How We Source Rates

Five rules that govern every number

1. Ranges, never point estimates. We publish the band the evidence jointly supports. A single figure for a country where brick prices vary two-and-a-half times between regions is false precision dressed up as authority.
2. Every rate carries a verified month and at least one source. No exceptions and no "approximately". The site build fails to compile if a rate is missing either.
3. One source of truth. All rates live in a single data file. Pages and calculators both render from it, so a number can never be current in one place and stale in another. Nothing is ever retyped into prose.
4. The date is visible next to the number. If you can see a price on this site, you can see when it was checked.
5. Confidence is stated honestly. A rate we are less sure of says so, and the least-confident tier never ships on a published page.

Source hierarchy

Sources are preferred strictly in this order, and a lower-ranked source never overrides a higher-ranked one:

1. Government schedules of rates — CPWD DSR and state PWD schedules.
2. Published indices — RBI and MoSPI wholesale price indices for cement and steel, CIDC cost indices.
3. Manufacturer and brand price lists — cement MRP circulars, TMT bar lists.
4. Large-marketplace listed prices — medium confidence at best, and always corroborated by something else.
5. Trade press carrying named data.
6. Verified local field checks — a price confirmed on the ground by someone who actually bought the material. Treated as high confidence and recorded as a source in its own right.

Blogs and content farms are never a source. At most they are a lead to chase back to a primary one.

How a rate is recorded

For each material we collect at least two independent sources and record the span they jointly support — not the union of their extremes, which would produce a uselessly wide band. We then note the unit exactly, because unit confusion is the classic estimating failure: a bag is not a tonne, and a cft is neither a brass nor a cubic metre. Finally we record the verified month, the confidence level, every source, and a note covering anything that moves the price — brand, grade, region, season or GST treatment.

Where a rate is currently supported by only one source, we do not hide it — the table below counts the sources behind every published figure, and any rate resting on a single source is held below our highest confidence level until a second one corroborates it.

What we publish today

Every material rate currently on the site, generated directly from the data the calculators read. These are national retail bands including GST unless the material's own note says otherwise; regional variation is large, and city-level rates are being built to narrow it.

All rates above were verified in July 2026 and are due for re-verification by October 2026. Confidence levels follow the source hierarchy above: a band corroborated by government or index data ranks higher than one built from market listings.

The build-cost model

Alongside material rates we maintain a cost model — the ₹/sq ft bands by quality tier that drive whole-house estimates. It is dated July 2026 and due for review by January 2027.

How these bands are turned into an answer, and what the resulting figure includes and excludes, is set out on Calculation Methodology.

Refresh discipline

Every rate-bearing file carries a review date — quarterly for market rates, half-yearly for the cost model. Once that date passes, the site build prints a warning on every single compile until the data is re-verified. That nagging is the mechanism that keeps dates honest; a policy nobody is reminded of is a policy nobody follows.

Material rates are currently verified to July 2026 and due for review by October 2026. When a review confirms a rate is unchanged, we still update its verified month — "checked and unchanged" is information you deserve to have. When a rate does change, updating it once refreshes every page and every calculator at the same moment.

Why your local price may still differ

These are national bands. Regional spread in India is genuinely enormous, and no national number can absorb it:

• Bricks vary the most — kiln-belt districts in UP and Bihar against metros and the South can differ by roughly two-and-a-half times.
• Sand is the most regulation-sensitive material: mining bans and monsoon restrictions cause 30–50% seasonal spikes.
• Transport can be 15–25% of the delivered cost of heavy, low-value materials.
• Season matters for steel — the monsoon months are typically the soft season.
• Order size matters for cement — bulk orders commonly save ₹10–20 per bag.

City-level rate pages are being built to narrow this. Until your city is covered, treat the national band as a sanity check and confirm locally before committing money.

Every source we currently cite

42 distinct sources sit behind the numbers on this site. All of them, in full:

