DOT bid history built for estimators

Build defensible estimates from what the market actually bid.

Search every bid tab from 26 state DOTs. Benchmark each pay item against historical unit prices filtered to the quantity, county, district, and letting window that match your work.

Used by estimators at public owner agencies, engineering firms, and construction companies of all sizes to build defensible engineer's estimates and competitive bids, validate pricing, and benchmark every line against real letting data. Since 2004.

Start Free See Estimating Workflow

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ESTIMATOR WORKBENCH / MARKET PRICE VALIDATION
Workflow preview · results come from your search
Pay item search
HMA SURFACE COURSE Search by pay item code or description across covered DOT bid tabs.
MATCH FOUND
Filter market dataACTIVE
Quantity range✓ APPLIED
County / region✓ APPLIED
DOT district✓ APPLIED
Recent lettings✓ APPLIED
Matching bid historyMARKET RANGE
Low
matching bids
Average
benchmark
High
matching bids
✓Quantity similarity checked
✓Regional pricing compared
✓Recent escalation reviewed
✓Bidder history available
Estimator outputUse comparable bid history to establish and defend your unit price.
READY TO PRICE
01 / Price the item
Quantity × unit price

QUANTITY × UNIT PRICE = EXTENSION

02 / Benchmark it
Compare against like work

Filter historical bids by quantity, letting window, county, district, and contractor.

03 / Defend the number
Know what needs review

Use low, average, high, trend, comparable count, and confidence before letting day.

Coverage

Multi-State DOT Bid Coverage & Growing

Additional states coming soon.

AL AR CA FL GA IA IL IN KS KY LA MI MN MO MS NC NY OH OK OR SC SD TN TX VA WI

By The Numbers

The data behind your next estimate is already here

16.8M+
Unit Prices Indexed
91K+
Contracts Awarded
4,284
Contractor Profiles
26
State DOTs Live

A Look At The Workflow

From a pay item to a defensible number.

Find a pay item, see its real price range, open the full tab, size up the contractors, narrow to your district, then build the estimate. The panels below are schematic, not screenshots.

1 · Search a pay item

Matching letting results, by state

2 · See the price range

Unit price over time, low / avg / high

3 · Open the full bid tab

Every bidder, every line item

4 · Size up the contractors
Contr. A
Contr. B
Contr. C
Contr. D

Win rate & activity (anonymized)

5 · Track a contractor's record
Recent lettingsWin = filled

Wins vs. bids over time (anonymized)

6 · Build the estimate
ConfidenceHigh
Estimate rangetight

Confidence-scored, encrypted on save

Live From The Lettings

Real prices. Really moving.

One high-volume pay item per state, pulled from the same dataset you get inside: trailing 12 months of statewide monthly averages. Items rotate as new letting results are published. Inside the app, the same prices slice by letting window, quantity range, county, district, unit of measure, and even specific contractors, with the full bid tab behind every number.

