Handyman price list: what to charge per job, your minimum and your day rate (free template)

Published November 3, 2026 · Numbers checked November 2026

• Free. The files 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 list.
• The rates below are what owners say they charge on Reddit, counted by us. They aren't a survey and can't be cut by state.
• Not legal advice. One paragraph mentions state license rules; your state has the last word.

A handyman price list is a price for each job you do often, worked out from a private hourly number, plus a minimum charge for any visit and a day rate for long jobs. Owners on Reddit put their hourly number at a median of $75 to $80, about $85 to $90 since spring 2026, and their minimum charge at $150, with the middle half between $125 and $250. The customer sees the job price. The hourly number stays with you.

The template does the arithmetic. Put in your hourly number, your minimum and your markup, then your time for each job, and it works out rounded prices, quotes a honey-do list and fills in a price sheet for customers. Get it two ways: make your own copy in Google Sheets or download the Excel version (.xlsx). To fill it in by pen, the printable version comes as a PDF, a Word file (.docx) or a Google Docs copy. Pick a format, enter your email and I'll send the links.

Before writing this I read the guides that rank for "handyman price list". The software-company ones take their numbers from homeowner cost sites: Cloud Job Manager's 40-job table comes from HomeGuide, and Koira quotes Fixr's hourly range and minimum.^{1, 2} Those are what customers report paying. This page starts from what owners say they charge, says how many owners that is, and gives you a sheet that starts from your own number.

Handyman rates: what owners say they charge

We counted owners on r/handyman and r/HandymanBusiness who stated their own figure between January 2025 and October 2026, one figure per owner. Two separate counts of the hourly number agreed.³

The spread is wide. In one count, about one in six owners said under $50 an hour, half said $50 to $99, and a third said $100 or more.³ Two cautions. People post their rate when they're proud of it, so these lean toward owners doing well. And Reddit can't be cut by state, so none of these is a local rate.

The BLS wage is the floor under your pay, not your price.⁴ It's what an employer pays someone to do similar work, with the truck, tools, insurance and slow weeks on the employer's side. $85 is about 3.6 times $23.84. That gap is your overhead and your unpaid hours.

Keep your hourly number internal

"Do not tell any client a hourly rate," an r/handyman owner wrote in January 2025.⁵ It's the line veterans repeat. Another put the reason simply, in the top reply to a thread on time and materials: "Because people won't tolerate being told a $100+/hr rate. But they will pay $75 to change a light switch all day long (which takes 20 min)."⁶ That's $225 an hour for 20 minutes, and customers pay it, because they're buying a working switch.

The job price also pays you for getting good. In the same thread: "If I charge for time and materials on a small project, I end up losing money because I've gotten better at my skill."⁶ On hourly, every shortcut you learn is a discount for the customer.

Customers will still ask. One r/HandymanBusiness owner posted that they'd told a caller "$200/hr" for work in her house.⁷ The top reply: "your hourly rate should be back office information only," with the line that owner uses instead: "We charge line item fees, not an hourly rate. This way there are no surprises for you when it comes time for payment." When a client asked another owner to break a quote into hours, the thread ran to 767 comments, and the top reply was "Here's the price. Take it or leave it. But in a nice customer friendly way."⁸

Hourly still has a place: troubleshooting, rot behind a wall, anything you can't see the end of. Bill those by the day or half day, or as time and materials with a written guess at the hours, and put it in writing before you start.

Work out your hourly number first

Your hourly number is what you have to average on the hours someone pays for. Those aren't all your hours. One owner: "I charge/make about $80/hr, which sounds great. But I'm only paid when I work, I don't get paid for my admin time, supply runs, etc."⁹

So start from a year:

1. Pay you want for yourself, before income tax. The template's example is $49,590, the national median wage for an employed maintenance and repair worker.⁴
2. Business costs for the year: insurance, truck, fuel, tools, phone, software, license or registration, accountant, ads. The template's example of $15,000 is made up; add up yours.
3. Hours you can bill in a week, and weeks you work. The example (25 hours, 48 weeks) is made up too. Driving, estimates and supply runs don't count.
4. Break-even = (pay + costs) ÷ (hours × weeks). With the examples: $64,590 ÷ 1,200 = $53.83 an hour.

Your hourly number goes above break-even, enough to cover slow months and leave a profit. The template puts $85 in as the example, near the 2026 self-reported median, and flags it if your number falls below your break-even. Pick your state and it also shows that state's BLS wage floor and price tier (more on tiers below).

