Fairbuild

Every other renovation app tells you what you've spent. Fairbuild tells you whether you're exposed. ARE YOU AHEAD OF THE MONEY? Paying 80% of the contract for 40% of the work is how renovations go wrong — and by the time a running total looks alarming, your leverage is gone. Fairbuild compares what you've paid against how much work you've actually received, and shows you the dollar figure you've paid for work not yet delivered. No other app in this category does this. IS THAT DEPOSIT REASONABLE? Contractors commonly ask for up to half up front. That's normal practice, not a scam — so Fairbuild doesn't cry fraud at it. Instead it gives you the counter-offer: 30% or less is the safer position, here's what that is in dollars, tie the rest to milestones. Where your state caps deposits by law, that limit overrides the guidance. PAYMENTS TIED TO WORK, NOT TO DATES A date arrives whether or not the work does. Fairbuild reviews your payment schedule and flags stages tied to the calendar, stages with no stated trigger, milestones too vague to enforce, schedules that don't reconcile to the contract, and too little held back for the end. DON'T PAY TWICE FOR THE SAME WORK If your contractor is paid but doesn't pay a subcontractor, that company can put a lien on your house — even though you paid in full. The defense is a signed lien waiver with every payment. Fairbuild tracks which waiver you should have for each payment: conditional or unconditional, progress or final, and warns you when you're holding the wrong one. A DATED PAYMENT LOG Every payment with the date you made it, a running total, and its share of the contract. The schedule is what you agreed to pay. The log is what you actually paid — and in a dispute, that's the document that matters. CHANGE ORDERS THAT DON'T AMBUSH YOU See what each approved change does to your final number and to the contingency you have left. Fairbuild counts the changes that aren't backed by a signed document dated before the work — the single most common source of renovation disputes. RED FLAGS, IN PROPORTION Two tiers, not a wall of alarms. Serious problems worth walking away over — no written contract, cash before paperwork, full payment up front, no license, a P.O. box address. And things merely worth asking about. A big deposit isn't on either list, because it's a negotiation. ALSO INSIDE • Line-by-line quoted vs invoiced, grouped by room or by trade • Compare competing quotes side by side • Contingency sizing by project type, and a live view of what's left • Free CSV export, always HONEST ABOUT WHAT IT ISN'T Fairbuild has no cost database and never tells you what work "should" cost — prices vary far too much by region for a national figure to mean anything. It compares your own quotes against each other. The deposit limits it shows cover only states we could verify from that state's own licensing board, each one dated. It's general information, not legal advice. No account. No ads. No analytics. No tracking. Everything stays on your device, and the app works with no network at all.