The dealer fee
The largest thing hiding in a proposal. At 20% it adds $0.65/W and at 30% it adds $1.11/W to identical equipment. It is not shown as a line item, so the only way to find it is to ask for the cash price and compare.
HyreSolar tools
Solar Proposal Analyzer
Put two quotes on the same basis before you compare them.
Solar proposals are built to resist comparison: different system sizes, different modules, different financing, and a monthly payment presented instead of a price. This reduces any quote to dollars per watt and dollars per first-year kilowatt-hour, and shows what a dealer fee does to both.
What this returns at the defaults
A $30,960 quote for a 12 kW system is $2.58 per watt. If it carries a 20% dealer fee, the financed amount is $38,700 and the real price is $3.23 per watt, the same equipment, 25% more money. Against 16,800 first-year kilowatt-hours the cash quote works out at $1.84 per year-one kWh, which is the figure that lets you compare two systems of different sizes.
Last updated . Data as of 23 August 2026.
Quote normaliser
Any proposal, reduced to comparable units.
— Price per watt
— Financed per watt
— Amount financed
— Per year-1 kWh
Not a price index. This normalises quotes; it does not judge them.
HyreSolar does not sell systems and takes no fee for a referral or a ranking.
What each output is for
Dollars per watt is the standard unit and the only fair way to compare quotes for different-sized systems. A $40,000 quote is not worse than a $30,000 quote if it is a much larger array. Per watt, the comparison is immediate.
Dollars per first-year kilowatt-hour is the better number when the systems differ in more than size. Two 12 kW arrays on different roofs, or with different modules and orientations, do not produce the same electricity. This normalises for that, provided both proposals give you a production estimate you trust.
We deliberately do not tell you whether your price is good. There is no live price index on this page, and the national benchmark is a survey rather than a quote for your roof. What this tool does is make two proposals commensurable, so the comparison you make is a real one.
Comparing two quotesUse dollars per watt if the systems are similar, and dollars per first-year kilowatt-hour if the production estimates differ materially.
Comparing cash against financedUse the financed price per watt. A quote with a dealer fee inside it is a different price from the same quote paid in cash.
Comparing against a benchmarkTreat any published national figure as a survey midpoint, not a target. Regional labour, roof complexity and permitting all move the real number.
How to use this calculator
Every input below is a number you can find, not one you have to guess. This is where each one comes from.
- 01
Enter the system size from the proposal
In kilowatts DC, which is what proposals quote. If you only have a panel count and a module wattage, convert first.
Where to find it The top line of the proposal. Our panel count calculator converts a count and a wattage into kW DC and shows the rounding.
- 02
Enter the total contract price
Everything the contract obliges you to pay for the system as installed, before any financing is applied.
Where to find it The contract total, not the monthly payment and not the price after an assumed tax credit. If the proposal only shows a monthly figure, ask for the contract price in writing.
- 03
Enter the dealer fee, if the quote is financed
The percentage the lender charges the installer to originate a low rate, passed to you inside the financed amount.
Where to find it The gap between the cash price and the financed price. Ask for both. If the installer will not give you a cash price, that itself tells you something.
- 04
Enter the first-year production estimate
The kilowatt-hours the proposal says the system will generate in year one.
Where to find it Every serious proposal includes one. If yours does not, that is a finding. Cross-check it against NREL PVWatts for your address before you rely on it.
- 05
Run it again for the other quote
The tool is only useful in pairs. One quote in isolation tells you very little.
Where to find it Compare the per-watt figures side by side, then the per-kilowatt-hour figures, then ask what explains any gap: equipment, roof complexity, or margin.
How this calculator works
Convert size to watts
Kilowatts × 1,000. Everything here is per watt.
Divide the price
Contract price ÷ watts gives dollars per watt on a cash basis.
Unwind the dealer fee
Financed = price ÷ (1 − fee), then divide by watts again for the real financed price per watt.
Divide by first-year production
Price ÷ year-one kilowatt-hours, so systems with different output can be compared.
The formula, in full
watts = kW × 1000. $/W = price ÷ watts. financed = price ÷ (1 − dealer fee). financed $/W = financed ÷ watts. $ per year-1 kWh = price ÷ first-year kWh.