AL TACK COAT
$5.36/GAL +19.6% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 122 bids in last 90 days
AR MINERAL AGGREGATE IN ACHM SURFACE COURSE (...
$144.96/TON +0.5% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 45 bids in last 90 days
FL CONDUIT, FURNISH & INSTALL, DIRECTIONAL BORE
$37.81/LF -13.5% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 260 bids in last 90 days
GA GALV STEEL POSTS, TP 7
$14.79/LF trailing 90-day avg
Statewide avg · 200 bids in last 90 days
IA SHLD CONSTRUCTION, EARTH
$511.14/STA +2.3% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 79 bids in last 90 days
IL LONG JOINT SEALANT
$12.61/FOOT +39.6% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 159 bids in last 90 days
IN SUBGRADE TREATMENT, TYPE IC
$56.56/SYS +4.5% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 260 bids in last 90 days
KS SEDIMENT REMOVAL (SET PRICE)
$50.00/CUYD +0.0% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 53 bids in last 90 days
KY ASPHALT MATERIAL FOR TACK
$308.30/TON +9.0% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 117 bids in last 90 days
LA MILLING ASPHALT PAVEMENT
$8.18/SQYD -28.7% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 110 bids in last 90 days
MI HAND PATCHING
$257.63/TON -8.4% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 136 bids in last 90 days
MN REINFORCEMENT BARS (CHROMIUM-EPOXY COATED)
$2.76/LB -5.5% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 61 bids in last 90 days
MO ROCK DITCH CHECK
$32.83/LF +18.9% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 108 bids in last 90 days
MS TEMPORARY TRAFFIC STRIPE, LEGEND
$2.38/LF +98.3% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 103 bids in last 90 days
NC FERT FOR TEMP SEEDING
$1,141.34/TON +7.7% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 79 bids in last 90 days
NY ASP SIDE W, DRVWAY, BICY PATH, VEG CON S
$675.79/TON +43.2% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 46 bids in last 90 days
OH COMMERCIAL FERTILIZER - (SUM-303-3.216)
$1,014.65/TON -15.2% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 188 bids in last 90 days
OK PAVEMENT MRKNG.REMOVAL(TRAF.STRP)
$0.92/LF +37.4% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 212 bids in last 90 days
OR SIGNS, STANDARD SHEETING, SHEET ALUMINUM
$45.88/SQFT +17.6% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 68 bids in last 90 days
SC MGS3 GR STANDARD SHOULDER
$33.74/LF +26.9% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 70 bids in last 90 days
SD REMOVE CONCRETE CURB AND/OR GUTTER
$8.31/FT +13.4% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 33 bids in last 90 days
TN ACS MIX(PG64-22) GRADING D
$253.53/TON +33.7% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 63 bids in last 90 days
TX EXCAV (ROADWAY)
$27.32/CY -19.4% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 583 bids in last 90 days
VA TEMPORARY SEED
$27.62/LB +13.4% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 77 bids in last 90 days
WI WATER
$42.84/MGAL +3.5% vs prior 90 days
Statewide avg · 120 bids in last 90 days

Statewide averages from publicly available DOT letting results. The estimate-grade view, narrowed to the lettings, quantities, locations, and contractors that match your job, is what the subscription is for.

Features

Build the number. Defend the number.

Move from pay-item lookup to a defensible estimate using the same bid-tab dataset: price history, comparable work, contractor intelligence, trends, and estimate building in one workflow.

🔍

Pay Item Search

Search by item code or description across every letting. Find unit prices and bid tabulation data in seconds.

📊

Price Analytics

Low, average, and high unit prices from real bid tabs. Filter by quantity range, date, county, or district.

📈

Visual Trend Analysis

Interactive charts show price movements over time. Spot escalation, seasonality, and market shifts at a glance.

🏆

Contractor Intelligence

Research any contractor's bidding history. Win rates, pricing patterns, geographic focus, and market share.

📋

Full Bid Tabulations

Complete bid tabs for every letting. All bidders, all line items, all pay items in one searchable place.

📤

Export & Integrate

Download to Excel, CSV, or PDF. Pull historical unit price data directly into your estimating workflow.

📝

Letting Analysis

Decompose every letting into apparent low bidder, full bid tabulation, contractor participation, and regional and county activity. Built for both bid review and procurement design.

🔍

Similar Project Finder

Find comparable past projects by pay item, quantity range, county, and district, so your benchmark reflects work like the job you are pricing.

🔥

Cross-State Price Analytics

Compare unit prices for the same pay item across state lines and over time. Charts, KPIs, and exports with source contract metadata preserved on every record.

Estimate Builder

Stop guessing. Price with precision.

Turn years of historical bid tabulations and letting results into confidence-scored cost estimates. Load your pay items, choose a pricing strategy, and get a number backed by real letting data, with a clear read on how much to trust it.

Confidence Scoring

Every pay item is scored on data depth, recency, and market consistency, so you know exactly how much weight to put on each unit price.

Multiple Pricing Strategies

Price an estimate using strategies tuned for different goals, from aggressive bid positioning to market-safe coverage, all drawn from real bid tab data.

Low-Bidder Reference

See the pricing patterns of apparent low bidders on comparable work, so you understand what it has actually taken to win in your market.

Trend-Weighted Pricing

Prices move. The engine weights recent lettings more heavily, so estimates reflect where the market is heading, not just where it has been.

Accuracy Backtesting

Run the engine against past lettings and compare its number to the bids that actually came in. Backtesting is for calibration, not prediction: you see how close the engine has been on this kind of work in this region before you rely on it for a live bid.

Encrypted Estimate Vault

Saved estimates are protected with AES-256 encryption and locked to your account. Nobody else, not even us, can read your bid numbers.

Depth Where It Counts

Enough comparable bids to trust the number.

