A real budget number, before the site walk.
- Access points×10$3,140
- Switching & PoE×4$6,820
- Cameras & NVR×12$9,460
- Cabling & rack48 drops$11,580
- Labor92 hrs$13,800
Start with a template
Or skip and configure everything manually below.
Project Details
Three things decide the number.
The estimator mirrors how we cost a real job. It defaults to current UniFi MSRP, New York tri-state labor rates, and the cable, rack, and UPS pricing we'd quote on real work — adjusted for the inputs you provide.
Equipment is the smaller line.
On the average UniFi job we quote, equipment is 35–45%of the total. The rest is labor, cabling, rack/IDF buildout, UPS, consumables (keystones, plates, patch cables), permits, and overhead. The estimator runs all of those — leaving them out is what produces the “but the cameras were only $3,200” conversation.
Labor follows site complexity.
Drop count, building construction, IDF location, and floor count drive labor more than device count. A fifteen-AP wood-frame office is faster than an eight-AP concrete tenant fit-out. Labor is held flat at $150/hr with a multiplier band — Low, Expected, High — that absorbs the unknowns until a site walk pins them.
A range, not a single number.
Every estimate reports Low / Expected / High. Equipment varies a few percent on availability; labor varies −15% to +35%on what we find behind the walls. The expected number is what we'd bring into a quote conversation; the range is the disclosure that comes with not having walked the site yet.
The terms above, in one paragraph each.
Skip if you've quoted a network this year. Useful if a stakeholder review is in your near future and the line items need a quick translation.
Four mistakes that turn a budget into a surprise.
Four mistakes that happen when a UniFi job is scoped from a parts list. Each one is cheaper to catch on paper than in week three of the install.
Quoting equipment cost as the project budget.
The most common “why is this so expensive?” conversation starts with a UniFi shopping cart total being mistaken for a project number. Drops, rack, UPS, patch panels, cable, and labor often exceed the bill of materials. The estimator surfaces all of it so the conversation starts at the real ceiling, not a fraction of it.
Forgetting structured cabling entirely.
Every AP, camera, doorway reader, and PoE-fed device needs a copper drop terminated at a patch panel and tested. At ~$185 per Cat6A drop installed, a fifty-device job is $9,250 in cable alone — before the PDU and rack ladder. Quotes that skip this surface a nasty surprise on day one.
Pricing the perfect-conditions number.
Old buildings hide things. Conduit pulls that should take an hour take three. A 1990s telecom closet has no clean ground. Plenum return air requires plenum-rated cable. The High end of the range exists because some sites spring all of those at once; the Low end exists because some sites are clean.
Treating documentation as optional.
A network without an as-built diagram, a labelled patch field, and a written runbook is a network the next engineer will charge you to reverse-engineer. Documentation is included in every ShiftCTRL engagement — the estimator bakes the hours in so the line reads honestly.
Common questions about UniFi project costs.
The phrasing varies, but most questions fall into one of these categories. If your scenario doesn't fit, that's the point at which it makes sense to talk to an engineer.
How much does a typical UniFi network deployment cost?
Why does the same equipment cost different amounts across projects?
What does the estimate include — and what does it leave out?
How accurate is this without a site survey?
Can I use this for budget approval before talking to anyone?
How is this different from a generic IT cost calculator?
Want this turned into a binding quote?
We'll do the site walk, finalize the device placement against an RF heatmap in Foresight, and hand back a written BoM with rack, UPS, drops, switches, and labor, priced line by line.