A worked example, start to finish
A 12 kW proposal at $30,960 with a first-year estimate of 16,800 kilowatt-hours, shown first as a cash purchase and then with a 20% dealer fee inside the financing.
Inputs
- System size
- 12 kW DC
- System watts
- 12,000 W
- Contract price
- $30,960
- Cash price per watt
- $2.58 / W
- Dealer fee
- 20%
- Amount financed
- $38,700
- First-year production
- 16,800 kWh
Result
$3.23 / W financed
The cash quote is $2.58/W. Financed with a 20% dealer fee it is $3.23/W, $7,740 more for identical equipment on the identical roof. On a cash basis the system costs $1.84 per first-year kilowatt-hour, which is the number to compare against a differently sized quote.
How the answer moves
One 12 kW system, different prices and financing structures. Every figure is computed by the calculator on this page.
| Quote | Cash $/W | Financed | Financed $/W | Per year-1 kWh |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $30,960 cash | $2.58 | $30,960 | $2.58 | $1.84 |
| $30,960 with 20% dealer fee | $2.58 | $38,700 | $3.23 | $1.84 |
| $30,960 with 30% dealer fee | $2.58 | $44,229 | $3.69 | $1.84 |
| $42,000 cash | $3.50 | $42,000 | $3.50 | $2.50 |
| $24,000 cash | $2.00 | $24,000 | $2.00 | $1.43 |
Read rows two and four together. A $30,960 quote with a 30% dealer fee ($3.69/W) is more expensive than a $42,000 cash quote ($3.50/W), even though the sticker price is $11,040 lower. The cheap-looking quote is the dearer one.
What moves this number most
Ranked. A proposal can change any of these without saying anything untrue, so these are the inputs to check first.
System size, when comparing raw totals
The reason per-watt exists. A larger quote is not a worse deal; comparing totals across different sizes is simply a category error.
The production estimate
Two identical arrays on different roofs produce different electricity. Per-kilowatt-hour normalises for that, but only if you trust both estimates. Cross-check against PVWatts before relying on either.
What is inside the contract price
Roof work, a main panel upgrade, trenching, a battery or an extended warranty may be inside one quote and outside another. A lower per-watt figure that excludes a needed panel upgrade is not cheaper.
Equipment, which per-watt deliberately ignores
A cheaper price per watt buys different modules, a different inverter architecture and a different warranty. Our inverter comparison covers what actually differs and what does not.
Who is doing the work
Price per watt says nothing about whether the crew is employed by the company you signed with. Our research found 96.3% of verified companies hold a licence in exactly one state, see who actually installs your solar.
Common mistakes with this calculation
Comparing total prices for different-sized systems
A $40,000 quote for 16 kW is $2.50/W and a $30,000 quote for 10 kW is $3.00/W. The bigger number is the better deal. Always normalise before comparing.
Comparing a financed quote against a cash quote
They are different prices for the same thing. Put both on the same basis: either both cash, or both with the dealer fee inside.
Comparing monthly payments
A payment is a function of term and rate as much as of price. It is the least informative number in the proposal and the one the sale is usually built around.
Subtracting a tax credit you cannot claim
Many proposals show a net price after a 30% federal credit. That credit is $0 for systems placed in service after 31 December 2025. Compare gross prices.
Trusting the production estimate without checking it
It drives the per-kilowatt-hour figure and it is produced by the party selling you the system. Run your address through PVWatts and see whether the two agree.
Treating a national benchmark as a target price
Published benchmarks are survey midpoints across very different markets. Regional labour rates, roof complexity, permitting and interconnection costs all move the real figure, and none of that is a reason to distrust your quote by itself.
The number on the front page
A proposal’s production estimate is a model output, not a measurement
The first-year kilowatt-hour figure that anchors the whole document was produced by software, from assumptions somebody entered. It is a forecast about a roof nobody has instrumented.