A state DOT site might show you two or three recent bids for your item and leave you guessing whether that is the market or an outlier. DOTestimate gives you the full picture, so the range you price against is real.

A real sample, not two data points

Narrow to recent lettings and you still have enough comparable bids to see a true low / average / high. A real distribution beats a single recent number every time.

Priced off the latest lettings

New letting results flow in as they are published, so your benchmark reflects the current market, not whatever happened to be posted last.

Every bidder, every line item

Not just the apparent low bid. The full tab on every letting, so you see the whole spread of what the market actually bid on each pay item.

Down to the county and district

Filter comparables by quantity range, county, and district so your benchmark reflects work like the job you are pricing, not a statewide average.

Escalation you can defend

When you need to bring older comparables to today, the longer record shows you the actual price trajectory, so you escalate to a defensible rate instead of guessing.

26 states in one account

Search Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Minnesota, Georgia and more from a single account. Compare unit prices for the same pay item across state lines.

DOTestimate has been collecting and indexing DOT bid tabulations since 2004. Current lettings and the full searchable record, in one place, with no data window to expire and no archive paywall.

Who It's For

Built for the people who price the work.

Whether you are preparing an engineer's estimate on the owner side or pricing a competitive bid on the contractor side, you are working from the same question: what is this work actually worth in this market right now? DOTestimate answers it with state-of-the-art tools that turn real bid data into a number you can defend.

📐 Owner-Side Estimators & Design Firms

  • Build defensible engineer's estimates for DOTs, municipalities and other public owners
  • Pull historical unit prices and price trends for cost studies and feasibility work
  • Benchmark pay item pricing against recent letting results in your region or county
  • Find comparable projects by item, quantity, and location

👷 Contractor-Side Estimators

  • Validate your bid against recent letting results and full bid tabulations before you submit
  • Study competitor pricing and bidding patterns with contractor intelligence
  • Identify pricing opportunities by region, item, and material
  • Understand what it has actually taken to be the apparent low bidder on comparable work

Working on the agency, oversight, research, or investment side? See DOTestimate for agencies & research →

FAQ

Questions estimators ask first.

The things you want to know before you put in an email address.

Every record is sourced directly from publicly available state DOT bid tabulations and letting results. We aggregate, index, and clean that public record so you can search it instantly. Source contract metadata, including contract number, letting date, and contractor, is preserved on every record so any number you pull can be traced back to its origin.

On a state DOT site, bid tabulations are scattered across individual PDFs and a given letting usually shows you only a few comparable bids for your item. To benchmark properly you would download dozens of files and retype the numbers into a spreadsheet. DOTestimate has already done that across every covered state, so you get instant search, a real price range, contractor history, and one-click export instead of a handful of PDFs.

Both. New letting results flow in as they are published, so you are pricing off the current market, and there are enough comparable bids per pay item that you can narrow to recent lettings, a quantity range, and your county or district and still see a real low / average / high instead of one or two data points. The longer record is there when you need it, mainly to set a defensible escalation rate or to tell whether a recent price is normal or an outlier.

Yes. Saved estimates are encrypted with AES-256 and locked to your account. Your bid numbers are yours alone, and not even DOTestimate staff can read them.

26 state DOTs are live today, including AL, AR, CA, FL, GA, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, MI, MN, MS, MO, NY, NC, OH, OK, OR, SC, SD, TN, TX, VA, WI, with more on the roadmap. See the coverage map above for the current footprint.

Yes to both. You can pull any contractor's full bidding history, win rate, geographic focus, and pricing posture, and you can export bid history, bid tabulations, and price data to Excel, CSV, or PDF for your own workflow.

Better estimates start with better data

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DOTestimate is a DOT bid history and cost-estimating platform for highway construction estimators. Search bid tabulations, historical unit prices, contractor histories, and letting results across 26 state DOTs, including ALDOT, ARDOT, Caltrans, FDOT, GDOT, IDOT, INDOT, Iowa DOT, KDOT, KYTC, LADOTD, MDOT, MnDOT, MDOT, MoDOT, NYSDOT, NCDOT, ODOT, ODOT, ODOT, SCDOT, SDDOT, TDOT, TxDOT, VDOT, WisDOT, with full bid tabs, current letting coverage per state, and a confidence-scored estimate builder. All data is sourced from publicly available state DOT records. Agencies & research →