Methodology

Who measures what

Our editorial team reads public pages (installer price pages, cost guides, marketplace and program reports, utility and state program pages) and records each price or rebate with the page, the date read and the passage it came from. We hold 37 published prices and 23 rebate entries across 10 electric companies. We do not take prices from installers who pay us, and an installer cannot change an entry.

How price bands are built

Each band is a low and a high for one kind of job, set from the published prices that support it. The reasoning for each is below.

• Ductless mini split, one or two rooms: $4,500 to $11,000 Low is the one-head price that NYC (Vinco) and Central NJ installers both start at ($4,500) and high is the top of Vinco's two-head range ($11,000); the Long Island one-head range ($5,000-$8,000) and two-zone range ($7,500-$10,000) sit inside.
• Ductless mini splits, whole home under 1,500 sq ft: $7,500 to $13,500 A home under 1,500 sq ft is assumed to need two or three heads, so the band runs from the low end of Vinco's two-head range ($7,500) to the high end of its three-head range ($13,500); Long Island and NJ three-zone ranges ($10,000-$15,000, $11,000-$15,000) overlap the upper half.
• Ductless mini splits, whole home of 1,500 to 2,500 sq ft: $11,000 to $19,000 A 1,500-2,500 sq ft home is assumed to need about four heads, so the band is the union of the two NYC four-head ranges (Vinco $11,000-$15,000, Brooklyn installer $13,000-$19,000), with three-zone ranges on Long Island and in NJ starting at about the same low end.
• Ductless mini splits, whole home over 2,500 sq ft: $16,000 to $26,000 A home over 2,500 sq ft is assumed to need five or more heads; low starts at the national 4-6+ head range ($16,000) rather than Vinco's $13,000 because a large home sits at the top of that count, and high ($26,000) is a judgement between Vinco's open-ended $20,000+ and the national $28,000.
• Central (ducted) heat pump, home under 1,500 sq ft: $9,500 to $16,000 No published figure is tied to a small NYC home, so each end is the midpoint of the NJ furnace-and-AC swap range ($7,000-$14,000) and the Long Island existing-ducts range ($12,000-$18,000); the NYSERDA 2017-2019 median for 1,000-1,500 sq ft ($11,450, older dollars) falls inside. This is the least direct band.
• Central (ducted) heat pump, home of 1,500 to 2,500 sq ft: $14,000 to $22,000 Low is rounded down from the bottom of EnergySage's marketplace range ($14,353) and high is rounded from the midpoint of Fixr's 2,000 sq ft top ($20,000) and Rewiring America's 80th percentile ($23,000); the Long Island existing-ducts range ($12,000-$18,000) overlaps the lower half.
• Central (ducted) heat pump, home over 2,500 sq ft: $22,500 to $30,000 Low is the 20th percentile for 2,500-5,500 sq ft homes from Rewiring America ($22,500); high ($30,000) sits above its 80th percentile ($28,000) because the NYSERDA 2017-2019 median for 3,000-4,000 sq ft was already $27,300 in older dollars and the Long Island no-ducts range tops out at $30,000.
• Central heat pump with new ductwork, home of 1,500 to 2,500 sq ft: $17,000 to $29,500 Built as the ducted-medium band ($14,000-$22,000) plus a new-duct add-on of $3,000-$7,500 (Bob Vila; Long Island $2,100-$4,000 and NJ first-time $4,000-$14,000+ bracket it); the Long Island no-ducts conversion range ($18,000-$30,000) lands on the same span.

How regions are adjusted

Every band is a New York City reference. Other regions multiply it by a factor.

• New York City, factor 1 Reference: every band is built from NYC and NYC-adjacent installer pages (Vinco, a Brooklyn installer) plus national guides; Vinco says Manhattan jobs carry a 10 to 20 percent surcharge over Brooklyn or Queens, so the band is a blended five-borough figure, not a Manhattan one.
• NY suburbs, factor 1 Judgement: Long Island installer ranges (one zone $5,000-$8,000, three zones $10,000-$15,000) run about 6 to 9 percent above the NYC installer midpoints, which is inside the gap between the two NYC installers themselves, so no discount or premium is applied; Westchester and Hudson Valley installer prices were not found, so this rests on Long Island only.
• New Jersey, factor 0.95 Judgement: one Central NJ installer prices at or above NYC (one zone $4,500-$8,000, three zones $11,000-$15,000) while two other NJ installer guides (Main Street Service Pros, Dimatic Control) price one zone at $3,000-$5,000 and $3,500-$5,500, and Dimatic cites NJ labour 15 to 25 percent above the national average, so a small discount to NYC is used.
• Upstate NY, factor 0.85 Weakest factor and mostly judgement: a cost-estimate site (hvacprojectcost.com) cites NYC-metro HVAC labour at $100-$200 an hour against $65-$100 upstate, but the two upstate installer pages found price above NYC (single room from $5,800; Mitsubishi single zone $10,000-$15,000), so no direct installer comparison supports a discount.

