HVAC pricing guide: what to charge for a service call, your labor rate and the jobs you'll do first (free rate sheet)

Published November 3, 2026 · Numbers checked November 2026

• Free. The rate sheet comes as a Google Sheets copy or an Excel file; the links come by email.
• Deepsel is our product: free estimate, invoice and scheduling software for contractors (scheduling, quotes, invoicing, card payments, a price book). One section, the one before the FAQ, says how it connects to this page.
• The measured prices are Housecall Pro's, from its own customers. The owner prices are what HVAC owners said on Reddit, counted by us. Neither is a survey, and nobody measures what HVAC companies charge by state.
• Not legal or tax advice. A few lines touch payroll tax; your accountant has the last word.

An HVAC contractor should charge enough per billable hour to cover a year of pay and business costs, plus a profit. For a one-man shop paying itself the US median HVAC wage, with the example costs on this page and about 1,000 billable hours a year, that's $135 an hour; across the 13 states we cover, $120 to $160. Customers rarely see that number. They see a diagnostic fee, about an hour of your time ($135 here; owners who post theirs mostly charge $99 to $225), and then a flat price for the repair, worked out from the same rate: a capacitor at $220, a contactor at $255, a tune-up at $205, R-410A at about $90 a pound.

The rate sheet does that arithmetic with your state and your own costs, then turns it into a diagnostic fee, a service call, job prices from your part cost plus markup, and a rate card for customers. Get it two ways: make your own copy in Google Sheets or download the Excel version (.xlsx). Pick one, enter your email and I'll send the link.

Before writing this I read what ranks for "HVAC pricing guide". It's mostly software vendors: SubcontractorHub, Jobber, BuildOps and others. Housecall Pro's guide is the useful one, because most of its prices come from its own customers' jobs: "3,648,131 reported HVAC service entries across 102 service categories from Housecall Pro customers over a 12-month period, ending September 2026."¹ Its hourly rate doesn't, and it says so. Search "HVAC hourly rate" instead and Google shows you what techs get paid, which is useful too, as a floor. This page uses both, plus what owners say they charge, and says which is which.

What HVAC companies charge: measured, then in their own words

Here are Housecall Pro's measured rows for the work a new shop does first. It describes them as "what homeowners typically pay."¹

Three cautions before you copy any of it. The shops are self-selected: they use Housecall Pro. The ranges are cleaned up ("We group similar services, filter out unusually high and low prices, and give more weight to recent data"). And the page mixes measured rows with borrowed ones: "Hourly and emergency labor rates, annual maintenance plan pricing, and the rows marked * are built from aggregated data across leading home service platforms and contractor cost studies."¹ So its "$75–$150 per hour for labor" is a consumer-guide number, and I've left it and the starred rows out. By region, the diagnostic runs from $59 to $99 in what it calls the Upper Midwest to $99 to $155 in the Northeast. It doesn't say which states fall in which region.

Then there's what owners say. We read two years of HVAC threads on Reddit for people stating their own prices.² Sixty-three owners stated a service call or diagnostic fee: mostly $99 to $225, median about $140. Forty-one gave an hourly rate: mostly $120 to $200, median $150, with some one-man shops at $80 to $100. Here are the ones who named a place or spelled out how they charge:³

Two cautions here too. People post prices when they're proud of them, and about one in five of the accounts we counted looked like employees or side work on a closer read, so treat the counts as rough tiers. And most name no place: no state among our 13 has enough owners to say what that state charges, so this page doesn't try.

Your state's wage floor

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes what employers pay HVAC mechanics and installers in every state.⁴ It's employee pay, with the van, tools, insurance and slow weeks on the employer's side. Treat it as a floor under your own pay, not a price. The last column is the number to look at: a year of that pay, spread over the 1,000 hours a one-man service shop can bill.

The tiers are the wages grouped. The five high states pay 1.22 to 1.27 times the US median, the seven middle ones 0.92 to 1.07 times, and Arkansas 0.79 times. The Denver metro area pays 1.17 times, well above Colorado as a whole, which matters if your license is a Denver one.⁴

At the US median, your pay alone costs $61.01 for every hour a customer pays for, before the van moves or the insurance bill comes. And the first year can come in under the wage. A one-truck owner, 12 years in: "Made 25k less than I did as a high value employee that first year, then matched my employee income the next year."⁵

Your HVAC labor rate, worked out from a year

The HVAC owners I found explaining their rate use the same method. One calls it "the 'break-even' method": "figure all expenses, divide by the yearly billable hours (common example: 2000ish for install/1000ish hours service) then add in the amount you wish to profit."⁶ Another, answering a one-man Texas shop that hadn't changed its prices in years: "calculate your total cost," including "truck payment/insurance/depreciation/wear and tear, office/shop rent, utilities, licensing, profit, then base that cost on 5 billable hours out of an 8 hour day, you'll have your per hour rate."⁷ The rate sheet follows that, in five steps:

