Paid, not quoted.

Every cost guide on the internet answers the same question the same useless way: "it depends." Prices from $400 to $4,000. Thanks.

Meanwhile the actual numbers exist. They are printed on receipts in kitchen drawers all over the country. iPaidThis collects them, anonymously, and publishes them, so the next person facing a four-figure quote knows what everyone else paid for the same thing.

One hidden-price market at a time

We started with vet care because that is where hidden pricing bites hardest. Then we widened out to more markets where the same thing happens: the advertised price and the price people actually pay drift apart. The same machine works for any market where prices are opaque and people feel ripped off.

The rules we can't break

• Numbers are never edited for money. Nobody can pay to remove, alter or bury a price.
• Sponsors are flagged. If something is paid-for, it says so, in plain sight.
• People stay anonymous. We publish prices, not posters. No names, no shaming individuals.
• Fast corrections. Genuine error? Flag it and it's fixed or removed fast.

How we collect and check the data

Every price on iPaidThis is a real number, not a model or an estimate. Here is exactly how a figure gets on the site.

1. Where prices come from. Three sources: receipts and quotes people share directly through the site; published price lists on providers' own websites; and official surveys or regulator data. Every individual price is tagged with its year, its state, the type of provider, and a link to its source, and each one is listed openly on that market's price page.
2. How they are checked. A person reviews every submission before it appears — nothing goes live automatically. Where someone uploads a receipt, the figure is checked against it. Obvious errors and duplicate entries are removed. A named business only appears once its price is backed by an uploaded receipt.
3. What the numbers mean. We report the median — the middle price — because one unusually high or low bill cannot skew it. We keep what people actually paid separate from advertised list prices, show the full range so outliers stay visible, weight every price equally, and always label a small sample with its count so it is read as a direction of travel, not a precise figure.
4. How it stays honest. No business pays to appear or to change a figure, and we never estimate. Genuine errors are fixed or removed fast when flagged, and the dataset is re-checked and grows as more people share.

The result is a transparent, source-linked record you can audit yourself: every guide links to the full per-price list, and every price links to where it came from.

Who runs this

iPaidThis is independently run by a small US team who got tired of "it depends" being the only answer to what things cost. No trade body, insurer, or lead-generation company owns or funds it. We never sell your data, and no business can buy its way onto — or off — a price. If we are ever wrong, tell us and we will put it right.