GarageDoorMatch
Get matched
GarageDoorMatch
Get matched with a garage door technician

How we research, write and check what we publish

Every page here makes claims about safety, money, building codes or the law. This is the standard each one has to meet before it goes live, how the cost estimates are built, and what we do when we are wrong.

Who writes and who reviews

Pages are written by the GarageDoorMatch editorial team, and each one is checked against the sources listed at its foot. We have not yet appointed a technical reviewer, so no page claims to be expert reviewed.

When a named reviewer with real trade credentials is appointed, this section will show their name, credential, state, years in the trade and a link to any public registry entry, and each page they have read will say so. Until then, treat the sources at the bottom of each page as the authority and check anything that matters with the agency or the city building office named there.

Where the numbers come from

FigureSourceHow often it is checked
Population, housing age, home valueU.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey five-year estimates 2023 (tables B01003, B25034, B25077)Each ACS release
WagesU.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 release, mechanical door repairers (SOC 49-9011). BLS has no garage door installer occupation, so this is the nearest code, chosen from the sample job titles that O*NET OnLine lists for it. The figures come from O*NET OnLine, a U.S. Department of Labor site that republishes BLS data, not from the BLS site itself. These are wages paid to workers, not prices charged to homeowners.Each BLS release
Permit feesThe city's own published fee schedule, where the city publishes one that names the work. Where it does not, we print no fee.When the city adopts a new schedule
Prices companies chargeNot collected as a range: too few garage door companies publish a regular dollar price to show one. Where a company's own published price is shown, it is a separate row with the company's name and the date we recorded it, and it is not averaged into an estimate. The estimates use published national cost ranges from third-party cost guides as inputs only: we have not verified them, we do not cite them on a page and we never show one as a local price.Each review of the estimates
Safety rulesThe federal standard for residential door openers (16 CFR 1211, as published on eCFR) and the technical and safety publications of the Door and Access Systems Manufacturers Association (DASMA)When a rule changes or a reader reports one
Codes, permits, licensingStatutes, administrative rules and agency pages of the state a page covers, and the city's own permit pages, each linked on the page that uses itWhen a rule changes or a reader reports one

The rules every page follows

  1. 1A fact we cannot source is left out. A fact we could not confirm on the source's own page stays in only if the sentence says so and names whom to ask. We do not guess a code rule, a permit requirement or a license requirement from memory.
  2. 2Every cost figure is labelled an estimate and shows how it was built. We never present a range as a quote.
  3. 3Pages say when a job is not for a homeowner, and quote the safety source. Springs, cables and the brackets they load are in that group.
  4. 4We do not publish reviews, rankings or "best of" lists. We have no basis for ranking companies we do not inspect.
  5. 5Referral income never changes what a page recommends. Companies that pay for requests do not see pages before publication and cannot edit them.
  6. 6Each page shows the date it was last reviewed and, where it quotes prices, the date those prices are as of.
  7. 7Pages may be drafted with software help. A person reads each one, and every factual claim has to trace to a source we list, or it comes out.

How we estimate costs

The ranges on this site are estimates, not quotes. Each one starts from published national cost ranges for the job (one to three per job, from third-party cost guides that we have not verified, do not cite and do not show as local prices), taking the median of their lows to the median of their highs; where a job has one such range, the band is widened 15 percent each side. That band is multiplied by the ratio of the state's wage for the nearest occupation, mechanical door repairers, to the US wage (BLS May 2025, read through O*NET OnLine), which is what the work pays, not what a customer is charged. We found no state permit rule or published fee for garage door work, so no permit fee is added. Where a company publishes a price for the job, the low end is held at or below it, but too few do to show a range of local prices. The estimates do not rest on customer quotes or invoices, and a real quote can land outside a range. Weather seals and commercial doors have no estimate because we found no published national range for them.

Parts (springs, openers, door model and insulation) drive most of the difference between one job and the next. Your actual price depends on your door, the work and the company you choose, and the figures here are for planning only. Each page shows the date its figures were read.

Corrections

If something on this site is wrong, tell us which page, which number or rule, and what you saw instead, with a link if you have one. We check it against the source. If you are right we fix the page, write the date of the fix at the foot of that page and add a line to the log below.

  • Oct 19, 2026: First live state opened. No corrections yet.

How the site is paid for

GarageDoorMatch earns money when a garage door company, or a referral partner acting for one, receives a homeowner request from us. That is a conflict of interest and we say so on every page. The way we deal with it is in the rules above: sources on every claim, no rankings, no paid placement, and pages that tell you when a job is not one to attempt or to rush. The full account is on how it works.