Estimate the real cost of building a house, villa or apartment block. Every price is dated and traceable. Try it without paying, subscribe for the full estimate.
A real estimate, computed live
Two-storey house, 120 m², Kolwezi
$78,000 – $143,000
$920 / m² · 38 weeks
Economy (self-build)
$270 – $590
/ m² · Kolwezi
Standard
$590 – $1,100
/ m² · Kolwezi
Premium
$1,100 – $1,950
/ m² · Kolwezi
Luxury
$1,950 – $3,750
/ m² · Kolwezi
A 120 m² standard-finish house in Kolwezi: roughly $71,000 to $130,000.
Three minutes is enough to get a budget range you can defend.
Building type, floor area, storeys, city and finish level.
Foundations, walls, roof, joinery, power and options like a borehole or solar.
Trade-by-trade budget, cash-flow schedule, material quantities and labour days.
Add your margin, swap our prices for your own suppliers’, and print a client-ready summary.
Cement in Kolwezi is not cement in Matadi, and the gap is over 50%. Every price names its source and its date, or admits it is an estimate.
Slabs, beams, columns, footings and load-bearing walls are sized, not assumed. Every check is shown, and the tool says which one fails.
Not a range: 1,317 blocks, 7 bags of cement and 24 worker-days for a single wall, wastage included. Checkable by hand, exportable as CSV.
The same calculation engine, three very different needs.
Know what your project costs before you buy the plot, and before a builder quotes you a number.
Price a job in minutes on your own supplier rates. Set your margin knowing the base rate already carries one, so nothing is counted twice. Then hand the client a version showing the trades and the price, without your ranges or your margin.
Sanity-check a budget quoted from Kinshasa when you live in Brussels, Paris or Johannesburg.
Not just a number. Enough to actually prepare a build.
Ten trades, from earthworks to paint, each with its share of the budget.
Four dated phases: know when the money leaves, not only how much.
Cement bags, blocks, reinforcement bar, roofing sheets: enough to go and get merchant quotes.
Worker-days per trade, from labourer to site foreman.
The same project in Kinshasa, Goma, Lubumbashi or Mbandaka.
Dollars and local currency, on a rate refreshed hourly.
Replace our averages with your supplier prices. They are remembered.
A real example computed right now: 120 m² house, standard finish, Kinshasa.
COST BY TRADE
The big American and European cost sites are excellent, but their assumptions do not hold here: labour there outweighs materials two to one, while in the DRC it is the other way round. Add the cost of hauling materials inland, the absence of a reliable grid, the need to drill your own water, and the answer changes completely. This estimator starts from Congolese prices.
Differences against Kolwezi, anchored on the published cement price surveys. Matadi, next to the Lukala works, is the cheapest point in the country; Kananga and Mbandaka the dearest.
Sourced, dated benchmarks to frame a budget before you start asking for quotes.
Price ranges per m² in Kolwezi, the reference city, and across the rest of the country, trade by trade, for a 120 m² house in 2026.
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Cement, rebar, blocks, roofing sheets, sand and timber: the price ranges seen on the Congolese market.
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Daily rates from labourer to site foreman, and what labour really represents in a build budget.
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The Democratic Republic of the Congo is the first country covered. The rest follow, using the same method with locally surveyed prices.
Pool, lift, underground parking: offered according to the building type and its specification level.
Every price is badged “sourced” or “estimated”, with its reference.
WORKER-DAYS BY TRADE