Estimate your move before the quotes roll in.

Professional movers typically price on a combination of the volume or weight of your belongings and the distance of the move, plus add-ons like packing, materials, insurance, and any special handling. Local moves are often billed hourly, while long-distance moves lean more on volume-and-distance pricing. Estimating volume — roughly how many cubic feet your goods fill — and applying a rate, then adding a distance charge, gives a baseline you can use to sanity-check the quotes you receive. This calculator produces that transport baseline; the full budget adds the rest.

Beyond the headline transport quote, moves carry costs that are easy to overlook: packing materials or a packing service, insurance or valuation coverage, temporary storage, cleaning, deposits and connection fees at the new place, time off work, and the small but real cost of replacing things that don't survive the move. Building these into a budget from the start prevents the move from costing noticeably more than the mover's quote suggested. The paid budget lists these categories so they're accounted for rather than discovered later.

A ready-to-use spreadsheet (Excel & Google Sheets): a full moving budget with transport, packing, insurance, storage, deposits, and extras, plus quote comparison — delivered instantly after checkout. AI-assisted, human-built; not financial advice.