How rebates are checked

Each rebate is read from the program's own page or manual and stored with the amount the program states, its status, whether it is income-qualified, the source and the date read. We list programs that are paused, waitlisted or ended instead of hiding them, and we count only open, non-income-qualified money for the utility you name, one amount per payer.

What "open" means

Pause and waitlist status could not be confirmed from a public live source for any utility. The New York Clean Heat manual (v3, effective 2026-09-01) lists full amounts for all six NY utilities and no public notice of a pause was found; Con Edison and National Grid ration money through quarterly contractor allocations (official Clean Heat meeting summaries say contractors "should only submit applications for incentives within their allocated incentive budget"), so a homeowner can be told no money is left through a given contractor. Treat "open" as "listed and not publicly paused", and call the utility or contractor before promising a rebate.

What we could not verify

• Pause and waitlist status could not be confirmed from a public live source for any utility. The New York Clean Heat manual (v3, effective 2026-09-01) lists full amounts for all six NY utilities and no public notice of a pause was found; Con Edison and National Grid ration money through quarterly contractor allocations (official Clean Heat meeting summaries say contractors "should only submit applications for incentives within their allocated incentive budget"), so a homeowner can be told no money is left through a given contractor. Treat "open" as "listed and not publicly paused", and call the utility or contractor before promising a rebate.
• The brief expected some utilities to have paused or cut Clean Heat budgets. Cuts are confirmed (base full-load rates fell on 2026-09-01 versus the March 2026 manual) but a pause or waitlist at a named utility was not found; one 2025 annual-report snippet about Central Hudson using unspent funds could not be read or confirmed.
• NYSERDA pages and PDFs (EmPower+ page, Heat Pump Planner, the 2022 mini-split study, the 2024 low-to-moderate-income market characterization) returned 403 to every fetch, so NYSERDA program-cost data enters only second-hand through a Long Island guide (2017-2019 medians). The EmPower+ queue and weekly-authorization process, the stacking rule with Clean Heat, and the 2026 EmPower+ heat pump dollar caps were not verified on an official page.
• PSE&G heat pump rebate amounts load from a table that did not render, and JCP&L per-measure amounts were not on the readable page. Only the official headline figures and third-party summaries (up to $10,000 or $12,000 for a full conversion) were found, so those two rebates carry no typical_dollars.
• No installer-published price pages were found for Westchester, the Hudson Valley, or any named upstate city; the two upstate points are single installer pages and conflict (from $5,800 versus $10,000-$15,000), so the ny-upstate factor of 0.85 is a judgement and the weakest number in the file.
• Ductless whole-home bands by house size assume 2-3 heads (small), about 4 (medium) and 5 or more (large); no source ties a head count to square footage in NY or NJ, and the large band is partly judgement. The ducted-small band is the least direct and rests on a midpoint of NJ and Long Island figures.
• No source gives a cold-climate premium for ducted systems, and the two premium figures found (Brooklyn $500-$1,500, NJ $1,500-$3,000 for a premium Mitsubishi tier) are per-unit ductless figures from installers.
• Oil tank removal: no New York installer price outside Long Island (one installer) was usable; the NJ figure assumes no soil contamination. Panel upgrade and ductwork figures are installer or guide ranges, not quotes.
• The region list has no whole-New-York option, so NYSERDA statewide program data and the national guides are tagged "us". NYSERDA 2017-2019 medians are in older dollars and are used only as a cross-check.
• Several national guide pages (HomeGuide, HomeAdvisor, Angi, Forbes, Consumer Affairs, Bell Mechanical) blocked fetches and were skipped. The Bob Vila heat pump page is dated April 2024; the Rewiring America figures are model output trained on data through March 2024.
• Federal HEEHR (formerly HEAR) is listed as unknown for NY: DOE Program Notice 26-2 removed fuel-switching rebates from May 29, 2026, but how New York and New Jersey implemented it for heat pumps was not verified. New Jersey state HOMES/HEAR availability and the NJ Whole Home Energy Solutions program rules beyond the "up to $7,500" headline were not verified on an official New Jersey page.
• All incentives are for single-family homes (1-4 units); co-op, condo and 5+ unit buildings were not covered. Prices are before incentives; no tax or financing effects are included.

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