1. Start with the pay you want before income tax. The template's example is your state's median wage times 2,080 hours, a full-time year: $61,006 at the US median.⁴
2. Add the payroll tax an employer would have paid on that wage. Self-employment tax is 15.3% (12.4% Social Security, 2.9% Medicare), and the IRS calls half of it the employer-equivalent portion.⁸ That half, 7.65%, is $4,667 on $61,006.
3. Add a year of business costs. The list below totals $42,100. One line comes from an HVAC owner; the rest are made up, so replace each one with a bill or a quote.
4. Divide by the hours you can bill. The example uses 1,000 (more on that below). ($61,006 + $4,667 + $42,100) ÷ 1,000 = $107.77 an hour. That's break-even.
5. Add profit, as a share of the rate. At a made-up 20%, $107.77 ÷ 0.8 = $134.71, which the template rounds up to $135.

The insurance line is one owner's: "I've got my own business with one assistant. You could probably start with about $2k in tools, and a $300/mo insurance policy plus licensing."⁹ Your state, your city or your commercial customers may set a minimum, so get a quote before you set the rate.

Billable hours, and the slow weeks

A thousand billable hours looks low against a 2,080-hour year. It isn't. The rest goes to driving, estimates, supply house runs, callbacks and paperwork. A reply to a 24-year-old about to go out on his own put it plainly: "Don't structure your hourly rate based on 8 hours a day… cut it in half and assume you will only have 4 or 5 billable hours in any given day."¹⁰

HVAC adds the seasons. The one-man Texas shop from above, a year earlier: "Every year about this time, my phone stops ringing."¹¹ That was late October. A reply in the same thread put numbers on his own year: "40-70 hrs March-Sept 10-30hrs Oct-Feb." So the rate sheet splits the year. The example has 25 busy weeks at 5 billable hours a day and 25 slow weeks at 3, five days a week: 625 plus 375 is 1,000 hours. The split is made up; your first spring and fall will tell you yours.

Here are the same costs run through each tier's wages. I kept the costs identical so only the wage moves; yours won't be identical.

• The wage moves the rate less than you'd expect. Massachusetts pays HVAC techs 61% more than Arkansas, but the rate is only 33% higher, because in this example the van and the insurance cost the same in both.
• Billable hours move it more. At 800 hours a year the $135 rate becomes $170. At 1,200 it drops to $115.
• Every rate lands at 4.3 to 5.2 times the state's median wage, because the wage has to carry the hours you can't bill as well as the costs.
• The rates sit at the low end of what owners charge (mostly $120 to $200). The Sarasota owner at $140 an hour has been at it a few years, and says: "we can't seem to get ahead enough to keep a good base of money all year."¹²

Profit is the line new owners skip, and HVAC needs it for the slow months. The Northwest Florida owner at $200 an hour: "This is a bit more than I need to charge, but it let's me ensure we have a good buffer during the slow season so I don't have to lay anyone off."¹² For a sense of the whole year: 1,000 billable hours at $135 bring in $135,000 of labor, and after $46,767 of business costs and payroll tax about $88,200 is left for you before income tax. One solo owner: "Did 150k year one solo and 200k year two."¹³ That's gross, from a shop that also sells equipment.

HVAC service call fee, diagnostic fee or first hour

Three different things get called a service call fee:

• A diagnostic fee pays for the trip and for finding the problem. The repair is priced on top, or the fee comes off it.
• A service call that includes the first hour pays for the trip and an hour of work, and time after that is billed by the hour. It suits hourly work, where the job itself is the unknown.
• A trip charge pays only for getting to the door. In this rate sheet it's for the call where you come out and don't diagnose anything.

The rate sheet works out all three from your hourly rate. Diagnostic fee = rate × (trip time + time to find the problem). With half an hour each at $135, that's $135, right on the owners' median of about $140. A service call with the first hour = rate × (1 + trip time) = $205. A trip charge = rate × trip time = $70.

The Texas reply above charges $100 for the call and $100 an hour; the one-man shop who asked said that was "pretty close" to his own prices, and that customers on the homeowner boards were posting quotes "twice what I charge and most people are calling it fair or cheap. Makes me wonder what I'm doing wrong."¹⁴ Another reply in that thread put the difference down to overhead: "A solo guy can charge parts + hourly on an install and everything is income. A business does that and bleeds money." You're a business from the first day: the van, the insurance and the slow weeks are yours now.

Housecall Pro's measured $85 to $125 sits under the $135 the arithmetic gives. My read: a shop can charge that little for the visit only when the repair price carries the rest. That's the whole question of the credit.

Should you credit the diagnostic fee toward the repair?

Some owners do, and say so up front. "Our diagnostic fee is $129 and we waive it if the customer proceeds with our recommended repairs. Gotta charge something for rolling to the door and telling you what's wrong with it…"¹⁵ Another, also at $129, prices the repair from a book: "you could expect a fixed labor fee out of our price book, no part cost and a waived diagnostic fee. The hours spent figuring the problem out do not factor in with my company, it is a flat rate fee to figure the problem out."¹⁶ Others keep the fee and add to it: "I charge $120 for diagnostic then I either mark up the part or charge for additional labor."¹⁷ Housecall Pro's advice is to "Explain what the fee includes and whether you'll credit it toward an approved repair."¹

Both ways can land on the same total. Take the capacitor in the rate sheet: half an hour of trip, half an hour to find it, a quarter hour to swap it, and a $25 part marked up to $50.