Turn the hourly number into job prices

Each line on the list is one sum:

Job price = your time × your hourly number + materials cost × (1 + markup), rounded up.

Time means on-site time, setup and cleanup included. The drive is covered by the minimum or the trip fee. A kitchen faucet, customer's faucet, at 1.5 hours and $15 of supply lines: 1.5 × $85 = $127.50, plus $15 × 1.20 = $18, is $145.50, rounded up to $150.

Here are six jobs owners quote flat prices for, priced that way at $85 an hour with a 20% markup, next to what owners said they charge and what Angi tells homeowners.^{3, 10, 11} The example times are back-solved: I set each one so the price lands near the middle of what owners reported. They're placeholders for your own stopwatch.

Owners differ by about two times on the same job, and one post with more than 1,200 upvotes shows how far it can go. A Virginia handyman quoted $160 to fix a handrail and some drywall. The homeowner had two other quotes, $1,800 and $800. The work took about 15 minutes, and the customer paid $260.¹² Nobody publishes a fair price for your town. Your own time and your own number are the only defensible start.

The template lists 20 common jobs grouped by kind of work (mounting, fixtures, drywall and paint, doors and trim, assembly), with room for your own. Fill in the ones you do most first. Two of those groups carry a warning: plumbing and electrical work needs a license in many states, and where a handyman repair ends and licensed work begins differs from state to state. Many states also set a dollar limit above which a handyman needs a license or registration. Check yours before those jobs go on the customer sheet.

Handyman minimum charge

The minimum is the price of showing up. Among owners who stated one, the median was $150, the middle half $125 to $250.³ Many tie it to time: "I have a $200 minimum. That covers the first hour."¹² Another: "I aim for an hourly rate of $100, but my minimum is $250. That covers up to 2 hours."¹³

Why it exists, from an owner asking what the smallest job is that's still worth taking: "The job itself might take 10–20 minutes, but by the time you drive there, unload tools, talk to the client, and pack up, it easily turns into an hour."¹⁴ Or more bluntly, from another: "I'm not getting in work truck for $50."¹⁵

Three rules make it work:

• It applies to every visit, said before you book. "My minimum is $150 for any visit. If you've got a few other small things, I can do them on the same trip."
• Small jobs on one visit add up toward it. The template's Visit quote tab adds the jobs and charges the minimum only if the total comes in under it.
• Each job on the price list shows what it costs alone: the job price or the minimum, whichever is higher. A $40 job is $150 if it's the only thing on the visit.

When it's time to bill, the handyman invoice template puts the minimum on the invoice either way, as its own line or as a top-up to a short visit, with three worked samples at these same prices.

Trip fee: when to charge one

Many owners fold travel into the minimum. A separate trip fee is for the visits the minimum doesn't cover: estimates, jobs outside your area, the customer who cancels at the door. A new owner doing property management work at $45 an hour asked in September how to charge for a job 17 miles out: "Had to stop at Home Depot to buy the materials spent an hour there." Then two hours on site.¹⁶ The answers ranged from a flat fee ("$150. It separates the real calls from the fakes") to mileage: one owner raised theirs from nothing to $1 and then $3 a mile as local work filled the calendar.¹⁶

The template has a trip fee cell that starts at $0. Put in a number if you charge one, and flip it on per visit in the Visit quote tab. Either way, say it before you drive.

Handyman day rate and half day

A day rate prices multi-day work and long honey-do lists without adding up 30 small prices. Work it out the same way: your hourly number × the hours you can bill in a full day. At $85 and 7 billable hours that's $595, which the template rounds to $600; the half day is $300. Four owners in our count stated one: $400, $500 and $600 for one person, and $750 for two.³

Not everyone shows it. "I charge a daily rate of $500. I don't tell the client my daily rate," one owner wrote.¹⁷ Another prices a list in chunks: "If I get into a honey do list situation, I price out the job in groups and have a flat fee for each group of things."¹⁸ The template's Visit quote does the comparison for you. It adds up the job prices, and when your hours on the list pass one billable day it shows what the same visit costs at your day rate, so you can quote whichever is fairer.