HyreSolar analysis. Every residential solar proposal in the country contains a first-year production estimate, and almost none of them explain how it was made. It is the output of a simulation: irradiance data for your location, the tilt and azimuth of each array plane, an assumed shading loss, and a bundle of system losses covering soiling, wiring, inverter efficiency, mismatch and so on. Change any of those inputs and the headline number moves. None of them is visible on the page you are asked to sign.
HyreSolar analysis. This matters for comparison specifically. Our dollars per first-year kilowatt-hour metric divides a real price by a modelled quantity. If one installer assumed a 12% total system loss and another assumed 20% on the identical roof, the second will look worse on that metric while proposing exactly the same hardware. The metric is still worth computing — it catches the case where a quote is expensive relative to what it will actually deliver — but it inherits the honesty of whoever built the model.
The useful next step. Put your own roof into PVWatts, published by NREL, and compare. It is free, it requires no email address, and it is not selling you anything. Enter your address, the system size on the quote, and the tilt and orientation of the planes the installer proposed. You will not match the proposal exactly and you are not trying to. You are looking for whether the two numbers are in the same neighbourhood. A proposal 25% above a like-for-like PVWatts run is a proposal with a question to answer, and the assumptions behind PVWatts are documented in PVWatts Version 5 Manual, NREL/TP-6A20-62641.
The useful next step. Then ask each installer, in writing, for the shading loss and the total system loss their model used. Two installers who give you those numbers are comparable. One who will not is telling you something.
What the first-year figure conceals
Comparing first-year production compares the best year either system will have
Both quotes will produce less every subsequent year. If they assume different rates of decline, a comparison anchored on year one is measuring the wrong thing.
Source fact. Jordan, Kurtz, VanSant and Newmiller aggregated more than 11,000 published degradation rates from almost 200 studies across 40 countries. For crystalline silicon the median is 0.5-0.6% per year; the mean of the same dataset is 0.8-0.9% per year.
HyreSolar analysis. The industry convention is to model the median and move on. That is defensible for a typical system and it is not the whole picture, because a mean well above the median means the distribution has a long tail — some arrays degrade a great deal faster than the middle one. A first-year comparison cannot see any of this. Two quotes with identical year-one estimates and different module warranties are not the same proposition.
The useful next step. Ask for the module performance warranty on each quote, specifically the guaranteed output at year 25 as a percentage of nameplate. That is a contractual number rather than a modelled one, which makes it one of the few genuinely comparable figures in the whole document. Our page on panel degradation sets out what those warranties actually promise and what they do not.
The largest hidden variable
A financed quote and a cash quote are not the same kind of number
The single most common way two solar quotes are made incomparable is that one of them has a finance charge folded into the price and the other does not.
Source fact. In its Issue Spotlight: Solar lending practices, the CFPB reported that hidden fees in solar lending were typically 10 to 30% of the cash price, and sometimes above 50%. The mechanism is straightforward: the lender pays the installer less than the contract price, and the difference — the dealer fee — is added to the amount you finance so that a headline interest rate can be advertised as low. The fee is real money and it is inside the price you are comparing.
HyreSolar calculation. On a $30,000 cash price, a fee at the bottom of that range produces a financed contract of $33,000, and at the top of the range $39,000 — for the same equipment on the same roof. This is arithmetic on a published range applied to a round number, not a quote we have seen.
HyreSolar analysis. A financed quote compared against a cash quote will therefore lose on dollars per watt even when it is the better deal on equipment, and a low-rate financing offer can be more expensive in total than a higher-rate one carrying no dealer fee. This is the reason the analyzer has a field for the fee: unwinding it is the only way to get both quotes onto the same basis.
The useful next step. Ask each installer for the cash price, in writing, and separately for the financing terms. Those are two questions and they deserve two answers. If the cash price is not available, that itself is the finding.
Illustrative chart. The band widths show a published fee range on an assumed price, not any real contract.
Why the page gives you two
Dollars per watt and dollars per kilowatt-hour fail in opposite directions
Each normalised metric is blind to something the other one catches. That is why the tool computes both, and why neither is a verdict.