• Credit it: the repair price carries the whole visit. 1.25 hours × $135 + $50 = $218.75, rounded to $220. The $135 diagnostic comes off, and the customer pays $220.
• Don't credit it: the repair price is the repair alone. 0.25 hours × $135 + $50 = $83.75, rounded to $85. The customer pays $135 + $85 = $220.

The trap is mixing the two: crediting the $135 against a repair priced at $85. Then $50 of what you collect is the part, and you're paid $35 of labor for an hour and a quarter. So my rule is: credit the diagnostic only on a repair price that already carries it. The rate sheet has one switch for this (Yes or No), and every job price follows it.

Crediting it against a job you quote for another day, like a system replacement, is different. That job has its own trip and its own time in its price, so the credit is a discount. If you give one, put a deadline on the quote. The HVAC invoice template has a diagnostic line and a credit line for the day you do it, so the customer sees the visit had a price and that you gave it back.

Say it before you book

The fee customers fight is the one they didn't hear about. Housecall Pro's note under its diagnostic table: "Explain any separate repair, travel, or after-hours charges before work begins."¹ Say the price, what it covers and whether it comes off the repair on the phone, before you book. There's a script at the end of the rate sheet section.

HVAC flat rate pricing for the jobs you'll do first

After the diagnosis, most HVAC repairs are jobs you'll do again and again: a capacitor, a contactor, a motor, a drain line, a top-off. Those get a flat price, given before you start. Housecall Pro's line on it is a fair summary: "Flat-rate pricing works well for repairs, tune-ups, and standard replacements where you know the labor and materials up front. Hourly or time-and-materials pricing is a better fit for diagnostics and jobs where the scope isn't clear until you're on site."¹ A reply to the Sarasota owner went further: "Switch to Fixed rate, make a pricebook. Hourly is the old ways of doing things."¹²

You don't need to buy a price book to start. Build one line at a time, the way the owner above described: "figure the average time for repair per component, part markup, and set a flat rate repair. I evaluate our prices a couple times a year, usually before the seasons."⁷ In the rate sheet a job price is your time on the visit at your hourly rate, plus parts at your markup, plus refrigerant at your price per pound, rounded up to $5, and never less than the diagnostic. Here's what the example gives, next to what others charge:

The times and part costs are placeholders; put in your own from the supply house invoice and your last few of each job. The markup is a made-up sliding scale, 100% on parts under $100 and 50% above. Owners vary: one tech pricing side jobs uses "50% markup," and a reply in the Texas thread: "Whatever a capacitor is x 3 is good."^{14, 18} The contractor markup page explains markup against margin if the two get mixed up.

Look at where the example lands. The repairs sit inside Housecall Pro's measured ranges (the ECM blower motor goes over, where owners also put it), and the capacitor sits right where another reply in that Texas thread put it: "Theres a reason companies charge 220+ for a residential capacitor and 10K for an install."¹⁴ Owners who stated a condenser fan motor price run above the measured range. The tune-up is the one line well above it, and that's the subject of the next section. Leak searches, coils, compressors and system replacements are their own quotes, so they aren't on the sheet.

One capacitor call from 2024 is worth knowing before your first. A union commercial tech on a side job drove an hour to someone given his number, swapped a capacitor in under half an hour with a $75 universal part, charged $250, and the customer "was visibly not happy." The top reply, at 189 points: "Pretty fair for a 1hr drive." Another said to warn the customer about a travel rate beforehand: "Get em to agree ahead of time." A tech at a small shop gave the same call's in-town price: "Cap-'n-go for my current is usually around $225 flat for diagnostics, cap, and install with a direct fit cap. For my previous employer, it would be $485 + tax because they only offered Turbo 200's and had enormous overhead."¹⁸ That's the credit model, priced about where the rate sheet lands. Decide your travel rule before the call, not in the driveway.

Refrigerant per pound: R-410A, R-22 and R-454B

Refrigerant isn't priced like a part. Owners set a price per pound, and it runs many times their cost, because the pound carries the time on the gauges, the recovery, the leak conversation and the jug you can't send back. A thread on r/HVAC in June 2025 opened with an owner charging $33 a pound for R-410A, who had just lost a customer because "they were concerned our prices are too low."¹⁹ The replies:

• "I charge $110 first lb 410, $80/lb after that. Low to mid price range for CA"
• "$85/LB 410-A" and "$129/LB 454-B"
• "R410a $250 Minimum covers up to 2lbs. $85lb for anything over the 2lbs" and "R-22 $500 Minimum covers up to 2lbs. $220lb for anything over the 2lbs"
• "$33 is insane. That's what we get by doing home warranty work (warranty co sets the price) and I avoid that any chance I get."

