What should be on a window replacement quote?

The reason this matters more than the price at the bottom: three quotes that are not itemised the same way are not three quotes. They are three guesses about what you are buying.

The eleven lines

1. Each opening priced separately, with size and window type

Not "12 windows — $X". A bay window and a bathroom slider are not the same unit and should not disappear into one number. Separate lines are also what lets you cut scope intelligently later if you need to.

2. Retrofit or full-frame, stated explicitly

This quietly moves more money than anything else on the list, and almost no national cost page even mentions it.

A retrofit insert sits inside your existing frame. Less labor, no stucco work, and you lose a little glass area. Full-frame takes the old frame out to the rough opening — which on a Phoenix stucco house means exterior patching, matching, and paint against a wall that has been in the sun for fifteen years.

Two bidders quoting different methods will look like two prices for the same job. They are not. Get the method in writing.

3. Manufacturer and product line — the actual series name

"Premium vinyl" is not a product name. Neither is "energy efficient." You want the manufacturer and the series, because that is what lets you look up the specification yourself instead of taking anyone's word for it.

4. The glass package, with NFRC U-factor and SHGC

The two numbers that decide how a window behaves here, for the exact unit and glass package quoted.

U-factor is heat conduction — lower is better. SHGC is solar heat gain — lower is better in this climate, and it is the one people forget to ask for. Federal guidance for warm climates is one line: "Look for a low solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC)... Low SHGCs reduce heat gain in warm climates."

ENERGY STAR's Version 7.0 specification, effective October 2023, sets the hotter southern zones at U ≤ 0.32 and SHGC ≤ 0.23.

"ENERGY STAR certified" is not the numbers. Ask for the numbers. A bidder who cannot produce them has not looked up the window he is selling you — and read the thresholds off energystar.gov rather than a manufacturer's summary, because at least one major manufacturer publishes a restatement of the v7.0 criteria that does not match the specification.

5. Frame reinforcement — what it is made of

Vinyl frames need stiffening, and the standard way to do it is aluminum inside the frame chambers. So "vinyl" is not an answer to "what is the frame reinforced with."

It is a fair question to every brand — the DOE is explicit that "metal or aluminum window frames conduct heat very rapidly, which makes metal a very poor insulating material." Some manufacturers use a non-metallic reinforcement instead and publish that they do.

6. Spacer type

The spacer holds the two panes apart at the glass edge, and it is where seal failure and fogging start. Peer-reviewed testing on insulated glass units found that over seventy weeks, aluminum spacers leaked more gas than non-metallic warm-edge spacers — in research that also names sunlight as "the most important aging factor on IGUs."

In a metro where seal failure is the dominant way windows die, this one line is worth asking about on every bid.

7. Stucco, drywall, trim and paint repair — included or excluded, in writing

On a full-frame job in this valley this is real money and real risk. A quote that does not mention exterior patching either includes it or is about to become a change order. There is no third option.

8. Permit, if one is required — and who pulls it

For like-for-like replacement into an existing opening, usually no permit. If the opening size changes, yes. Requirements differ across the Valley. Ask who pulls it and get the answer in writing.

9. Haul-away and disposal

Of the old units and the glass. Small line, occasionally a surprising one.

10. Product warranty and labor warranty — as two separate documents

This is the line people discover three years later.

A manufacturer's warranty covers the product. It does not cover labor. Somebody still has to come and fit the replacement part, and whose problem that is depends entirely on the installer's own workmanship warranty — a separate document, with a separate term.

Ask four things of every warranty, ours included: which document, which components, how many transfers and in what window, and is labor in it.

You will find conditions in all of them, and they are not scandals — they are terms. Two real examples we verified in September 2026, from opposite ends of the market:

• A premium vinyl line carries lifetime coverage for insulated glass seal failure — conditional on the upgraded glazing package, dropping to 10 years without it. Weatherstripping is 5 years. It transfers once, and only if registered within 30 days of sale. Labor is not covered.
• A value-tier manufacturer restructured effective 1 January 2026. Its headline coverage — glass breakage plus labor — is now an optional upgrade that "must be purchased at the time of the original product sale" and "cannot be assigned or transferred." Its default warranty is transferable, but excludes glass breakage and covers labor only within 10 years.

At one end the better warranty dies when you sell the house. At the other, labor is not covered at all. Both are in documents you can ask for today. A conditional lifetime warranty clearly written is a good warranty. A "lifetime warranty" that arrives only as a spoken sentence is not a warranty at all.

11. Payment schedule, and what is owed before work starts

Including what happens if the job stalls. A large deposit against a job that has not been ordered is the single most common way homeowners get stuck.

The two questions that are not on the quote

Ask them anyway. They decide more about how your job goes than anything in the list.

"Are your installers employees or subcontractors?"

Employed crews cost a contractor more — payroll taxes, workers' compensation, training, keeping people busy year-round. Subcontracted crews are cheaper because the risk moves off the contractor's books. It moves somewhere.

This is not a theoretical concern. The most-read thread in this whole category is a homeowner who paid $16,000 for 8 Pella windows and got a bad installation, with the top comment nine words long — "For 2k a window, I would expect perfection." — and a contractor further down saying "As a Pella certified contractor, these are installed wrong."

Read that correctly: that is not evidence the product was bad. A certified contractor is the one saying the units were installed incorrectly. Above roughly $2,000 a unit you are not buying a window, you are buying an installation, and the extrusion is the cheap part.

"What is your ROC number and classification?"

Then go and look it up yourself rather than taking the answer. It takes thirty seconds, it is public, and it is the difference between having a bond and a state recovery fund behind your job and having nothing behind it. What that number protects, and what it does not, including the two-year deadline that catches people. Ours is ROC 364596.

The discount that expires when the rep stands up

One more thing, because it is the single most disliked practice in this category and it tells you something about the first number you were given.

One homeowner reported a quote for seven windows and two doors dropping from $29,000 to $24,000 on the spot in exchange for committing that day. In their own words: "I hate those high pressure tactics when they bring the price down but you have to commit that day... I'm having remorse."

The final price may well have been fair. The issue is what it says about the first one. If $5,000 can leave a price in ninety seconds in exchange for a signature, the original number was not a measurement. It was an opening position.

The counterweight is in the same thread — a homeowner who got their price down "bit by bit as I got other quotes" and explicitly "did not commit that day." Same tactic, two outcomes, and the difference is entirely the buyer's willingness to leave the room.

The test costs you nothing: ask for the same price in writing, valid 30 days. A real price survives a week. We do not do same-day pricing — the number we give you on Tuesday is the number on Friday.

And get three: "Never ever ever do projects without 3+ quotes." Then compare them on the eleven lines rather than on the bottom number, because that is where the difference actually lives. If the cheapest of your three wins on the line items — same product line, same glass package, same method, same scope, same warranty terms — take it. That is what we would do.

Related guides

• What the ROC number on a bid tells you
• How many windows people replace at once
• Window replacement cost in Arizona