The short answer
Xactimate pricing comes from Verisk’s price list for your postcode and month, not from a national rate card. The list is refreshed monthly, so a line item you priced in March is not necessarily the line item you bill in June. Disputes usually turn on scope and on overhead and profit, not on the unit price itself.
Key takeaways
- Price lists are regional and monthly. Quoting from a stale list is the most common self-inflicted estimating error.
- A line item bundles labour, material, equipment and a labour burden. Arguing the total without knowing the components is arguing blind.
- Overhead and profit is a negotiation on most files, not an automatic entitlement.
- The trade press has largely left this topic alone. The most-read industry article on Xactimate pricing is about a thousand words with no tables and has not been revised in over a year.
Xactimate is the estimating platform most property insurance claims pass through in the United States. Understanding how it prices work is the difference between an estimate that gets approved and one that generates three rounds of supplements.
Where the numbers come from
Xactimate does not hold one national price. It holds price lists keyed to geography and time. Verisk researches local material and labour costs and republishes lists on a monthly cycle. When you open an estimate you are selecting a list, and that selection is a pricing decision.
| What you choose | Why it matters | Common error |
|---|---|---|
| Price list region | Material and labour cost vary by market | Using an adjacent metro’s list because it was already loaded. |
| Price list month | Lists are refreshed monthly | Writing a supplement in June against the March list you started on. |
| Line item selection | Each item has a defined scope and unit | Choosing an item whose description does not match the work performed. |
| Overhead and profit | Applied at the estimate level | Assuming it will be accepted without justifying complexity. |
What is inside a line item
A line item is not a single number. It is a composite of labour, material, equipment and a labour burden component. When an adjuster and a contractor disagree about a total, the productive conversation is almost never about the unit price, which both parties are reading from the same list. It is about which items belong in the scope and how many units of each.
Overhead and profit is the real argument
General contractor overhead and profit, usually discussed as ten and ten, is applied when a job requires genuine coordination of multiple trades. Whether a given file qualifies is a judgement, and it is where a large share of estimating disputes actually live. Documenting trade count, sequencing and supervision at the time you write the estimate is more effective than arguing it after the fact.
What it costs to use
Xactimate is sold by subscription with tiers that differ by platform access and by whether you need the full desktop application. Verisk publishes current pricing directly, and because it changes we are not going to print a figure here that will be wrong in a quarter. Check Verisk’s own pricing page for the current number.
Questions people actually ask
How are Xactimate prices determined?
Verisk researches local labour and material costs and publishes price lists by region, refreshed monthly. Your estimate prices against the list you select, so the region and month you choose directly change the total.
How often do Xactimate price lists update?
Monthly. That cadence is why supplements written against an older list can differ from the current one even when the scope has not changed.
What is O and P in Xactimate?
General contractor overhead and profit, commonly ten percent each, applied where a job requires coordinating multiple trades. Whether it applies to a specific file is frequently disputed, so document trade count and supervision when you write the estimate.
Do I need Xactimate certification to write estimates?
No, but carriers and programme work often expect it, and certification levels are a common filter for panel membership. It is a commercial requirement rather than a legal one.
Sources
- Verisk, Xactimate product information. Retrieved 23 September 2026.
- Price list cadence and structure as described in Verisk’s published product documentation. We have not been granted access to the underlying price research methodology, which Verisk does not publish.