Across the owners we counted, R-410A runs $40 to $150 a pound with a median of about $90, R-22 mostly $100 to $200, and R-454B $85 to $180, from only four owners.² R-22 costs more because no more is being made: the EPA's schedule ended production and import of HCFC-22 in 2020, so what's sold is what's left.²⁰ The same thread shows what owners paid. One paid $175 for a tank of R-410A. Another bought 30 lb of R-22 for $800: "It was $1600 last summer." The owner who started the thread said a 20 lb tank of R-454B cost $1,200 early that summer and "now down to about $800" by September.¹⁹

The rate sheet takes your jug price and size, shows your cost per pound, and takes your price per pound (the examples are $90, $150 and $129). Then it shows the multiple, so you can see what each pound pays above the jug. A top-off after a diagnosis is the diagnostic plus the pounds: $135 + 2 × $90 = $315 for R-410A. If the system is low, it leaks. Say so, write it on the invoice, and quote the leak search as its own job.

Tune-ups

A tune-up is a visit of its own, so there's no diagnostic in it: the trip plus your time on site, at your rate. Techs put the time at about an hour. "I can usually get it done around an hour minus paperwork," one says of a gas furnace; another, doing the furnace and the condenser together: "All in all roughly 1.5 hours."²¹ At an hour on site, the example gives $205. One shop charges $250: "it takes a good hour because we actually test and correct things like airflow, temp rise, gas pressure, safeties etc. And if a cap is reading out of range, it's included. And so is the furnace filter."²² The HVAC tune-up checklist has the steps and readings for each season, and the prices published guides and contractor pages show for the visit.

Why a $59 tune-up fails

Housecall Pro's customers charge $89 to $158 for an AC tune-up. Specials run lower, and $59 is the number that keeps coming up. One pro answered a homeowner who asked if their mom was being scammed: "People need to know that even a one man show with little overhead can not drive to your house for $59 and stay in businesses. Stay away from all these specials they are most likely scammers."²³ The $250 shop: "We aren't interested in the customers that want the $59 tune ups."²²

Here's the arithmetic. The example year costs $107,773 over 250 working days: $431 a day to break even. A $59 tune-up takes half an hour of driving and an hour on site, so it pays $39.33 an hour of your time, against a $107.77 break-even. It takes 7.3 of them to cover one day, and at an hour and a half each that's 11 hours of work, before the paperwork. At $205, 2.1 tune-ups cover the day.

The big shops that run $59 specials hope to make it back on what the tech sells while he's there. You can try that too, but then the tune-up is advertising, and you should count it that way. There are two honest versions. One owner's first move, 12 years ago, was a $12,000 mailer commitment with "a deeply discounted ($45) tune up special. It was somewhat successful and gave me the boost i needed to get a name started for myself."⁵ That's a launch budget with a number on it. The other is volume without the drive: "i only do $75 if it's a $150 2 season combo and I get 10 or more packaged together. So I'll usually knock out 6-10 in a day add some capacitors filters or whatever make it 1k in my pocket. Still i really prefer regular service."²⁴ Ten units at one rental property have one trip between them.

For the slow weeks, the replies to the one-man Texas shop are the better advice. "Run maintenance specials. It's boring and doesn't pay great but it's better than no work and can sometimes lead to more work," said one. Another: "I send out a maintenance email reminder start of October and it fills up the calendar for 3-5 weeks."¹¹ A tune-up at your real price, sent to customers you've already met, fills the same weeks without the 11-hour day.

HVAC labor rate calculator (free rate sheet)

The rate sheet has five tabs. Your rate is the internal one: pick your state (or the Denver or New York metro area), keep its median wage or type your own pay, then fill in a year of costs, your busy and slow weeks and your profit. It gives the hourly labor rate, the diagnostic fee, a service call with the first hour, a trip charge, an after-hours diagnostic, refrigerant per pound and the $59 check, and it's where you choose whether the diagnostic is credited and what a customer pays if they say no. Job prices holds the jobs above and room for nine more, with Housecall Pro's measured range and the owners' range beside each line; a grey column outside the print area shows what each job pays per hour of your time. Rate card is what the customer sees, with no wages, costs or hours. State wages holds the BLS table, and Notes explains every formula and where each example number comes from. Sourced examples are marked EXAMPLE, placeholders MADE-UP EXAMPLE.

To fill it in:

1. Copy the Google Sheet or open the .xlsx, start on Your rate and pick your state.
2. Replace every MADE-UP EXAMPLE cost with a real one, from a bill or a quote. Get an insurance quote first.
3. Be honest about billable hours, and about how slow your spring and fall are. Check it against your first month.
4. Time ten diagnostic calls and put the real trip and diagnosis times in. They set the diagnostic fee and every repair price.
5. Pick Yes or No on crediting the diagnostic, and what a customer pays if they say no.
6. Put your supply house prices into Job prices and your refrigerant jug prices into Your rate, then add the jobs you do most.
7. Fill in the Rate card header and print it, or copy the prices to your website.

