Plumbing pricing: how to price plumbing jobs

Plumbing pricing starts with one number: what it costs you to put a plumber and a truck in front of a customer for one hour you can bill. That cost per billable hour is the plumber's fully loaded pay plus the shop's overhead, divided by the hours that end up on an invoice. In the example below it comes to $122, so the price book charges $152.50 for each hour of book time at a 20% profit, and parts carry their own markup on top.

A price list copied from the shop across town carries that shop's costs. Build yours from your payroll report and your P&L, which is where a plumbing company's books should already hold every number you need.

What does a billable hour cost you?

Three costs go into it:

1. Fully loaded wage: the median wage for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters was $30.67 an hour in 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Payroll taxes, workers' comp, benefits and paid time off added about a third in our labor burden example, so a $30 plumber costs you about $40 for every hour on the clock.
2. Hours nobody invoices: drive time between calls, the morning supply house run, loading the truck at the shop, callbacks and the Monday meeting are all paid. None of them are billed, so every billed hour has to carry them.
3. Overhead: the dispatcher, truck payments, fuel, insurance, marketing, software, rent, and your own salary if you're not on the tools. Divide the year's total by the billable hours your whole crew sells.

A worked example for a 4-truck shop

This example uses round numbers: 4 plumbers at $30 an hour, each paid for 2,000 hours a year, with 65% of those hours billed. Swap in your own payroll report and P&L.

Divide by one minus the profit you want. Multiplying $122 by 1.2 gives $146.40, which leaves about 17% instead of 20%. The post on how to price HVAC jobs walks through markup versus margin in more detail.

The billable share moves this number more than wages do. If drive time and supply house runs push the same shop down to 55% billable, its cost per billable hour rises to about $144. A $2 raise for every plumber adds about $4. That's why truck stock and tight routing show up in your prices.

Flat rate or time and materials?

Use flat rate for the work you do every week. Use time and materials (T&M, the hourly rate plus parts) where nobody can see the scope until a wall or a slab is open.

Flat rate also keeps the hourly guess off the customer's invoice. Book hours are how you build each flat price and how you check it afterward. The customer sees the price of the job, not the hours.

Plumbing pricing in the price book

Each line in the book is the same calculation: book hours × $152.50, plus parts at your markup. The numbers are examples; build yours from your own costs.

Round each one up to the number you'd print. Where your city requires a permit, put the fee on the ticket at cost.

Build the lines on units your plumbers can count at the door: per fixture, per drain line and access point, per tank size and fuel type, per foot of line.

This is so, so, so critical to actually have pricing based upon like units. … having a sheet that's very clear that an 11-year-old … could come in, they could take your pricing guide, they could go into a house without knowing everything there is to know about all the nuances of your services, and they could actually price out a job.

Brandon Vaughn, who coaches home service owners, said that while teaching a group of owners how to build a sales playbook. A newer plumber with a book like that quotes the same water heater the same way your best plumber does.

How much should you mark up parts?

Price parts at a margin that slides down as the part gets more expensive. One example scale:

• Parts under $50: divide cost by 0.5, a 50% margin.
• $50 to $500: divide by 0.6, a 40% margin.
• Over $500, water heaters included: divide by 0.7, a 30% margin.

Overhead is already in the hourly rate, so the parts markup pays for what parts cost you beyond the supply house invoice: truck stock that walks off or gets crushed, returns, the free trip back when a cartridge fails 3 months later, and the cash sitting on the shelves. One flat percentage across every part either overprices the water heater or underprices the wax ring.

What should a trip or diagnostic fee be?

Charge one billable hour at your rate, about $150 in the example. A call that ends with "we'll think about it" still costs a drive and an hour of a plumber's day, and the fee makes that hour billable.

If you credit the fee toward the repair when the customer says yes, the book time for each repair has to include the diagnosis. Otherwise every approved job gives that hour away. For addresses past your normal service area, add the extra drive time at the same rate.

How should you price after-hours calls?

Start from what the call costs you, then decide the premium. The BLS notes that "plumbers are often on call for emergencies, so evening and weekend work is common."

Federal law requires at least time and a half for a covered, non-exempt employee's hours over 40 in a workweek, per the Department of Labor. It doesn't require extra pay for night work, or for weekends and holidays unless those hours are overtime. Your state may add its own rules, so check those too.

When the night call is overtime, time and a half raises the labor line by up to half, from $62 to as much as $93. The cost per billable hour becomes $153, and at a 20% profit the price is $191 an hour, about 1.25 times the daytime rate. That's the floor. What you add above it pays for any on-call pay, the late start on tomorrow's first job, and a plumber who's willing to answer the phone at 2 a.m.

Check the book against your job costs

Once a month, compare book hours to actual hours for your top 10 lines, and check the billable share for the whole crew. If a line keeps running long, raise its book time or add an add-on for what makes it run long. Tracking job profitability shows how to set that up.

If you're not sure your P&L splits job costs from overhead well enough to price from, bring it to a free profit call. Bookkeeping, payroll and tax sit in one firm at YetiBooks, with the same profit specialist every time (here's how it works), so the numbers behind your price book stay current.

Questions owners ask

What if a flat-rate drain job runs long?

That's the trade you make with flat rate. Some main lines take 3 hours on a 1-hour book time and some take 30 minutes, and the book works only if the average lands near the book time. If one line keeps running over, add lines for what slows it down, such as a second access point or pulling the toilet to reach the line.

Should I charge for a second trip when a part is on order?

If the customer picked a special-order fixture, a return-trip line at one billable hour is fair. If it's a part that should have been on the truck, absorb the trip and fix your truck stock.

How often should I update plumbing prices?

Every January, when your payroll costs reset, and any time you give raises or the supply house changes prices on water heaters and fixtures. Check the billable share every month too, because it moves your cost per hour more than anything else in the book.