HyreSolar analysis. Dollars per watt normalises for system size, which is exactly what you want when comparing an 8 kW quote against an 11 kW quote. It is blind to whether those watts will do anything: a cheap system per watt, badly oriented or heavily shaded, is not cheap. Dollars per first-year kilowatt-hour fixes that by dividing by output — and immediately inherits the modelling problem described above, because output is estimated rather than measured.
HyreSolar analysis. Neither metric sees scope. One quote may include a main panel upgrade, a new roof penetration flashing kit, tree work, a critical load subpanel, or permitting fees that the other has quietly excluded and will bill for later. Neither sees equipment quality, warranty length, or whether the installer will still exist in year eight. Neither sees the contract terms, which is what our contract checker is for.
The useful next step. Use the two metrics to find the question, not the answer. When a quote is an outlier on either one, the useful move is to ask that installer why — and the explanation is frequently legitimate and frequently something you would not otherwise have known about the job.
Illustrative chart, constructed to make a logical point about comparison metrics. It is not drawn from observed quote data, because we hold none.
Line by line
What may be in one quote and not the other
Normalising for size and unwinding a fee gets you a long way. This is the list of things that survive both and can still make two quotes incomparable.
| Item | Why it varies between quotes | What its absence from a quote means |
|---|---|---|
| Main service panel upgrade | Depends on the existing panel’s rating and available breaker space, which the installer may or may not have assessed before quoting. | Either the panel is fine, or it has not been looked at. Ask which. It is one of the larger change orders in residential solar. |
| Permitting and interconnection fees | Set by the jurisdiction and the utility, not the installer, and sometimes passed through at cost rather than quoted. | It is a pass-through you will pay later, or it is included. The word "included" should appear somewhere. |
| Roof work and flashing | A quote may assume the covering is sound. If it is not, this becomes a separate job with its own sequencing. | Nobody has assessed the covering. Our roof timing checker covers why that sequence matters. |
| Tree removal or trimming | Shading is modelled from imagery; the remedy is a real job with a real cost, often excluded. | The production estimate may already assume trimming that nobody has priced. |
| Monitoring hardware and subscription | Some systems include consumption monitoring; some include production only; some charge after a free period. | You may be unable to tell whether the system is underperforming. See what a zero reading actually means. |
| Critical load subpanel | Only relevant with storage, and a meaningful cost when it is. | A battery quote without one may not power what you assumed during an outage. See the critical load panel. |
| Workmanship warranty term | Set by the installer, not the manufacturer, and ranges widely. | The labour to fix a leak or a failed connection is on you. What a workmanship warranty covers. |
| Removal and reinstallation terms | What it costs to take the array off and put it back for roof work later in its life. | An unpriced future obligation. Ask for the figure now, while you still have leverage. |
HyreSolar performs no installations and holds no pricing data, so this table names the items to ask about rather than what any of them should cost.
Seven questions, in writing
What to ask before you compare two proposals at all
Every one of these has a documentary answer. An installer who will answer them is easy to compare against another one who will.
- What is the cash price, separately from any financing?
The one question that makes a financed quote and a cash quote comparable. Everything else in this list is secondary to it.
- What dealer fee, if any, is inside the financed amount?
The CFPB found these to be typically 10 to 30% of the cash price, and sometimes above 50%. It is a fair question and it has a numeric answer.
- What shading loss and total system loss did the production model use?
Two numbers, usually percentages. They are what make one estimate optimistic relative to another on the same roof.
- What does the module performance warranty guarantee at year 25?
Contractual rather than modelled, and therefore genuinely comparable between quotes.
- Is a service panel upgrade included, excluded, or not yet assessed?
Three different answers with three different consequences. Do not accept silence.
- What is the workmanship warranty term, and who honours it if you close?
The second half matters more than the first. See what happens when an installer closes.
- What placed-in-service date does any tax credit in this proposal assume?
26 U.S.C. §25D does not apply to expenditures made after 31 December 2025, and an expenditure is treated as made when the original installation of the item is completed, not when the contract is signed and not when the invoice is paid.
- A proposal that shows only a monthly payment
There is nothing here to normalise. A monthly payment can be made to look like anything by moving the term. Ask for a price.
The real blind spots
What this analyzer cannot do
The proposal analyzer normalises arithmetic. Most of what decides whether a solar project goes well is not arithmetic.