Then say it on the phone, before you book: "It's $135 for the diagnostic. That covers the trip and finding the problem. If I can fix it on the same visit, the $135 comes off and you pay the repair price, which I'll give you before I start. A capacitor, for example, is $220 all in. Refrigerant is $90 a pound."

More for new HVAC contractors

• HVAC tune-up checklist: the visit in order, the target readings and what to charge, with a free report card.
• Opening a supply house account: what to bring, cash or credit, and how dealer programs work, with a free checklist.
• Quoting your first system replacement: the price, the scope and what the quote must include, with a free proposal template.
• Starting an HVAC business while still employed: side work, your boss's customers, non-competes and when to go.
• Register every install: maker deadlines, your labor warranty and what a callback costs, with a free close-out sheet.
• Your first slow season: the customer list and the one reminder that fills a calendar, with a free log.
• Your HVAC license and first 30 days, by state: Colorado and Denver, Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Virginia.

Where Deepsel fits

A spreadsheet is the right place to work your rate out. Charging it happens in a hot attic or a customer's kitchen. In Deepsel, each price book item has a name, a description that shows on the quote, a unit such as each, hour or lb, a price, and a cost that never appears on anything the customer sees; the edit screen shows the markup and gross margin those two give. Put your diagnostic fee, hourly labor, refrigerant per pound and flat-price jobs in as items. Adding one to a job copies its name and price onto the line, an hourly or per-pound line takes part quantities such as 1.5, and the job's lines carry over to the invoice. New accounts start with sample HVAC items to edit or delete, among them a diagnostic fee, a tune-up, hourly labor, a run capacitor, a contactor, R-410A by the pound and a trip charge, and Add a trade in the price book loads the full HVAC starter list of 42 items. What it won't do: work your rate out from your costs, set a price from a markup, apply a minimum by itself, or take a diagnostic off a repair automatically. The one automatic credit is a deposit taken when a customer approves a quote, which comes off the final invoice. The terms text you write once is copied onto each new quote, so that's the place for your diagnostic and credit rule. The Free plan covers 30 estimates and 30 invoices a month for your whole team; Pro is $29 a month for unlimited estimates and invoices. Details are on the pricing page.

Frequently asked questions

How much should an HVAC company charge per hour?

Enough to cover a year of pay and business costs on the hours you can actually bill, plus a profit. For a one-man shop paying itself the US median HVAC wage, with $42,100 of example costs plus payroll tax and 1,000 billable hours a year, that comes to $135 an hour. With the same costs it's $120 in Arkansas, $130 to $145 in the middle-tier states ($150 in the Denver metro area) and $155 to $160 in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey and New York. HVAC owners on Reddit who state a rate mostly charge $120 to $200, median about $150.

What is the average HVAC labor rate?

Nobody measures it. Housecall Pro's guide says $75 to $150 an hour, but says that figure comes from consumer cost guides, not its own customer data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' $29.33 an hour (May 2025 median) is what employers pay HVAC techs: a floor under your pay, not your rate. Among 41 HVAC owners on Reddit who stated an hourly rate, most charge $120 to $200, median about $150, with some one-man shops at $80 to $100.

What is a typical HVAC service call or diagnostic fee?

Housecall Pro's customers charged $85 to $125 for a residential diagnostic in the 12 months to September 2026, from $59 to $99 in its Upper Midwest region to $99 to $155 in the Northeast. Among 63 HVAC owners on Reddit who stated a service call or diagnostic fee, most charge $99 to $225 and the median is about $140. To set yours, multiply your hourly rate by your trip time plus the time it takes to find the problem: at $135 an hour, with half an hour each, $135.

Should an HVAC diagnostic fee be credited toward the repair?

Only if your repair prices already include it. Two owners on Reddit charge $129 and waive it when the customer goes ahead with the repair; another charges $120 and then adds the marked-up part or more labor. Both can come to the same total. In this page's example a capacitor is $220 with the visit built in, so crediting the $135 diagnostic costs nothing. If the capacitor were priced at $85 for the part and the repair time only, crediting the $135 would leave $35 of labor for an hour and a quarter of your time.

How do you price an HVAC job?

Work out your hourly rate from a year of pay, costs and billable hours. Then price each job you do often as a flat price: your time on the visit (trip, diagnosis and the repair) at that rate, plus parts at your markup, plus refrigerant at your price per pound, rounded up. Use the time it takes you, from your own last few, and change it if you run long three times in a row. Keep hourly (time and materials) pricing for jobs where nobody can see the end, such as leak searches and odd commercial work.

What should I charge per pound for R-410A, R-22 and R-454B?

Among HVAC owners on Reddit, R-410A runs $40 to $150 a pound with a median of about $90 (20 owners), R-22 mostly $100 to $200 (about 6), and R-454B $85 to $180 (only 4 had priced it). Owners don't price refrigerant from a markup on cost: the pound carries the time on the gauges, the recovery and the leak conversation. One owner charging $33 a pound lost a customer who thought the price was too low.

