Pricing & job costing

What should your HVAC business charge per hour?

Start with the real cost of labor, non-billable time, and overhead—not only the wage on a technician's paycheck.

Free tool

Calculate your true hourly rate

Enter your own operating costs to estimate the hourly rate needed to cover them and reach your target margin. Your inputs stay in this browser.

Technician cost

Base hourly wage ($/hour)Employer payroll taxes (%)Workers' comp (%)Annual benefits ($/year)Annual vehicle cost ($/year)Annual tools cost ($/year)Annual training cost ($/year)Paid hours per year

Suggested annual benefits update to 19.2% of base wages until you edit the field. No sourced default exists for vehicle, tools, or training: leaving any of those at $0 excludes that cost from this estimate.

Capacity, overhead, and margin

Non-billable time (%)Annual company overhead ($/year)Billable technicians sharing overheadTarget margin on selling price (%)Current billed rate ($/hour, optional)

Workers' comp varies substantially by state, classification code, and experience modifier. Verify your NCCI classification and EMR before using this estimate for a real price.

What should your HVAC business charge per hour?

Calculate your true hourly rate

Rate and cost breakdown

Margin and markup are not the same

Your current-rate gap