Equipment Price Benchmark

What it covers

Quotes and invoices for vertical and horizontal machining centers, 5-axis machines, Swiss lathes, industrial robots and cobots, PLC and drive packages, LV switchgear and switchboards, pad-mount transformers and standby gensets, normalized to configuration (spindle, travels, tool changer, payload, reach, kVA, ampacity, kW, tier) and to region and quote date. Published as distributions per cell: median, interquartile range, n and contributor count. Never an individual quote.

Cadence

Quarterly, once any cell clears the threshold

Compiled from

Contributions (none yet); Haas published price list; Public Bid-Tab Price Book awards as the public-record anchor for each cell

Delivered as

Web distributions per cell, CSV of cell statistics

Updates

Quarterly once cells clear the threshold

Onboarding

Contributor guide

Support

hello@open-factory.com

Tier

Contribute to see

Who uses it and what it decides

• Job shops and plant managersWhether a machine or robot quote is in line with what other shops paid for the same configuration.
• Sourcing managers at multi-plant groupsWhich plants are paying above the distribution for the same gear, and by how much.
• Contractors buying gear for their own jobsWhether a distributor's switchboard quote is inside the band before the bid goes in.

Methodology

Where it stands

The Equipment Price Benchmark is a contribution form and a promise, nothing more. Zero contributions have been received. No count, no distribution and no band will print until a cell holds five or more contributors and eight or more quotes, with no contributor above 40% of the cell and every quote at least three months old. Those rules are on the methodology page and will not be relaxed to get a number out sooner.

The one public reference point today is Haas, the only US machine-tool builder with a published list: VF-2 $70,995, VF-2YT $78,995, VF-2SS $83,995, VF-3 $87,995, verified 31 August 2026 via MachineToolIndex against the Haas price list. What the benchmark will show is how far a delivered, optioned, rigged machine lands from that list, and what Mazak, Okuma and DMG Mori machines with no public list actually sell for.

How a quote becomes a cell

1. Contribution. A quote or invoice, uploaded or transcribed, with the configuration fields for its class (spindle speed, travels, tool changer, probing, automation for a machining center; payload, reach, controller for a robot; kVA, voltage, impedance for a transformer; ampacity, sections, breaker frame for a switchboard; kW, fuel, tier for a genset). The contributor confirms there is no confidentiality clause.
2. Normalization. The price is reduced to the class’s unit convention ($/machine at base configuration with options listed, $/kVA, $/section, $/kW) and tagged with region and quote month.
3. Cell test. A cell is a class, a configuration band, a region and a rolling four-quarter window. It publishes only when it meets the size rules.
4. Publication. Median, interquartile range, n and contributor count. Nothing else.

What is free and what is paid

• Contribute to see: contributors see the distributions for their cells.
• Pro: all published cells.
• Institutional: cell statistics as CSV and API, with quarterly updates for a year, an onboarding call and ad hoc calls. Never rows.

Articles that set it up

What a Haas VF-2 Really Costs in 2026 is the first cell’s public anchor. Reading a Switchgear Quote and How to Write an RFQ for Capital Equipment in 2026 define the configuration fields for the electrical cells. Public awards from the Public Bid-Tab Price Book anchor each cell before any contribution arrives.

Version history

• 0.0 (September 2026). Contribution form open. No contributions. Cell rules published.

What version 1 adds

Version 1 exists when the first cell passes the size test. It will print the cell, its n and its contributor count, and merge into the Bid-Tab Price Book bands where the classes overlap. A lawyer’s memo on information exchange and defamation precedes the first publication.

Known gaps

Everything. This page exists so the rules are public before the data is.

Articles built on this model