Find the right contractor in three questions.
Reviewed by the GTA Pool Contractors editorial teamLast reviewed How we research
- 1Job/
- 2Location/
- 3Priorities/
- 4Shortlist
What are you hiring for?
Pick the job. The shortlist only includes companies that list that work on their own website — not every company that says yes to everything.
How the journey works
Filter first. Compare last. No guessing in between.
Most directory searches start with a list of everyone and end with a phone call to whoever answered. This one starts with the job and narrows before you spend a call.
1. Answer three questions
The job, the city and up to three priorities. It takes about a minute and needs no contact details.
2. Get an eligible shortlist
Only companies that list the work and cover the city. Ordered by your priorities, with the reasons shown on every card.
3. Compare two
Pick two finalists and read the head-to-head: service match, location, review volume, rating and what each one does not list.
The limits
What the match cannot tell you.
It compares published facts. It cannot see a contract, a crew or a finished job. The five checks below still decide whether the company is safe to hire.
- 01
Get three quotes, then compare the line items.
The most repeated advice in the corpus, 40 comments deep. Three totals tell you nothing when one quote leaves out the heater; three itemised quotes tell you what the job actually costs.
- 02
Read the exclusions, not the headline.
39 comments were about scope and change orders. The gap between the quote and the invoice is usually something the contract never named — decking, fencing, the gas hookup, or what happens if the dig hits rock.
- 03
Find out who digs, and who finishes.
The crew that excavates is often not the crew that closes the job, and owners describe the handoff as where communication and quality slip. Ask for the names, and the dates, in the contract.
- 04
Ask for the certificate, not the logo.
Ontario has no general pool-builder licence. Ask for liability insurance, a WSIB clearance certificate and, for gas work, TSSA registration. Twenty comments on this, same answer every time: get the document.
- 05
Keep the last payment until you are satisfied.
The deposits thread is small but consistent — money out before the work, and the leverage goes with it. Pay in stages, hold back a meaningful final payment, and never e-transfer a deposit to a personal name.
Plain answers
Questions about the match.
How does the guided contractor match work?
It filters the 81 records to companies that list the job you chose and are based in the city you chose, then orders them by up to three priorities such as review volume or star rating. Select two and it explains the stronger fit using the same facts, with the reasons written out.
Is this a real AI chatbot?
No. It is a fixed, transparent scoring rule, not a generative model. The same answers always produce the same shortlist and the same verdict, and every reason cites a fact on file. A recommendation about a five-figure contract should be reproducible, not improvised.
Do companies pay to appear in the shortlist?
No. There is no paid placement in the match. The list is built from the public records: a phone number, a working website, a logo and the services each company lists. A company cannot buy its way into your results.
What if no company matches my job in my city?
The records are not a census of every pool business. If nobody on file lists the work in your city, the tool says so, lets you widen the search to the GTA, and offers the quote request instead of inventing a match.
Does the match check insurance, WSIB or workmanship?
No. It only knows what each company publishes. Insurance, WSIB and licensing are exactly what you still have to ask for, which is why every result links to the five checks before you sign.
Want a human to check the shortlist?
Send the job once. We reply with available local companies for your address — no salesperson, no obligation.