Materials markup

Owners who stated a markup mostly said 15% to 25% on what they buy.³ One owner: "materials are marked up 20% from list price," and "Either way, clients don't get the receipts."¹⁹ Another: "I charge 15-25% on top of the material cost."²⁰ Angi tells homeowners to expect 10% to 30% above retail when the handyman buys the materials, so a customer who has read it won't be surprised.¹¹

Owners still argue about it: one September post was titled "Materials markup: 3x cost or 30%? Getting two very different answers."²¹ Pick one percentage, put it in the sheet, and use it every time. Two things to know:

• Markup is on your cost, margin is on the sell price. A 20% markup keeps 16.7% of what the customer pays for the part. The template shows both.
• The markup pays for the supply run. If a job needs an hour at the store, either the markup covers it or the hour goes into the job's time.

Price tiers by state

No source publishes handyman job prices by state, and our Reddit counts can't be split by state either, so I won't print a state price table that pretends otherwise. What does vary by state is labor cost. Our research groups the 13 states we cover into three tiers, using wages, price levels and construction cost data together. Here are the tiers with the one measure I re-read for this page, the BLS wage for an employed maintenance and repair worker.⁴

The wage alone doesn't match the tiers exactly: it puts Minnesota at the top and Nebraska in the middle. Use your own state's figure as the floor and the tier as a rough guide. These are statewide numbers, so New York City and Denver run differently from the rest of their states.

The handyman price sheet your customer sees

The template's Customer sheet tab is the printable price sheet. It shows the jobs you mark Y on the Price list, with the price and what's included, plus your minimum. It never shows hours, your hourly number or your markup. The day and half-day rates start hidden; mark them Y if you want them on it.

Write the included line carefully. "Customer's faucet, new supply lines included, a seized shutoff valve is extra" heads off the argument before it starts. The sheet ends with two lines worth keeping: bigger or multi-day jobs and anything hidden get a written quote first, and materials you buy are added at your price. The handyman estimate template is that written quote, for a list of small jobs or a project with allowances and a deposit.

How to fill in the template

1. Copy the Google Sheet or open the .xlsx. Start on Your numbers: pay, costs, billable hours and weeks give your break-even.
2. Type your hourly number, minimum, trip fee (or 0), billable hours in a day, and your markup. Pick your state.
3. On the Price list, time the jobs you do most and type your time and your materials cost. Replace the six example times as soon as you've done each job once with a watch running.
4. Type over any price you want to set by hand in the Your price column; the formula price stays beside it for comparison.
5. Mark Y on the jobs that go on the customer sheet, and write the included line for each.
6. On the next honey-do call, pick the jobs in Visit quote. The total respects your minimum, and the grey columns tell you what that visit pays per hour.
7. Print the Customer sheet, or the printable version's page 2, and keep page 1 in the truck.

When the list moves off the spreadsheet

A spreadsheet is fine while you're the only one quoting. It gets awkward when you're quoting from a phone in someone's kitchen, or a second person starts quoting with an older copy of the list.

That's when the list can move into the price book in Deepsel. Each item carries a name, a description that shows on the quote, a unit and a price, plus a cost that never appears on anything the customer sees; the edit screen shows the markup and margin between the two. Adding an item to a quote or a job copies its name and price onto the line, and only the owner can change the book. What it won't do: work prices out from your hourly number, apply your minimum by itself (add the minimum and trip fee as items), or import this spreadsheet, so you type the list in once or start from the 21-item handyman starter list that Add a trade loads in the price book. 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.

Still choosing an app to quote from? Eleven free handyman apps are compared on their free-plan limits, card fees and which popular ones are only trials.

Frequently asked questions

How much should I charge as a handyman?

Work out a private hourly number first: the pay you want plus your business costs, divided by the hours you can actually bill in a year. Then price each common job as your time times that number, plus materials with a markup. For a sense check, owners on Reddit put their own hourly number at a median of $75 to $80, about $85 to $90 since spring 2026, and their minimum charge at a median of $150. Those figures are self-reported, so they're a check on your arithmetic, not a rate to copy.

What is a typical handyman minimum charge?

Among owners on r/handyman and r/HandymanBusiness who stated one in 2025 and 2026, the median minimum was $150 and the middle half sat between $125 and $250. Most say it covers the trip and the first hour or two of work. It applies to any visit, so a ten-minute job costs the minimum, and several small jobs on one visit count toward it.

Is $50 an hour good for a handyman?