It cannot tell you whether a price is good
HyreSolar does not install solar, does not lend, is not a utility, and holds no dataset of quotes, bids or completed installations. Nothing here is a price we have observed. That is also why these tools are free to tell you that the answer is to do nothing.
We can tell you that one quote is 18% more per watt than another. We cannot tell you what anybody in your area paid last month, and we will not publish a benchmark we have not measured just because a page looks better with one on it.
It cannot verify the production estimate
It takes the figure from the proposal and divides by it. If the estimate is optimistic, the dollars-per-kilowatt-hour result is flattering in exactly the same proportion.
The independent check is PVWatts from NREL, run yourself on your own roof.
It cannot assess equipment
Two systems at the same price per watt may use very different modules and inverters, with different warranty terms and different failure histories.
Our pages on inverter types and panel efficiency cover what those differences actually change, which is less than the marketing suggests and more than nothing.
It cannot assess the installer
It does not rank contractors, score them, or take a fee for introducing you to one. There is no HyreSolar list of approved installers, because we have not inspected anybody’s work.
What you can do yourself is check the licence: how to verify a solar installer’s licence sets out where the public registers are.
It cannot read the contract
Escalators, arbitration clauses, production guarantees, lien terms and cancellation rights are outside a per-watt comparison entirely, and they are frequently where the regret is.
Run the contract red flags checker on the document itself before you compare prices at all.
It cannot tell you to buy
A well-priced system is still the wrong purchase if you are moving in three years, if the roof needs replacing first, or if your tariff credits exports at a fraction of retail.
Comparing two quotes assumes the decision to buy has been made. That assumption is worth revisiting, and "neither of these" remains an available answer.
Important: this is a planning estimate
- Not a price index. This tool does not judge whether your quote is high or low, because we do not ship a live benchmark.
- Assumes the dealer fee is a percentage of the amount financed, which is common but not universal.
- Says nothing about equipment quality, warranty terms, or who performs the installation.
- Uses the proposal’s own production estimate, which is produced by the seller.
- Does not model tax credits. §25D is $0 for systems placed in service after 31 December 2025.
Questions this calculator answers
What is a good price per watt for solar?
We deliberately do not publish a target, because there is no live index on this page and a national benchmark is a survey midpoint across very different markets. What this tool does is let you compare two real quotes on the same basis. If you want a reference point, treat published benchmarks as context rather than as a price you are entitled to.
How do I compare two solar quotes for different sized systems?
Divide each contract price by the system size in watts. A $40,000 quote for 16 kW is $2.50 per watt and a $30,000 quote for 10 kW is $3.00 per watt, so the larger and apparently more expensive quote is the better deal. If the production estimates differ materially, compare dollars per first-year kilowatt-hour instead.
How do I find out if my quote has a dealer fee?
Ask for the cash price in writing and compare it with the financed price. The gap is the fee. It is not usually shown as a line item, and a 20% fee adds $0.65 per watt to identical equipment, so it is worth the question.
Why does a cheaper quote sometimes cost more?
Because financing hides the difference. A $30,960 quote with a 30% dealer fee works out at $3.69 per watt financed, while a $42,000 cash quote is $3.50 per watt. The sticker price is $11,040 lower and the real price is higher. This is the single most useful thing this tool shows.
Should I compare gross price or price after the tax credit?
Gross, for two reasons. First, the residential credit is $0 for systems placed in service after 31 December 2025, so a proposal showing a net price after 30% is showing you a number you cannot achieve. Second, comparing gross keeps both quotes on the same footing regardless of what each proposal assumes.
What is dollars per first-year kilowatt-hour?
Contract price divided by the kilowatt-hours the system is projected to generate in its first year. It normalises for the fact that two identical-sized arrays on different roofs, or with different orientations, do not produce the same electricity. It is the better comparison when the systems differ in more than size.
Can I trust the production estimate in my proposal?
Check it rather than trust it. The estimate is produced by the party selling you the system and it drives the per-kilowatt-hour comparison. Run your address through NREL PVWatts and see whether the two broadly agree. A large gap is worth asking about before you sign.
