Hiring movers for a two-bedroom home costs roughly $750–$1,400 locally, and $2,400–$4,480 for a 250–1,000 mile move, before packing or special items. This estimator takes your home size, distance band, packing choice, and heavy items, applies typical published US rates — every figure printed in the tables below — and returns a low–high range to budget against.
Why honest moving estimates come as ranges
Any website that gives you a moving cost to the exact dollar — "$3,412" — is inventing precision that doesn't exist. Movers price from variables a form can't fully capture: how much your belongings actually weigh, whether the truck can park at your door, how many flights of stairs stand between your couch and the street, and whether you're moving on a quiet Tuesday in February or the last Saturday of June. Two quotes for the "same" move routinely differ by 40%.
What a form can do honestly is build the range from the factors that drive most of the price: the size of your home (a proxy for weight and volume), the distance band (which decides whether you're billed by the hour or by weight-and-mileage), and the two extras that reliably add hundreds — professional packing and heavy special items. That's exactly what this estimator does, and it shows its work: the rate tables it uses are printed in full below, so you can see — and challenge — every assumption.
Methodology and rate assumptions
The tables below are compiled from typical published US mover averages — national moving-cost guides, consumer moving surveys, and mover rate data published for 2025–2026 — and rounded to planning figures. Base rates assume a full-service move (crew, truck, loading, transport, unloading) of an average-furnished home at that size.
Base rates — local move (under 50 miles)
| Home size | Low | High |
|---|---|---|
| Studio | $350 | $650 |
| 1 bedroom | $500 | $900 |
| 2 bedroom | $750 | $1,400 |
| 3 bedroom | $1,100 | $2,200 |
| 4+ bedroom | $1,600 | $3,200 |
Distance adjustment (multiplies the base range)
| Distance band | Multiplier | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Under 50 miles | ×1.0 | Billed hourly; base rates above apply directly |
| 50–250 miles | ×1.8 | Same-day or next-day; fuel and drive time roughly double the job |
| 250–1,000 miles | ×3.2 | Priced by weight and mileage; multi-day transport |
| Over 1,000 miles | ×5.0 | Cross-country; consolidated loads and week-scale delivery windows |
Extras
| Extra | Adds |
|---|---|
| Full packing — studio | $200 – $400 |
| Full packing — 1 bedroom | $300 – $550 |
| Full packing — 2 bedroom | $450 – $800 |
| Full packing — 3 bedroom | $650 – $1,100 |
| Full packing — 4+ bedroom | $900 – $1,500 |
| Each heavy / special item (piano, safe, pool table, hot tub) | $200 – $500 |
Not included anywhere in these figures: tips for the crew (customary, and worth budgeting), valuation/insurance upgrades beyond the basic federal minimum, storage, shuttle fees when a large truck can't reach your door, and long-carry or stair fees some movers itemize separately. If several of those apply, expect the top of the range — or above it.
Worked example
A two-bedroom home moving 250–1,000 miles, self-packed, with one piano:
- Base range for 2BR: $750 – $1,400
- Distance multiplier ×3.2: $750 × 3.2 = $2,400 · $1,400 × 3.2 = $4,480
- Packing: $0 (packing themselves)
- One special item (the piano): +$200 – $500
- Total estimated range: $2,600 – $4,980
The default inputs above are exactly this example, so the estimator reproduces these figures on load. Watch how the range moves if you add full packing (+$450–$800 for a 2BR) — that's the honest size of the "should we pack ourselves?" question, and for many people it's the difference between a weekend of boxes and a few hundred dollars they're glad they spent.
How to use a range like this
Budget at the midpoint, negotiate from the low end, and be pleasantly unsurprised anywhere inside the range. When quotes come back, compare them against the range rather than against each other in a vacuum: a quote below the low end deserves scrutiny (what's excluded?), a quote above the high end deserves a question (what are they seeing that the range doesn't?), and three quotes inside the range means you've found the market price. The range is not the answer to your move — it's the yardstick that tells you whether the answers movers give you make sense.