A solar calculator that never asks for your phone number
Type an address, get the numbers. No phone field, no account, no “an advisor will call you shortly”.
Why every other calculator wants your number
Most free solar tools are lead generators. The estimate is the bait; the phone number is the product. It is sold to several installers at once, which is why one form submission turns into a fortnight of calls from companies you have never heard of. The calculator was never really the point.
Those leads are expensive, and the cost is recovered from the small number of homeowners who eventually buy — which means the marketing budget ends up inside the price of the system. You pay for the calls, whether or not you answered them.
What we do instead
| SIA | A typical lead-gen calculator | |
|---|---|---|
| Phone number | Never asked for | Required before results |
| Account to see results | Not required | Often required |
| Your details sold | Never | Typically to several installers |
| Address stored | Only if you save a project | Usually retained |
| Who is paying | Nobody, yet | Installers, per lead |
What we actually collect
Being specific matters more than a promise, so here is the whole list.
- The address you type, used to fetch roof geometry and your utility’s rates. It is not stored unless you choose to save a project to an account.
- Anonymised analytics, through Matomo with the last two bytes of your IP masked and Do Not Track honoured. Enough to know which pages help; not enough to identify you.
- An email address, only if you create an account. It exists to sign you in. No phone number is requested at any point, and there is no newsletter.
Read the whole privacy policy, which includes an opt-out from analytics entirely.
So what is the catch
There is a business model, and it is worth saying plainly rather than letting you wonder. When installer matching launches, a homeowner who wants an introduction can ask for one, and the installer pays a referral fee — part of which we pay to you. That only ever happens if you ask. It requires no phone number, and until you ask, no installer knows you exist.
The order matters. Every other model sells your details first and shows you the numbers afterwards. This one shows the numbers, and may well tell you solar is a poor idea at your address — which it frequently does, and which a lead generator can never afford to say.
What you get without giving anything
- Your actual roof modelled in 3-D from aerial imagery, with panels placed on real roof planes and shading measured rather than assumed.
- Production simulated by NLR PVWatts, the same engine installers quote from.
- Cash, loan, lease and PPA compared over 25 years on your own utility’s rates — including what a leasing company would make on your roof.
- An honest verdict, including when the answer is that solar does not pay here.
Every model and data source behind these numbers is published in the full methodology, along with the known limitations and the defects we have found and fixed. Estimates are informational and are not an installation quote.