Repair-or-replace: share of replacement cost

A repair that costs more than half a replacement stops being the lead path. That gate is our policy, and it is stored as a scoring weight, not a fact about the world.

TechWorth editorial · Last reviewed 6 September 2026

Apple publishes out-of-warranty service estimates for iPhone. We transcribe them with the date we read the page. The engine then asks whether that sourced repair is larger than our repair-share gate of replacement cost.

The gate is an editorial judgement living on a published scoring weight set. It is not a measurement. If replacement cost is unknown, the gate cannot fire and the outcome says so.

iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro have those repair rows. Galaxy and Pixel do not, yet. Repair or replace iPhone 13 Pro is the landing; the questionnaire is the personal version.