Bid-hit ratio calculator: count, dollar-weighted and 1-in-N

What is a bid-hit ratio?

Most shops track the count version because it is easy. The version that tells you whether the estimating department is paying for itself is the dollar-weighted one: dollars won divided by dollars bid. The two can sit far apart, and the gap between them is usually the most useful number on this page. The calculator below gives you both, the inverse "1 in N" form that GCs tend to quote, and what each win is costing you in estimating labour.

Runs in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere. Benchmarks are the ranges used in our bid-hit ratio benchmarks by trade.

The bid hit ratio formula, three ways

Each form answers a different question, and a shop that only tracks one of them will be blind to something.

All four assume a clean denominator. Count every pursuit that consumed real estimating hours, including bids you withdrew and bids the GC never opened. Exclude budget numbers and rough-order-of-magnitude pricing done in an afternoon; those are sales, not estimating, and mixing them in makes the ratio look worse than it is.

Why the count and dollar ratios differ

Run the calculator with 10 wins from 40 bids and $3.6 million won from $18 million bid, and you get a 25% count ratio against a 20% dollar ratio. That gap means the jobs you win are smaller than the jobs you bid on average: $360,000 per win against $450,000 per bid. There are three usual explanations, and they call for different fixes.

You are winning the small ones. On small jobs reputation and speed matter more than price. On the large ones you are one of eight numbers and a bigger competitor's cost structure beats yours. The fix is not to stop bidding big jobs; it is to stop bidding the ones where you are only there for coverage.

You are winning the negotiated ones. Repeat clients hand you small work without a real competition, and it inflates the count ratio. Segment the pipeline. A negotiated pipeline at 50% and a hard-bid pipeline at 12% is two honest numbers; blended into 28% it is one meaningless one.

Your big-job pricing is off. If the dollar ratio is well below the count ratio and the losses cluster on the largest pursuits, check the bid tabs. A consistent 8 to 12% spread to the winner on large jobs is a production-rate or overhead-allocation problem in the estimate, not a selection problem.

The reverse case, a dollar ratio well above the count ratio, means you are winning the big ones and losing the small ones: usually a shop that has grown past its old market and still bids $50,000 jobs out of habit, at the same estimating cost as a win twenty times larger.

What moves the ratio

Three things, in order of how much control you have over them.

Bid selection. Which pursuits you say yes to is the single largest lever, and it is the only one that raises the ratio without touching price. Shops that install a written go/no-go gate and score every invitation before the takeoff starts routinely move from single digits into the high teens or twenties on the same pricing, because the pursuits they stop bidding were the ones they were never going to win. Our bid/no-bid scorecard does the scoring; the reasoning behind it is in the bid/no-bid scoring model post.

Relationships and bidder count. The number of bidders sets the ceiling. With four bidders and a GC who has worked with you, 30% is achievable. With twelve bidders on a public hard-bid, 10% is normal and 15% is excellent. You cannot change the market, but you can choose which end of it you spend your hours in, and you can be the sub who returns the GC's calls, which is worth more than most estimators think.

Estimating accuracy. This one cuts both ways. Misses in quantity lose you the close ones by a few percent. Overruns in quantity make you leave money on the table on the ones you win. A takeoff that is right to within a percent or two lets you price to your real cost with a real margin, which is how you win at a number that holds. That is what AI takeoff is for: quantities from the plans in minutes rather than a week, so the estimator's hours go into pricing and scope review. The cost of estimating a bid piece puts numbers on how much of the bid budget quantification consumes.

How to raise your bid-hit ratio without bidding less

The obvious way to improve a hit ratio is to bid fewer, better pursuits, and it works. But some shops are already lean on volume, and some owners will not accept a lower bid count. Here is what raises the number while holding volume.

• Swap pursuits, do not cut them. Keep the bid count and replace the coverage bids (late invitations, short turnarounds, GCs who already know who is winning) with pursuits scored high on relationship and scope fit. Same hours, different outcomes.
• Bid earlier, with a clear scope letter. The number that is in first gets the GC's questions and the chance to clarify. The one that lands at 3:55 pm gets levelled by someone who has stopped reading carefully, and clear inclusions and exclusions stop you losing bids you were low on.
• Free up hours inside each bid. Move quantity takeoff to software so the estimator's time goes into subcontractor and supplier coverage, spec review and RFIs. Real quotes instead of plug numbers win bids that plug numbers lose by 3%.
• Review every loss for ten minutes. Bid tabs where available, a phone call where not. Always second by 5% is a pricing problem; always fourth by 15% is a selection problem.

Then check the number against the benchmarks. The benchmarks by trade post gives healthy ranges by trade and delivery method and, just as important, the ceiling above which a high ratio is a sign you are underpricing. A 45% hard-bid hit ratio is not a sales success; it is forty-five out of a hundred owners telling you nobody else would do it for your number.

What to do with the number

A bid-hit ratio is a diagnostic, not a target. Track it monthly on a trailing twelve months, segmented by pipeline and ideally by GC, with the count and dollar versions side by side. Use estimating spend per win as the bridge to the go/no-go decision: if a win costs $14,000 in estimating against $60,000 average gross profit, you are fine; if the two are within a factor of two, the next pursuit has to score well on the scorecard or it is not worth the hours. The bid/no-bid Excel template has a pursuit log that computes the ratio as you go.

Questions estimators actually ask