About Heat Pump Pricing Index

Heat Pump Pricing Index is an independent reference for U.S. homeowners shopping for a heat pump. We publish real installed cost ranges by metro, a comprehensive map of federal, state, and utility rebate programs, and a calculator that shows what you'll actually pay after every incentive you qualify for. We are not an installer, a manufacturer, a utility, or a lead-generation company.

Why this site exists

Heat pump pricing is uniquely opaque. The same 3-ton installation can be quoted anywhere from $9,000 to $24,000 in the same city in the same week, because installers routinely price against perceived budget rather than published rates. Rebate programs change quarterly, stack in non-obvious ways, and most aggregator sites either repeat outdated DSIRE entries or simply omit utility programs entirely. Almost everything else that calls itself a "heat pump guide" online is funded by lead-generation companies whose business model is selling your contact information to contractors — which means their incentive is to get you to submit a form, not to give you accurate numbers.

We started Heat Pump Pricing Index because the question "how much should a heat pump actually cost in my zip code, and what will I pay after rebates?" should have a straight answer that doesn't require handing over your phone number. Every page on this site is built around that question.

Who runs the site

Heat Pump Pricing Index is a small editorial team based in the United States. Day-to-day research, writing, and data verification is handled by a core group that combines backgrounds in building science, residential HVAC, energy policy, and software. The team includes people who have:

Designed and installed residential heat-pump systems (air-source and ground-source) in single-family homes.
Worked on state energy-office rebate program design and reviewed the eligibility language we now summarize on this site.
Built consumer-facing data products in adjacent domains (energy efficiency, home improvement pricing) and know what it takes to keep a publicly facing dataset accurate.

We don't publish individual bylines on cost or rebate pages because the data on those pages is the work of the editorial team as a whole — each rebate is verified by one person and reviewed by a second before it ships. Where a long-form article or guide reflects a specific contributor's expertise (a building-science piece on cold-climate performance, for example), we attribute it on the article itself.

You can reach the editorial team directly at hello@heatpumppricing.com. We read every message and respond within one business day on weekdays. The full set of contact options — corrections, press, privacy requests — lives on the contact page.

How we work

The short version: every number on this site comes from a primary source we can link you to, every page that summarizes a rebate program shows when it was last verified, and every correction submitted by a reader is checked against the original source within one business day.

The long version — exactly which sources we use for cost data, how the audit bot re-verifies rebate amounts between editorial passes, how the calculator handles stacking, and where the data's limits are — lives on our methodology page. If you're evaluating whether to trust a number you see on this site, that's the right page to start with.

What we don't do

We don't generate installer leads. No form on this site forwards your contact information to a contractor. We don't sell, rent, or syndicate visitor data to lead-gen networks.
We don't recommend specific installers. Naming a single local contractor on a national site invariably means we got paid to name them. We'd rather point you at your utility's qualified-contractor list (which is on each state page) than play favorites.
We don't accept payment for inclusion. No rebate, brand, product, or program on this site is here because someone paid for it to be. The rebate list is a function of what exists in each state, not what we've been asked to promote.
We don't ask for your email, phone, or address. The calculator runs entirely in your browser. We don't store the inputs you type and we don't require an account.
We don't track visitors across sites. See the privacy policy for what is and isn't set in your browser.

Editorial independence and how we're funded

Heat Pump Pricing Index is supported by display advertising served by Google AdSense. That means the ads you see are auctioned and served by Google's ad network — we don't sell ad placements directly, and individual advertisers cannot pay us to influence what appears on a page or in what order. Ad revenue covers hosting, data licensing (RSMeans, BLS feeds), and the editorial time required to keep the rebate database current.

We have an explicit firewall between advertising and editorial. Specifically:

Cost ranges, rebate amounts, and program eligibility are never adjusted in response to ad-revenue considerations.
Programs from advertisers' competitors are listed identically to programs from companies that show ads on this site.
We do not publish sponsored content, "advertorial" pieces, or paid recommendations. If we ever do, the article will say so at the top in plain language.

We don't accept affiliate revenue from installer-matching services, and we don't earn commissions on equipment sales. If that changes in the future, the funding model section on this page will be updated before any such revenue is collected.

Corrections and feedback

If a rebate amount, eligibility rule, program status, or city cost range is wrong, please tell us. We verify against the primary source — the state energy office, utility program page, IRS notice, or DSIRE entry — and correct within one business day, with the re-deploy landing within 24 hours of the fix. The contact page has the exact email address and the information that helps us turn a correction around quickly.

More broadly, if there's data you wish this site had — a program we're missing, a city we don't cover, a question the calculator can't answer — we want to hear about it. Reader requests are the single largest source of new coverage on this site.