Pricing guide for electricians
How much should an electrician charge?
The published answer to this is somewhere between $40 and $150 an hour, which is another way of saying nobody can answer it for you. Here is what the numbers actually say, why they are so far apart, and how to work out the rate that covers your licence, your insurance and your van.
What the published numbers say
Here is what the widely-cited sources put on it. Read the spread, not the midpoint.
| Job | Published range | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Electrician, per hour | $50 - $130 | HomeGuide |
| Licensed electrician, per hour (residential) | $75 - $150 | Housecall Pro |
| Panel replacement / service upgrade | $850 - $2,500 | HomeGuide |
| Service panel upgrade (national average start) | $1,325 - $1,606 | Homewyse |
Now notice that those numbers do not agree with each other.
One source starts electricians at $50 an hour, another starts them at $75 and runs to $150. On panel upgrades the published bottom end is $850 and the published top end is $4,500 - a five-fold spread on a job with a fairly standard scope. Apprentice, journeyman and master rates are all being averaged together, along with a 100A swap and a full service upgrade with a mast and a meter.
That is not sloppy reporting. It is what happens when you average a rural county with a coastal metro, a one-truck operator with a fleet, and a straightforward job with a difficult one. Quoting against a national average is how busy contractors end up broke — it is an average of other people’s costs, and none of them pay your insurance.
The number that actually matters is yours
This is arithmetic, not opinion. Put your own costs in and it tells you what an hour has to bill.
Work out your own hourly rate
Change the numbers to yours. Nothing is sent anywhere — this runs in your browser.
What you want to actually earn, before tax.
Payroll taxes, liability insurance, workers' comp, benefits. Commonly 20-35% on top of your pay.
Van, fuel, tools, license, phone, software, accountant, advertising, rent. Everything you pay whether or not you work today.
Be honest. A 40-hour week is rarely more than 25 billable once you take out quoting, driving, parts runs and invoicing. 25 x 48 weeks = 1,200.
What the business keeps after everything, so it can survive a slow month or replace a van.
- Labor burden on your pay
- $18,750
- Total cost to operate for the year
- $117,750
- Break-even hourly rate
- $98
Your shop rate
$123 / hour
This is what an hour has to bill for you to hit 20% margin after paying yourself $75,000 and covering $24,000 of overhead across 1200 billable hours. Charge less than $98 and you are losing money on every hour you work.
Turning an hourly rate into a price
Price per device once you know your hour
Most residential electrical work prices cleanly per device - per outlet, per switch, per can, per circuit run. That is far faster to quote and far easier for a customer to understand than an hourly estimate. But a per-device price is only sound if it came from your hourly cost multiplied by how long that device genuinely takes you, including the fishing, the patching and the cleanup.
Permits are two costs, not one
The permit fee is a pass-through. Your time to pull it, wait for it and meet the inspector is labour, and it is often the larger of the two. Quoting the fee alone and absorbing the half-day is one of the quietest ways to lose money on otherwise well-priced work.
Breakers are not all the same line
AFCI and GFCI breakers cost multiples of a standard breaker and the code keeps requiring more of them. If your quote has one line that says 'breakers' at a single rate, a panel full of arc-fault devices will eat the job. Price them as separate line items so the customer sees why the number moved.
Old houses need a stated allowance
You cannot see behind the plaster when you quote. Say what the price assumes, give a per-hour or per-run rate for what you find, and get that agreed in writing before you start. A change order agreed at the kitchen table beats an awkward conversation once the walls are open.
The lines that quietly come out of your margin
Not charging for these is the most common reason a job that looked profitable was not:
- ▸The permit AND the inspection visit - two separate costs of your time
- ▸The load calculation, if you did one
- ▸Temporary power or a generator while the panel is out
- ▸Patching where you fished the wall, or the drywaller you subbed it to
- ▸Trip charge on the return visit for a part or a failed inspection
- ▸Warranty callbacks - price the risk in, or you are giving away future hours
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The Electrical Rate Book Starter (2026)
The full checklist with a blank column for your own rates, plus this worksheet in a form you can keep in the van.
Download the PDFStraight answers
What is a good hourly rate for an electrician in 2026?
Published 2026 figures run from about $40 an hour for apprentice work to $150 for a licensed electrician in a metro, which tells you the question cannot be answered nationally. Your number comes from your break-even: your target pay, plus labour burden of roughly 20-35% on top of it, plus annual overhead, divided by your genuinely billable hours - then adjusted up for the margin the business needs to keep. Use the calculator above.
How do I price a panel upgrade?
Build it from parts rather than copying a number off the internet: the panel and breakers at your markup, the labour hours at your rate, the permit fee passed through, your time to pull the permit and meet the inspector, any temporary power, the disconnect and reconnect, and the patching. Published totals for this job run from $850 to $4,500, which is exactly why a quote built from your own lines beats a quote built from an average.
Should I charge a diagnostic fee?
Yes. Finding a fault is skilled work and it is often the hardest part of the job. Charge it as its own line and decide in advance whether you credit it against the repair if the customer proceeds - both are defensible, but giving away the diagnosis and then losing the job means you funded someone else's quote.
How many billable hours should I assume?
Fewer than you work. Quoting, driving, parts runs, permit offices, invoicing and chasing payment are all real hours that no customer pays for directly. A realistic figure for a one-van operation is 20-25 billable hours a week, so 1,000-1,200 a year. Dividing your costs by 2,000 will set your rate roughly 40% too low.
Should the customer see my hourly rate?
Usually not. Show line items with prices - what the job includes and what it costs. An hourly rate on the page turns the conversation into a negotiation about what your time is worth, which is not the conversation you want to be having on a ladder.
Once you know your rates, stop retyping them
That is what QuoteFlow does. Enter your rate book once, then stand at the job and say what you are doing — it comes back as priced line items from those rates. Nothing is generated or guessed, and anything it does not recognise arrives flagged with no price, so a made-up number never reaches a customer. The customer signs on their phone before you leave.
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