Why not run a $59 tune-up special?

Because a tune-up takes about an hour on site plus the drive, and $59 for an hour and a half is $39 an hour of your time, against a break-even of about $108 in this page's example. You'd need 7.3 of them a day, 11 hours of work, just to cover the day. Big shops run them to sell repairs and replacements. A one-man shop does better pricing the visit properly ($205 in the example) and sending a reminder to its own customers in the slow weeks.

Is there an HVAC labor rate calculator?

Yes. The free rate sheet on this page works out your hourly labor rate from your state's median HVAC wage or your own pay target, a year of business costs, billable hours in busy and slow weeks, and your profit. Then it gives your diagnostic fee, a service call, refrigerant per pound, flat prices for the jobs you'll do first from your part cost plus markup, a check on a $59 tune-up and a rate card for customers. It comes as an Excel file or a Google Sheets copy.

Sources

1. Housecall Pro, Jorge Jimenez, "HVAC pricing guide 2026: How to price HVAC jobs accurately & profitably" (posted April 22, 2026, updated October 27, 2026) - "The service call, repair, installation, ductwork, maintenance, and regional prices in this guide come from 3,648,131 reported HVAC service entries across 102 service categories from Housecall Pro customers over a 12-month period, ending September 2026. We group similar services, filter out unusually high and low prices, and give more weight to recent data to show typical pricing."; "Hourly and emergency labor rates, annual maintenance plan pricing, and the rows marked * are built from aggregated data across leading home service platforms and contractor cost studies."; "The tables below show what homeowners typically pay"; measured rows: residential diagnostic $85–$125; capacitor replacement $130–$295; contactor replacement $175–$389; blower motor replacement $341–$975; condensate drain line clearing and flushing $125–$249; refrigerant leak repair $239–$754; condenser fan motor installation $281–$789; AC tune-up $89–$158; furnace maintenance $100–$199; residential diagnostic by region, Upper Midwest $59–$99, Northeast $99–$155. Not measured, not used as data: "HVAC contractors typically charge $75–$150 per hour for labor." Advice quoted: "Explain what the fee includes and whether you'll credit it toward an approved repair."; "Explain any separate repair, travel, or after-hours charges before work begins."; "Flat-rate pricing works well for repairs, tune-ups, and standard replacements where you know the labor and materials up front. Hourly or time-and-materials pricing is a better fit for diagnostics and jobs where the scope isn't clear until you're on site." housecallpro.com, read November 3, 2026.
2. Deepsel research, prices stated by US HVAC owners on Reddit (r/HVAC, r/hvacadvice, r/ProHVACR and other trade and small-business subs), August 2024 to November 2, 2026, one figure per person, known promotional accounts removed, owner status from each person's own wording; about one in five turned out to be employees or side work on a closer read. Service call or diagnostic: 63 owners, mostly $99 to $225, median about $140. Hourly rate: 41 owners, mostly $120 to $200, median $150, one-man shops from $80 to $100. Capacitor: 52, mostly $130 to $300, one-man shops $70 to $130, big shops $400 and up. Contactor: 3, $130 to $322. Blower motor: 6, PSC $275 to $350, ECM from about $1,000. Condenser fan motor: 4, $600 to $1,500. R-410A: 20, $40 to $150 a pound, median about $90. R-22: about 6, mostly $100 to $200. R-454B: 4, $85 to $180. AC tune-up: about 10, $130 to $275 as a priced visit, $70 to $90 in bulk or to get in the door. r/ProHVACR bans price posts, so most come from pros replying on r/hvacadvice. Counted November 2, 2026.
3. The table's rows, each a Reddit comment or post, quotes checked November 3, 2026: Texas, September 26, 2025, "I do 100$ service call fee 100/hr in texas lmk ur thoughts caps 100 contactors 150 410a 100" (source 14); Sarasota and Northwest Florida, September 16, 2025, and Polk County, September 17, 2025 (source 12); California, June 10, 2025 (source 19); $129, September 14, 2024 and May 19, 2026 (sources 16 and 15); $120, January 29, 2026 (source 17); $150 service call, August 7, 2024 (source 18); $250 tune-up, July 15, 2025 (source 22); $75 tune-ups, November 26, 2025 (source 24); R-410A $85 and R-454B $129, June 13, 2025 (source 19).
4. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, median hourly wage, Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Mechanics and Installers (49-9021): national $29.33 ($61,010 a year, 409,670 employed); MA $37.16, CT $36.83, MN $36.71, NJ $35.79, NY $35.78, CO $31.35, IA $29.17, NE $28.77, VA $28.72, UT $28.24, LA $28.20, ID $27.04, AR $23.13; Denver-Aurora-Centennial metro area $34.41; New York-Newark-Jersey City metro area $37.50. Read from the BLS public data API (series OEUN000000000000049902108 and the matching state and metro series); May 2025 tables at bls.gov, read November 3, 2026.