As a private hourly number it's at the low end. In one count of 255 owners' stated rates, $50 was the lower quartile: about one in six said less, and a third said $100 or more. Whether $50 works for you depends on your break-even: pay plus costs divided by billable hours. At 25 billable hours a week for 48 weeks, $50 an hour grosses $60,000 before the truck, insurance, tools and taxes.

How much does a handyman charge per day?

Four owners in our research stated a day rate: $400 to $600 for one person and $750 for a crew of two. That's too few to call a market rate, so work yours out instead: your hourly number times the hours you can bill in a full day. At $85 an hour and 7 billable hours, that's $595, rounded to $600. Many owners use a day or half-day rate for multi-day work and long honey-do lists, and some don't show the number to the customer.

How much should a handyman mark up materials?

Owners who stated their markup mostly said 15% to 25% on materials they buy, with a few at 10% and a few far higher. Angi tells homeowners to expect 10% to 30% above retail. Remember markup is on your cost and margin is on the price: a 20% markup keeps 16.7% of what the customer pays for the part.

Should a handyman charge by the hour or by the job?

By the job for anything you've done before, with the hourly number kept internal. Owners who've been at it a while say customers balk at a $100-plus hourly rate but happily pay a flat price, and a job price pays you more as you get faster. Hourly or a day rate still fits work you can't see the end of, such as troubleshooting or rot behind a wall: say so in writing before you start.

Is there a handyman price list template in Excel or Google Sheets?

Yes. This one has a Your numbers tab (break-even, hourly number, minimum, trip fee, day rate, markup), a Price list tab that turns your time and materials cost into rounded job prices, a Visit quote tab for honey-do lists that never drops below your minimum, and a Customer sheet that shows prices only. It opens in Excel as an .xlsx file or copies into Google Drive as a Sheet. A printable version to fill in by pen comes as a PDF, a Word file and a Google Doc.

