans and inspect the work. Ask whether these are included or billed to you separately.
• Allowances. A placeholder dollar amount for something you haven’t picked yet, like tile or a vanity. If you choose something more expensive later, you pay the difference.
• Overhead and profit. What the contractor charges to run the business and make a living on your job. A contractor who shows this line is being straight with you, not overcharging you.

When a bid is one line that reads Kitchen remodel, $72,000, you have nothing to compare against anyone else. Ask for it broken out before you go any further. Most good contractors will do it without complaint, because a detailed estimate protects them as much as it protects you.

For projects with structural changes, like moving a bearing wall or adding square footage, expect the most accurate numbers after your plans are drawn and approved by the city. Bids based on a walkthrough alone are a starting point for these jobs, not a final price.

The Risk of Getting Too Many Bids

Homeowners sometimes assume that more estimates mean a better decision. In practice, a long list of contenders makes the choice harder, not easier. Six bids take six walkthroughs to schedule, six follow-up calls, and six documents to read closely enough to compare. By the time you finish, the first contractor you liked has booked another job.

Comparing three bids carefully beats skimming six. If two of your three come back with wildly different numbers, the better move is to go back and ask why, rather than to add a fourth contractor to the pile. Estimates vary for reasons that usually make sense once someone explains them.

How to Compare Bids Fairly

A fair comparison only happens when every contractor priced the same work. If one contractor is pricing a tub and another is pricing a walk-in shower, the two numbers mean nothing next to each other. That’s why the identical written scope matters so much.

Once the bids come back, go through them line by line and ask:

• Does every bid cover the same rooms, materials, and finishes?
• Who is pulling the permits, and are those fees inside the price or on top of it?
• What does the payment schedule look like, and does each payment line up with work that will actually be finished by then?
• How are change orders handled? A change order is a written amendment you both sign when the job changes mid-project, and it becomes part of your contract.
• What’s the timeline, and what happens if it slips?
• What’s excluded? Read the fine print for exclusions, warranties, and any penalties for delays.
• Is anything conspicuously absent, like demolition, debris removal, or painting?

Putting the bids side by side in a spreadsheet is the fastest way to make the gaps visible, because a missing line is much easier to spot in a column than in a PDF. Our free BidCompare AI tool does this for you: upload the bids and it normalizes them into one comparison so you can see what each contractor included and left out.

Look at what’s offered beyond price, too. One contractor may include hauling away old debris or a longer workmanship warranty instead of a lower number. Those extras have real value.

One more thing to build in. An estimate is not a guarantee of the final price, so set aside a contingency of 10% to 15% of your budget for the surprises that turn up once walls are open. Every experienced homeowner will tell you the same thing.

What California Law Requires in Your Contract

Once you accept a bid, it turns into a contract, and California sets rules about what that contract has to contain. These are worth knowing while you’re still comparing bids, because a contractor who brushes past them is telling you something useful about how the rest of the job will go.

According to the Contractors State License Board, the state agency that licenses and regulates contractors in California:

• A written contract is required for any home improvement project over $500.
• Your down payment cannot be more than $1,000 or 10% of the contract price, whichever is less. There is no exception for special-order materials.
• After the down payment, payments cannot run ahead of the work. A contractor is not allowed to bill you for work that hasn’t been done or materials that haven’t been delivered.
• The contract has to state who is responsible for pulling the permits, and it has to include a completion date.
• Any change to the price or the scope needs a written change order, signed by both of you, before the work happens.
• The contract must identify the contractor’s name, business address, and license number.

That license number is worth two minutes of your time. You can look up any California contractor free on the CSLB license check and see whether the license is active, who it belongs to, and whether the contractor carries workers’ compensation insurance. As of January 1, 2025, a California contractor needs a license for any job over $1,000, and for any job that requires a permit no matter what it costs.

Red Flags in a Contractor’s Bid

Most contractors who bid your project will be honest people trying to win work. A few won’t be, and their bids usually give them away.

• A bid far below the others. A price 30% or 40% under the rest of the field is rarely a deal. It usually means missing scope, cheaper materials than you specified, or a plan to make the money back through change orders once your kitchen is demolished and you have nowhere else to go. This is common enough that contractors themselves name it: in a Consumer Reports survey of 300 general contractors, one of the shady practices they reported seeing in the trade was winning jobs with lowball bids and raising the cost later by pointing to unforeseen problems. If you’re tempted by the cheapest bid, ask that contractor to walk you through what the others included that they didn’t.
• Lump sums with no breakdown. Several tasks bundled into one line with no specifications is a way of hiding what isn’t in there. Ask for detail, and pay attention to whether you get it.
• A big deposit request. Anyone asking for 30% or 50% up front on a home improvement job is over the legal limit, and that tells you either they don’t know the rules or they don’t follow them. Neither is good.
• Pressure to sign now. Discounts that expire today, a crew that happens to be in your neighborhood this week, a contract pushed across the table before you’ve read it. A contractor who wants your project will still want it on Friday.
• No license number anywhere. It belongs on the bid, the contract, and the business card. If you have to ask for it twice, stop.
• No questions during the walkthrough. A bidder who didn’t ask anything about your house probably priced a generic job, not yours.

