How easy is it to ask a UK supplier
for a quote? We checked 506 websites
An automated check of the homepages of 506 UK suppliers and wholesalers, run on 26 October 2026. What a buyer, or software acting for one, finds when they try to ask for a quote.
Read this first. Kavel picked these 506 sites from its own research. They are not a sample of UK suppliers. The check reads the homepage, the quote page it links to and robots.txt, so a form added by JavaScript, a menu we did not read or prices behind a login are not seen. Missing items are often a choice. The checks were run and this page written with AI.
What we looked at
Fasteners and fixings, MRO, bearings and hydraulics, packaging, janitorial, catering supplies, electrical, plumbing and heating, builders' merchants, office supplies, signs and print, lab and safety, IT resellers and wholesale brands. Of the 506 sites, 399 answered the quote-readiness check and 384 the pricing check. The rest refused the checker, returned an error or could not be reached, and are left out.
A way to ask for a quote
82 of 399 sites (21%) showed a link or form on the homepage worded as a quote or trade enquiry request, such as "Request a quote" or "Trade enquiries". The other four in five did not, on the pages we read. Most of those have a contact page, which may be perfectly good. But a buyer sending the same request to five suppliers will notice which ones make it obvious how to ask.
Contact details and reply time
- 203 of 399 (51%) showed both a phone number and an email address.
- 13 of 399 (3%) stated how fast they reply, with wording such as "we respond within 24 hours". That is about a dozen sites, since one of the 13 was a service-request time, not a quote time.
Only promise a time you reliably meet. For a buyer deciding whom to wait for, a stated time is information, and almost nobody gives it.
Prices a tool can read
For 335 sites that let the checker read the page (49 more turned it away with a bot check), we looked at the homepage, or the pricing page if the homepage linked to one:
| Result | Sites | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Product prices in the page's HTML | 152 | 45% |
| No prices on the page read | 83 | 25% |
| Prices only added by JavaScript | 60 | 18% |
| "Contact us" or on-request pricing | 39 | 12% |
| Prices only in structured data | 1 | under 1% |
"No prices on the page read" does not mean no prices anywhere: many sites show them deeper in the site or only to logged-in trade customers. Prices added only by JavaScript are not in the HTML a tool that does not run JavaScript reads. Whether that matters to you depends on who you want to find your prices.
AI crawlers
Of 391 sites where robots.txt could be read, 18 (5%) asked at least one of the 14 AI crawlers we check to stay away. That is what robots.txt says; it is not a statement about what any AI assistant does with a site.
What to do with this
- Check your own site in a minute with the free supplier quote-readiness check, and your prices with the AI pricing check.
- If you answer quote requests from a price list, see what your quote time adds up to with the quote time calculator.
- A free quote request page collects what you need to price a job and emails each request to you.
- For a faster first reply, see speed to quote and how to reply to a request for quote.
Method
Each site's homepage was fetched once by the Kavel checkers, which read page text without running JavaScript, the first quote page the homepage links to, and robots.txt. Wording rules look for a quote or enquiry link or form, a phone number or email address, a stated reply time and amounts with a currency sign. We checked samples by hand and fixed two mistakes before these figures (a "next working day delivery" promise counted as a reply time, and "Get Quote" links missed). Expect some misses in both directions. Per-business results are not published.
Written with AI from the checker's output. Automated checks are not advice.