A reference, not a funnel
Most of what is published about solar pricing is written by someone who wants to sell you solar. This site is an attempt at the other thing.
What we do here
SolarPanelCosts.com publishes what rooftop solar actually costs in the United States, calculated from public data rather than asserted. The price figures come from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s record of 205,297 installations where the price on the contract was reported to a state programme. The production figures come from the same solar radiation database NREL’s own tools use. The electricity prices come from the EIA and are refreshed monthly.
Every page that carries a number says where the number came from, and the methodology page sets out the assumptions and, more importantly, the things this data cannot tell you.
Why it exists
In July 2025 Congress terminated the 30% residential clean energy credit for systems finished after the end of that year. An enormous amount of published solar content, including material still being handed to customers, describes the old rules. The difference is about a third of the price of a system. A site that gets that right is useful in a way that a site repeating last year’s numbers is not.
How it makes money
We do not ask for your phone number, we do not run a quote form, and we do not sell your details to installers. If you want quotes, you will leave this site and give your details to the company that will call you.
Where we link to a company that sells equipment or arranges quotes, that link may earn a commission. It cannot change a figure on this site, because the figures are computed from public datasets by scripts in the open, not chosen. See the disclosure page.
Corrections and enquiries are handled by Nikko Salamanca. Contact: the contact page.