How we calculate prices
Every price on this site is a range with a defined scope. This page sets out how we build those ranges, what the figures include, and where they currently fall short. If you spot an error, tell us and we will correct it.
What we publish
Ranges, never a single national average. A national average for moving is close to meaningless: the same household can cost $3,000 or $9,000 to move depending on distance, access, season and how much of the work you keep. Averaging those describes nobody.
Inside each range we publish a narrower band showing where most quotes land. That band is the part that helps, because knowing the range runs from $4,000 to $11,000 tells you nothing about whether your own number is normal.
| Move size | Scope priced | Full range | Most quotes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio or 1 bedroom | 1,000+ miles | $1,500–5,000 | $2,400–3,800 |
| 2 bedroom | 1,000+ miles | $2,500–7,500 | $3,800–5,600 |
| 3 bedroom | 1,000+ miles | $4,000–11,000 | $5,500–8,000 |
| 4 bedroom or larger | 1,000+ miles | $6,000–16,000 | $8,000–12,000 |
| Moving container | 2 to 3 bedroom, cross country | $2,000–6,000 | $3,000–4,500 |
| Rental truck, self move | 2 to 3 bedroom, cross country | $1,200–4,500 | $2,000–3,200 |
What our scope means
Door to door price for an interstate move of 1,000 miles or more: transport, loading, unloading, basic released valuation and fuel surcharge. Before packing services, storage, specialty items and any deposit.
Included: transport, loading, unloading, basic released valuation, fuel surcharge, and the crew labor already priced into an interstate tariff.
Not included: packing services and materials, storage in transit, specialty items such as pianos and vehicles, full value protection, long carry and shuttle fees, expedited delivery, and any deposit.
Deposits are excluded deliberately. A large up front deposit is a warning sign rather than a normal line item, so folding one into a price range would normalise something we tell readers to question.
How we build a range
- Collect. We gather published 2026 pricing from moving industry sources, marketplace data and mainstream reporting.
- Normalise. Every figure is restated to one scope: interstate, 1,000 miles or more, door to door, before packing and deposits. Most of the disagreement between published moving prices comes from mixing local hourly pricing with interstate weight-and-distance pricing, and from silence about what is included.
- Discard. If a figure cannot be normalised because the source does not say what it covers, we drop it. Four usable sources beat ten ambiguous ones.
- Band. The full range spans the normalised low and high. The typical band sits where the normalised sources overlap.
Where these numbers currently fall short
Stated plainly, because a methodology page that only lists strengths is marketing.
- These ranges are triangulated from published sources, not from a primary sample of household quotes. That is the honest description of the method as it stands today. It is enough to tell you whether a number is unusual. It is not enough to tell you what your specific route costs.
- Route level figures are not published yet. We could multiply a national figure by a distance index and publish fifty routes tomorrow. That would be arithmetic presented as research, and we are not doing it. Route ranges will be published when we have quotes behind them, and each will carry the number of observations.
- Container and rental truck figures are the least stable. Those markets price dynamically by date and availability, so a range is a weaker guide there than for full service moves.
- Ranges age. Fuel and seasonal demand move this market quickly. We revise twice a year and stamp the date below.
What we do not do
- We do not publish a single national average and call it your price.
- We do not present false precision. Where the honest answer is a wide spread, we publish the wide spread.
- We do not rate, rank or recommend individual moving companies, and we take no payment from carriers or brokers.
- We are supported by advertising, disclosed on every page. Advertisers have no input into our ranges and no sight of them before publication.
Help us improve them
If you have been quoted recently, that is the data this site is waiting on. Send your route, the size of the move, the total and what it covered through the contact page. Reports are used in aggregate and nothing is passed to carriers or lead networks.
Last reviewed August 2026.