When the Final Cost Goes Over the Estimate

Stop and get it in writing before any extra work happens. Costs rise for real reasons, like rot found behind a wall or a choice you changed mid-project. They also rise because a bid was low on purpose. Either way, ask the contractor to explain the increase, look at alternatives with them, and sign a change order for anything new before the work is done. If the overrun is large, it’s reasonable to revisit the payment schedule or timeline. Here’s more on what to do when a contractor’s price goes over the estimate.

The best protection is the work you did before signing: a detailed scope, the same for every bidder, and a written list of who supplies what. Changing your mind mid-project is the most common way homeowners blow up their own estimate, because by then the contractor sets the price of the change.

Price Is Not the Whole Decision

Price matters, and pretending otherwise would be silly when you’re spending this kind of money. It’s just a poor way to pick between three qualified people, because the number on the page says very little about how the next four months will go.

What we watch for at GreatBuildz, and what homeowners tell us mattered most in hindsight, comes down to a few things beyond the bottom line. Does the contractor return calls? Did they ask questions about your house that the others didn’t think to ask? Can they show you finished projects like yours, and will past clients get on the phone with you? Does their experience actually match your project type?

Credentials are worth checking even when the referral came from someone you trust. In that same Consumer Reports survey, almost a fifth of general contractors lacked either a state license or the proper insurance, and 9% lacked both. The survey also found that fully credentialed contractors were better at holding costs down when unexpected problems came up, which is the situation where the difference between contractors actually shows.

Finding a contractor you can trust is hard, and we’re not going to pretend that three bids and a spreadsheet make it simple. The prep work above makes the bids you get back worth comparing in the first place. If you’d like help with the rest, we’re here.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many bids should I get for a construction project?

Three is the right number for most home projects. It gives you enough range to judge whether a price is fair and to compare how each contractor approaches the scope, without overwhelming you or stretching out your timeline. Fewer than three makes it hard to spot an outlier bid. For a large or complicated project like an addition or an ADU, four or five is reasonable.

How do I get accurate contractor bids?

Give every contractor the same written scope of work, including materials, finishes, and expectations, so their bids cover the same thing. Walk the project with each one in person, share any new details with all of them, and ask for itemized written bids. Vague requests produce vague, hard-to-compare bids.

What should I do before asking contractors for bids?

Set your budget and how you’ll pay for it, rank your priorities, write a scope of work, decide which materials you’ll buy yourself, and sort out logistics like your timeline and whether you’ll live at home during the work. Check each contractor’s license on the CSLB website before they come out.

Why shouldn’t I just take the lowest bid?

The lowest bid often reflects missing scope, cheaper materials, or a plan to add costs later through change orders. Compare bids on what is actually included, the materials, the timeline, and the contractor’s references, so you are comparing value rather than just the bottom-line number.

How do I compare contractor bids fairly?

Give every contractor the same written scope of work so they are all pricing the same job, then compare the bids line by line. Look at the payment schedule, the timeline, who is pulling permits, what’s excluded, and how change orders are handled. A clear, detailed bid is usually a sign of a contractor who runs an organized project.

How much can a California contractor ask for as a down payment?

No more than $1,000 or 10% of the contract price, whichever is less, on a home improvement job. This is set by the Contractors State License Board and there is no exception for special-order materials. After the down payment, payments cannot run ahead of the work that has been completed or the materials that have been delivered.

Is a contractor’s estimate legally binding?

No. An estimate is the contractor’s best projection of cost, not a fixed price. It becomes binding once it is written into a signed contract, which California requires for any home improvement project over $500. Until then, treat the number as a well-informed approximation.

How long does it take to get three contractor bids?

Plan on two to three weeks. Most contractors can come out for a walkthrough within a week, and then need a few days to a week to put a detailed bid together. Scheduling is usually the slow part, so reach out to all three at once rather than one at a time.

Planning a remodel anywhere in California? You don’t have to collect and compare bids alone. GreatBuildz is a free service that matches homeowners with three vetted general contractors and stays involved from the first walkthrough to the finished project. Call us at 818.317.3567 or get matched here.