5. r/HVAC, "1 truck company owners, what is considered a good month for you guys, 30k, 70k, 100k?" (comment by the thread's author, a one-truck owner 12 years in, October 12, 2026) - "We had $15k saved up when I started the business. First thing i did was sign a mailer ad campaign to the tune of a $12k commitment over 9 months"; "I offered a deeply discounted ($45) tune up special. It was somewhat successful and gave me the boost i needed to get a name started for myself."; "Made 25k less than I did as a high value employee that first year, then matched my employee income the next year." reddit.com, quote checked November 3, 2026.
6. r/ProHVACR, "What is a typical ratio of hourly pay to billed rate for commercial jobs in HVAC" (comment, October 14, 2025) - "We use the "break-even" method. Look it up, but the upshot is, figure all expenses, divide by the yearly billable hours (common example: 2000ish for install/1000ish hours service) then add in the amount you wish to profit." reddit.com, quote checked November 3, 2026.
7. r/HVAC, "My pricing is a bit behind the times" (comment, September 28, 2025) - "Need to calculate your total cost, and when I say that how much everything costs, truck payment/insurance/depreciation/wear and tear, office/shop rent, utilities, licensing, profit, then base that cost on 5 billable hours out of an 8 hour day, you'll have your per hour rate, then you can figure the average time for repair per component, part markup, and set a flat rate repair. I evaluate our prices a couple times a year, usually before the seasons." reddit.com, quote checked November 3, 2026.
8. IRS, "Self-employment tax (Social Security and Medicare taxes)" (last reviewed or updated October 30, 2026) - "The self-employment tax rate is 15.3%. The rate consists of two parts: 12.4% for social security (old-age, survivors, and disability insurance) and 2.9% for Medicare (hospital insurance)"; "you can deduct the employer-equivalent portion of your SE tax". irs.gov, read November 3, 2026.
9. r/HVAC, "Thinking of starting my own thing." (comment, April 20, 2025) - "I've got my own business with one assistant. You could probably start with about $2k in tools, and a $300/mo insurance policy plus licensing." reddit.com, quote checked November 3, 2026.
10. r/hvacadvice, "Quitting my job to go out on my own!" (a 24-year-old about to go out on his own; reply, April 25, 2025) - "Don't structure your hourly rate based on 8 hours a day… cut it in half and assume you will only have 4 or 5 billable hours in any given day. You will spend more time than you think running around doing stuff you can't specifically bill for. If you are tempted to be anything less than $100 - $120 an hour… re-assess your actual expenses." reddit.com, quote checked November 3, 2026.
11. r/HVAC, "The Fall rut" (October 22, 2024), posted by a one-man shop in Texas - "Any other small hvac business owners experience this slow down, in the Fall? I'm a one man and a van business."; "Every year about this time, my phone stops ringing." Replies: "40-70 hrs March-Sept 10-30hrs Oct-Feb" (reddit.com); "Run maintenance specials. It's boring and doesn't pay great but it's better than no work and can sometimes lead to more work." (reddit.com); "I send out a maintenance email reminder start of October and it fills up the calendar for 3-5 weeks." (reddit.com). Post: reddit.com. Quotes checked November 3, 2026.
12. r/ProHVACR, "Hourly Labor Charge for FL" (September 16, 2025) - the post: "I run a little 2 guy AC company that I opened with my wife a few years ago in Sarasota, FL."; "We have been charging $140 for one guy hourly". The same owner: "we can't seem to get ahead enough to keep a good base of money all year." (reddit.com). Replies: "NW FL. I charge $200 per hour for labor. Some of the big guys charge $400+ per hour near me. This is a bit more than I need to charge, but it let's me ensure we have a good buffer during the slow season so I don't have to lay anyone off." (reddit.com); "Small company in Polk county we charge $120/hr we stay busy year round with property management companies" (reddit.com); "Switch to Fixed rate, make a pricebook. Hourly is the old ways of doing things." (reddit.com). Post: reddit.com. Quotes checked November 3, 2026.
13. r/HVAC comment, July 24, 2025 - "Did 150k year one solo and 200k year two." reddit.com, quote checked November 3, 2026.
14. r/HVAC, "My pricing is a bit behind the times" (September 26, 2025, 32 comments) - the post: "I'm an independent HVAC contractor in Texas. I haven't changed my pricing in years."; the same owner: "I'm a small fish, one man one truck."; "I work out of my garage, but I am licensed, and insured."; "That's pretty close to what I charge. I keep seeing people on the advice subs posting quotes that they get which are twice what I charge and most people are calling it fair or cheap. Makes me wonder what I'm doing wrong." (reddit.com). Replies: "I do 100$ service call fee 100/hr in texas lmk ur thoughts caps 100 contactors 150 410a 100" (reddit.com); "A solo guy can charge parts + hourly on an install and everything is income. A business does that and bleeds money." (reddit.com); "Whatever a capacitor is x 3 is good" (reddit.com); "Theres a reason companies charge 220+ for a residential capacitor and 10K for an install." (reddit.com). Post: reddit.com. Quotes checked November 3, 2026.
