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This is the single biggest factor in what your window project costs, and most companies decide it for you without saying so. Here's the plain version.
An insert puts a new window inside your existing frame. A full-frame replacement takes the whole thing out, down to the framing in the wall, and rebuilds the opening.
If your frames are solid, an insert is usually the better value. If they're not, an insert hides the problem instead of fixing it.
Old sash out, new window into the existing frame, sealed and insulated.
Everything out to the rough opening, then flashed, set, insulated, and re-trimmed.
Go outside and push a thumbnail into the wood at the bottom corners of a few window frames. If it gives, that's rot. Inside, look for dark staining on the trim or the wall under the window, and check whether the paint on the siding below the opening is peeling in a stripe.
Any of those means at least that opening is a full-frame job. It does not mean the whole house is. It's normal for a home to get inserts on most openings and full-frame on the two or three that have taken water.
What we do if we find it mid-job. Sometimes the damage is invisible until the old window is out. If we quoted an insert and find rot on install day, we stop and show you before anything else happens. We'd rather have an awkward conversation in your driveway than bury a problem behind new trim.
Our winters put water and ice against the outside of a house for months, and the freeze-thaw cycle drives it into every gap. Homes in this area routinely have decades of that hidden behind window trim. It's the reason we look closely at sills and lower corners on every estimate instead of measuring and leaving.
We don't sell one method because it's more profitable. We don't quote a full-frame job on a house that doesn't need one, and we don't quote an insert on a house that does, just to come in lower than the next estimate.
That's the normal starting point. We'll come look and tell you, at no cost.
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