Does a lower price per watt mean worse equipment?
Not necessarily, and per-watt deliberately ignores equipment. A cheaper quote may use different modules, a different inverter architecture or carry a shorter warranty, and it may simply reflect a leaner operation. Price per watt tells you what you are paying; it does not tell you what you are getting, so read the equipment list too.
What might be in one quote and not another?
Roof repair or replacement, a main panel upgrade, trenching for a ground mount, tree removal, a battery, extended warranties and permitting fees. A lower per-watt figure that excludes a panel upgrade you genuinely need is not cheaper. Compare scopes before comparing prices.
How many quotes should I get?
Enough that the range tells you something, which usually means at least three. The value is not in finding the cheapest but in seeing where the cluster sits and identifying the outlier. A quote far below the others deserves the same scrutiny as one far above.
The research behind these numbers
Every assumption in this calculator is argued from primary sources somewhere in our research library. These are the pages that matter for this one.
- What zero-down actually costs The CFPB finding that hidden fees typically run 10 to 30% of the cash price, and sometimes above 50%.
- Who actually installs your solar Two 10-Ks describing opposite structures, and the finding that 96.3% of verified companies hold a licence in exactly one state.
- Verifying an installer’s licence Only 4 of 27 states name solar in the licence, and two require no state licence for residential at all.
- The workmanship warranty What is not backstopped by any manufacturer, and why both major warranties exclude the labour they exist to cover.
- Door-to-door sales rules The federal cooling-off rule that applies even when you invited them.
- Inverter types What a cheaper price per watt actually changes, and the efficiency comparison that does not work.
More solar calculators
NEM vs net billing calculator
The cents-per-kWh gap between import rate and export credit, and what that gap is worth.
Solar loan calculator
Unwind a dealer fee into financed principal, then the monthly payment and extra over cash.
Solar incentive finder
Who would claim the federal homeowner credit under cash, loan, lease or PPA. State programmes: DSIRE.
Want a more accurate estimate for your home?
Actual results depend on roof, usage, utility rules and a real proposal. Matching is still being built. The form is an enquiry, not a dispatch line.
Written and audited by
HyreSolar Research
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are a research desk, not a sales floor. We read the statute, the tariff, the code section, the federal filing or the manufacturer data sheet ourselves, and we publish the figure with the document it came from and the date we retrieved it. Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify. That rule has cost us whole sections, and it is the reason the rest can be trusted.
- 160
- primary sources read and cited
- 220
- figures with a retrieval date
- 115
- federal and state government sources
- 66
- researched pages published
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. Statutes from the legislature’s own publishing system, federal data from the agency that collects it, code text from the adopted edition, manufacturer claims from the data sheet. We do not cite an article that cites a source; we go and read the source.
- Every figure carries its provenance. A named document and the date we retrieved it, so you can check it and so you know how old it is. Retrieval dates are not decoration: an EIA rate from May is a different fact from an EIA rate from August.
- We publish what we could not verify. Every research page carries a section naming the things we tried to establish and could not, and why. A paywalled standard, a state website that refused the request, a manufacturer that publishes no figure at all.
- We separate measurement from modelling from our own reasoning, and label which is which on the page. A laboratory measurement, an assumption inside a modelling tool and our own inference are three different kinds of claim and they are never presented as one.
- We do not sell solar, and we take no payment for placement, ranking or a favourable mention. Nobody buys a position on this site.
Data as of 23 August 2026. Authorship on this site is organisational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
Data and sources
- U.S. Solar Photovoltaic System Cost Benchmark (NREL, retrieved 2026-08-23. A survey benchmark, not a quote for your roof. Context only.)
- Issue Spotlight: Solar lending practices (CFPB, retrieved 2026-08-23. Source for hidden fees typically 10–30% of cash price, sometimes above 50%.)
- PVWatts Calculator (NREL, retrieved 2026-08-23. Independent cross-check on a proposal’s first-year production estimate.)
- Residential Clean Energy Credit (§25D) (IRS, retrieved 2026-08-11. Why proposals showing a net price after 30% should be treated with care.)