Sources

1. Cloud Job Manager, "Handyman Price List: Template and How to Price Your Jobs" - "Handyman Price List Template: 40 Common Jobs With Rate Ranges", from "HomeGuide's handyman price guide by Tom Grupa. They are national customer-facing benchmarks, not your costs." cloudjobmanager.com, read November 3, 2026.
2. Koira, "How to Price Handyman Jobs: Hourly, Flat Rate and Minimums" (updated October 11, 2026) - "Fixr lists a handyman hourly rate of $50 to $100, with most charging around $65, and gives a $130 minimum as an example." koira.ai, read November 3, 2026.
3. Deepsel research, owner-stated figures on r/handyman and r/HandymanBusiness, January 2025 to October 2026, one figure per owner, US posts only, known promotional accounts removed. Hourly: median $75 in a count of 255 owners (quartiles $50 and $100; under $50 16%, $50 to $99 50%, $100 to $149 22%, $150 and up 12%), $75 to $80 across two independent counts of 176 to 255 owners, and $85 in the 91 owners posting from April to October 2026. Minimum or service call: median $150, quartiles $125 and $250, 149 owners. Day rate: $400, $500 and $600 for one person, $750 for two, 4 owners. Materials markup: 15% to 25% from six owners, plus 10% and 30% to 100%. Flat job prices, one per owner, 2025 to 2026: TV mount 7 owners, toilet 6, ceiling fan 5, faucet 4, door 4, drywall patch 3. Counted November 2, 2026. Examples: "I charge $175 to hang a large TV on a standard sheetrock wall" (reddit.com, August 23, 2025); "I charge $350 flat for a toilet reset or replacement" (reddit.com, January 2025); "I charge $325 to install a ceiling fan" (reddit.com, February 20, 2026), each read November 3, 2026.
4. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, Maintenance and Repair Workers, General (49-9071), median hourly wage: national $23.84 ($49,590 a year); MA $28.04, NJ $26.35, NY $27.79, CT $27.70, CO $24.65, MN $28.46, VA $23.79, IA $25.08, UT $24.26, LA $21.13, AR $20.87, ID $23.17, NE $24.38. Read from the BLS public data API (series OEUN000000000000049907108 and the matching state series); tables at bls.gov, read November 3, 2026.
5. r/handyman comment, January 4, 2025 (the post was later deleted by its author; the comment remains): "Do not tell any client a hourly rate." reddit.com, read November 3, 2026.
6. r/handyman, "Time and Materials" (June 1, 2026) - top reply (57 points): "Because people won't tolerate being told a $100+/hr rate. But they will pay $75 to change a light switch all day long (which takes 20 min)."; another owner: "If I charge for time and materials on a small project, I end up losing money because I've gotten better at my skill." reddit.com, read November 3, 2026.
7. r/HandymanBusiness, "A customer called to have some work done in her house and asked how much I charge an hour. I told her for that type of work it's $200/hr." (March 18, 2026) - top reply: "This is why your hourly rate should be back office information only. When I am asked for an hourly rate, I say something to the effect of: 'We charge line item fees, not an hourly rate. This way there are no surprises for you when it comes time for payment.'" reddit.com, read November 3, 2026.
8. r/handyman, "Client wants me to convert quote into hourly labor rate" (May 22, 2025, 767 comments) - top reply (292 points): "That's not how this works. Here's the price. Take it or leave it. But in a nice customer friendly way"; another owner: "I don't have an hourly rate, I have a price for the job and the other option is I don't do the job." reddit.com, read November 3, 2026.
9. r/handyman, "Why are handyman services so expensive?" (September 18, 2025) - an owner: "I charge/make about $80/hr, which sounds great. But I'm only paid when I work, I don't get paid for my admin time, supply runs, etc." reddit.com, read November 3, 2026.
10. Deepsel template arithmetic: example times back-solved so that time × $85 + materials × 1.20, rounded up to $5, lands near the middle of the owner prices in source 3. Example materials costs are made up. See the Notes tab of the workbook.
11. Angi, "How Much Does It Cost to Hire a Handyman? [2026 Data]" (updated September 23, 2026) - "the national average cost to hire a handyman is $405, based on 103,764 verified projects from Angi Pros. Most homeowners pay between $164 and $647"; "Handyman labor rates typically range from $50 to $150 per hour"; "If your handyman purchases materials on your behalf, expect a markup of 10% to 30% above retail"; by service: faucet replacement $100 to $300, drywall patch $120 to $350, ceiling fan installation $100 to $400, TV mounting $300 to $400, door adjustment or repair $75 to $220, painting $200 to $1,600 per room. angi.com, read November 3, 2026.
12. r/handyman, "Insane quote" (April 5, 2026, 1,238 points) - a Virginia handyman: "I sent out the estimate ($160)"; the homeowner "had an $1800 estimate, and another for $800"; "knocked it out in about 15 minutes total. They were so happy and paid me $260 for the job." A reply: "I have a $200 minimum. That covers the first hour." reddit.com, read November 3, 2026.
13. r/handyman, "Client Went The Cheap Route And Screwed Himself!!!" (July 9, 2025) - "I aim for an hourly rate of $100, but my minimum is $250. That covers up to 2 hours." reddit.com, read November 3, 2026.
14. r/handyman, "What's the smallest job you still take?" (March 16, 2026) - "The job itself might take 10–20 minutes, but by the time you drive there, unload tools, talk to the client, and pack up, it easily turns into an hour." reddit.com, read November 3, 2026.
15. r/handyman, "How to handle minimum service visit charge in this case?" (May 31, 2026) - "I'm not getting in work truck for $50." reddit.com, read November 3, 2026.
16. r/handyman, "How much do you charge for trip fees?" (September 25, 2026) - the poster, at $45 an hour for a property manager: "Had to stop at Home Depot to buy the materials spent an hour there. Got to the site and finished the work in 2 hours."; replies: "$150. It separates the real calls from the fakes"; "I've increased my mileage rate over the years from 0 to $1 to $3/mi as I've built up plenty of hyperlocal business." reddit.com, read November 3, 2026.
17. r/handyman, "Hourly vs. Job Cost" (January 15, 2025) - "I charge a daily rate of $500. I don't tell the client my daily rate." reddit.com, read November 3, 2026.
18. r/handyman comment, April 18, 2025 (the post was later deleted by its author; the comment remains): "If I get into a honey do list situation, I price out the job in groups and have a flat fee for each group of things." reddit.com, read November 3, 2026.
19. r/handyman, "Markup receipt Home Depot?" (May 17, 2026) - "materials are marked up 20% from list price"; "Either way, clients don't get the receipts." reddit.com, read November 3, 2026.
20. r/handyman comment, June 19, 2025 (post deleted by its author): "I charge 15-25% on top of the material cost." reddit.com, read November 3, 2026.
21. r/handyman, "Materials markup: 3x cost or 30%? Getting two very different answers" (September 24, 2026). reddit.com, read November 3, 2026.