15. r/hvacadvice comment, May 19, 2026 - "Our diagnostic fee is $129 and we waive it if the customer proceeds with our recommended repairs. Gotta charge something for rolling to the door and telling you what's wrong with it…" reddit.com, quote checked November 3, 2026.
16. r/hvacadvice comment, September 14, 2024 - "Our Trip Fee/Diagnostic Fee is $129, and is waived with the cost of any repair we do. Our part/labor warranty is standard 10/2, so if it was us you were using you could expect a fixed labor fee out of our price book, no part cost and a waived diagnostic fee. The hours spent figuring the problem out do not factor in with my company, it is a flat rate fee to figure the problem out." reddit.com, quote checked November 3, 2026.
17. r/HVAC comment, January 29, 2026 - "$120 is a good middle ground. I charge $120 for diagnostic then I either mark up the part or charge for additional labor." reddit.com, quote checked November 3, 2026.
18. r/HVAC, "How much would you charge?" (August 7, 2024) - the post, by a union commercial tech on a side job: "1 Hour drive to the customer's house. Long story short, capacitor was bad"; "Less than half an hour total time for this call. Capacitor was $75 our cost from the supply house."; "I charged the customer $250, and the customer was visibly not happy." Replies: "Pretty fair for a 1hr drive" (189 points, reddit.com); "Of course knowing the distance I'd warn them of some kind of travel rate beforehand. Get em to agree ahead of time." (reddit.com); a tech at a small shop: "Cap-'n-go for my current is usually around $225 flat for diagnostics, cap, and install with a direct fit cap. For my previous employer, it would be $485 + tax because they only offered Turbo 200's and had enormous overhead." (reddit.com); "Side jobs are for making money not helping people out. I charge $150 service call, $100/hr drive time and 50% markup so a normal capacitor in town is $200 with service call included. If I'm driving an hour there and back add $200 to that." (reddit.com). Post: reddit.com. Quotes checked November 3, 2026.
19. r/HVAC, "What are y'all charging customers for refrigerant?" (June 9, 2025, 210 comments) - the post: "I'm currently charging $33/lb for r32 or r410. Recently had a customer decide not to go with us because they were concerned our prices are too low". Replies: "I charge $110 first lb 410, $80/lb after that. Low to mid price range for CA" (reddit.com); "$85/LB 410-A $129/LB 454-B" (reddit.com); "R410a $250 Minimum covers up to 2lbs. $85lb for anything over the 2lbs R-22 $500 Minimum covers up to 2lbs. $220lb for anything over the 2lbs" (reddit.com); "$33 is insane. That's what we get by doing home warranty work (warranty co sets the price) and I avoid that any chance I get." (reddit.com); "Im paying $175 for a tank of 410 and Ive bought 1 tank of 454 for $951" (reddit.com); "I bought 30lb of R22 for $800. It was $1600 last summer." (reddit.com); the thread's author, September 29, 2025: "454B is actually super expensive, although a little cheaper now than it was at the beginning of summer ($1200 for a 20lb tank, now down to about $800)." (reddit.com). Post: reddit.com. Quotes checked November 3, 2026.
20. U.S. EPA, "Phaseout of Class II Ozone-Depleting Substances" (last updated April 1, 2026) - phaseout schedule, 2020: "No production or import of HCFC-142b and HCFC-22"; "While most HCFCs have been phased out, there are some uses that continue, such as for servicing refrigeration and air-conditioning equipment". epa.gov, read November 3, 2026.
21. r/HVAC, "Checklist for PMs?" (comment, September 26, 2026) - "my usual gas furnace tuneup looks like this, and I can usually get it done around an hour minus paperwork" (reddit.com); r/HVAC, "What do you all do on your maintenance calls?" (comment, June 10, 2025) - "Inside: Check electrical at the furnace, blow out drain lines, throw in some pan tabs and change filter. Outside: check electrical for loose/burnt/chewed wires, hook up gauges then wash the coil. All in all roughly 1.5 hours." (reddit.com). Quotes checked November 3, 2026.
22. r/HVAC, "People using 2 HVAC companies." (comment, July 15, 2025) - "We charge $250 for a tune up and it takes a good hour because we actually test and correct things like airflow, temp rise, gas pressure, safeties etc. And if a cap is reading out of range, it's included. And so is the furnace filter. We aren't interested in the customers that want the $59 tune ups." reddit.com, quote checked November 3, 2026.
23. r/hvacadvice, "Help, is my mom getting scammed?" (comment, October 3, 2025, 44 points) - "$59 get their stinky ass foot in the door. People need to know that even a one man show with little overhead can not drive to your house for $59 and stay in businesses. Stay away from all these specials they are most likely scammers." reddit.com, quote checked November 3, 2026.
24. r/HVAC, "What do you charge for maintenance?" (comment, November 26, 2025) - "Yeah i only do $75 if it's a $150 2 season combo and I get 10 or more packaged together. So I'll usually knock out 6-10 in a day add some capacitors filters or whatever make it 1k in my pocket. Still i really prefer regular service" reddit.com, quote checked November 3, 2026.