I started out with ColdFusion soon after I started web development about 9 years ago. I got to be good at estimating my time for CF projects. When demand for PHP increased I started off bidding the same hours that I would with CF but due to learning curve and CF's "make easy things easy" philosophy, I found myself spending about 20% more time to do the same with PHP but didn't mind the time invested. On PHP's side, there are a lot of free applications out there so that can factor in very well in projects. I now work in an environment where CF and Java are used. I heard a developer estimating a project yesterday and then his boss asked how long it would take in Java. He didn't give an exact number but basically said a lot more time. I have heard that it takes 4 to 5 times as long doing J2EE work and from what I observe in the group next to me, it's not far off. So my experience for coding web projects from scratch would have me estimate PHP at 120% of CF and Java at 200-400% of CF. This is for web projects built from scratch not downloading and tweaking an open source project. What's your ratios for estimating?