• 1000 Bricks Price 2026 (kiln operator, Mar 2026) — Chaudhary Bricks(accessed July 2026)
• 20mm Aggregate — Hyderabad Builders(accessed July 2026)
• 20mm Aggregate — Material99(accessed July 2026)
• 2x2 (600×600 mm) tiles — Orientbell Tiles (manufacturer store, category price floor)(accessed July 2026)
• Ace exterior wall paints range — Asian Paints (manufacturer's published MRP per litre)(accessed July 2026)
• Ace Sparc — Asian Paints (official product page, pack-size table proving the per-litre basis)(accessed July 2026)
• Apcolite Premium Emulsion — Asian Paints (official product page)(accessed July 2026)
• Apex exterior wall paints range — Asian Paints (manufacturer's published MRP per litre)(accessed July 2026)
• Asian Paints Ace Sparc Exterior Emulsion 20 L White — Flipkart (street price)(accessed July 2026)
• Berger Bison Emulsion Lite 20 L — Industrybuying (street price with tax split)(accessed July 2026)
• Brick Price Today 2026 (updated Apr 2026) — Comaron(accessed July 2026)
• Bricks Price in India 2026, 50 cities — InfraLens(accessed July 2026)
• Cement margins to rise 250 bps in FY26 (CRISIL Intelligence) — The Tribune(accessed July 2026)
• Cement price list, Bangalore — BuildMaadi (dated dealer counter list, both grades for seven brands)(accessed July 2026)
• Cement price per bag, Hyderabad — CementShop (dated dealer listing)(accessed July 2026)
• CLC Minimum Wages listing — clc.gov.in(accessed July 2026)
• CLC(C) VDA Order F.No.1/6(3)/2025-LS-II dated 30.03.2026 (primary PDF, building operations)(accessed July 2026)
• CPWD Delhi Analysis of Rates 2023, Civil Vol. I — rate analyses & material coefficients (RCC item 4.1.2, mortar 3.11, brickwork 6.3, steel wastage item 5.22); official PDF, mirror host(accessed July 2026)
• Dulux Velvet Touch Pearl Glo 20 L Brilliant White — Industrybuying (street price with tax split)(accessed July 2026)
• Dulux Weathershield Max 20 L Brilliant White — Industrybuying (street price with tax split)(accessed July 2026)
• Dulux Weathershield Protect — AkzoNobel India (official datasheet, coverage)(accessed July 2026)
• Full Body Vitrified Tiles — Orientbell Tiles (manufacturer store, category price ceiling)(accessed July 2026)
• House Construction Cost in India 2026 — JK Cement (the tiers band; single tier-3 source, low confidence, structure-only denominator)(accessed July 2026)
• Interior wall paints, plain finishes — Asian Paints (manufacturer's own per-litre MRP index, 30 SKUs)(accessed July 2026)
• IS 10067:1982 Material Constants in Building Works — Bureau of Indian Standards (brick counts Tables 3-4; constants stated 'excluding wastages')(accessed July 2026)
• JSW PSC Cement 50 kg, Hyderabad — ConstructionKart(accessed July 2026)
• Labour Rates for House Construction India 2026 — Aecord(accessed July 2026)
• M-Sand (double-washed, RCC/PCC) — Material99 (marketplace corroborator)(accessed July 2026)
• Maharashtra PWD State Schedule of Rates 2022-23 (official PDF, government CDN)(accessed July 2026)
• Notification No. 9/2025-Integrated Tax (Rate), in force 22-09-2025 — CBIC (primary PDF, heading 2523 at 18%)(accessed July 2026)
• Portland Slag Cement 50 kg listings, multi-city — TradeIndia / IndiaMART / ExportersIndia (independent B2B platforms)(accessed July 2026)
• Primary TMT Bar Prices — OfBusiness (live trade data)(accessed July 2026)
• Provisional Estimates of Wholesale Price Index, June 2026, Annexure-III — Office of the Economic Adviser, DPIIT(accessed July 2026)
• Punjab brick prices at new high (Dec 2025) — The Tribune(accessed July 2026)
• Royale Matt — Asian Paints (official product page, pack-size table)(accessed July 2026)
• Steel Price Per Kg India 2026 — Comaron(accessed July 2026)
• Tile Price Per Sq Ft in India — Orientbell Tiles (manufacturer's own published price guide)(accessed July 2026)
• Tractor Emulsion — Asian Paints (official product page, pack-size table)(accessed July 2026)
• Ultima exterior wall paints range — Asian Paints (manufacturer's published MRP per litre)(accessed July 2026)
• UltraTech cement price list, Delhi NCR, July 2026 — RDAK(accessed July 2026)
• WPI monthly item-level index, base 2022-23 — Office of the Economic Adviser, DPIIT(accessed July 2026)
• WPI press release Apr 2026 — Office of the Economic Adviser, DPIIT(accessed July 2026)

Found a better number?

If you have a primary source we are missing, or you know what a material actually costs in your area this month, we want to hear it — [email protected]. Verified local knowledge counts as a high-confidence source. Our Corrections Policy explains exactly what happens after you send it.

Frequently Asked Questions