Handyman pricing: minimum charge, hourly versus flat, and route density
How to set a two-hour minimum, when flat rate beats hourly, good-better-best quoting, deposits on material, and why the drive decides your margin.
Two handyman businesses charge the same $95 an hour. One nets $70,000 a year and one nets $130,000. The difference is almost never the rate. It is the minimum, the routing, and how the price is presented.
Small tickets punish sloppy pricing in a way large tickets do not. A plumber who mis-scopes a job loses an hour on a $1,200 ticket. You lose an hour on a $200 ticket, plus the 25-minute drive, and the day is gone.
Start with the minimum charge, not the hourly rate
Publish a minimum. Two hours is the standard that works: long enough to cover the drive and setup, short enough that a homeowner with one job says yes.
"Two-hour minimum, $189. Most small repairs fit inside it, and if we finish early we will knock out something else on your list."
That last clause is the whole trick. It reframes the minimum from a penalty into a benefit and it changes customer behavior: they start assembling a list before you arrive, which is exactly what you want. The best handyman customers hand you six items, not one.
Say the minimum three times: on the website, in the ad copy, and on the phone before you book. Say it early and casually. Owners who bury it end up arguing about it in a driveway, which is the worst possible place to negotiate.
Yes, you will lose calls. You will lose the ones that cost you money.
Hourly or flat rate
Neither is right for everything. Use this split:
Flat rate for any job you have done more than 20 times and can scope from a photo. Ceiling fan swap. Toilet replacement. Standard interior door. TV mount. Grab bar set. Gutter guard on a single-story run. You know the time, you know the parts, and the customer wants a number, not a meter.
Flat pricing also protects your speed. When you get faster at hanging a door, hourly pricing punishes you for it. Flat pricing pays you for it.
Hourly for open-ended work: unknown-condition rot repair, older houses, "come do my list," anything behind a wall. Quote a range with a stated check-in point: "I expect four to six hours. When I hit four I will show you where we are and you decide whether to continue."
Never quote hourly for a job the customer thinks is simple and you know is not. That is where disputes come from.
Typical rates run $65 to $125 an hour depending on market, experience and whether you carry commercial insurance and a trailer. If you are at the bottom of that band and busy every day, you are underpriced. Raise the rate on new customers only and watch the booking rate. If it does not move, raise it again.
Route density is the real profit lever
Here is the math owners skip. Two jobs at $250 each in the same neighborhood, 10 minutes apart, produce $500 in a day with 40 minutes of driving. Two jobs at $250 on opposite sides of the metro produce $500 with two hours of driving. Same revenue, an hour and twenty minutes of unpaid difference, which is most of a third job.
Fixes, in order of impact:
- Zone days. North side Monday and Thursday, south side Tuesday and Friday, Wednesday for larger jobs. When someone calls from the north on Tuesday, book them Thursday. Almost nobody argues. Small repairs are not emergencies.
- A tight service area. Set it on your Google profile and in your ads to what you can reach in 25 minutes. Take the far jobs only at a higher minimum.
- Travel charge past the line. "Outside our regular area there is a $65 trip charge." It either pays for the drive or it turns down the job politely.
- The list. Every customer gets asked, "Anything else on your list while I'm here?" Two hours becomes four with zero drive time and zero acquisition cost. This is the cheapest revenue in the business.
Presenting the price: good, better, best
On anything with an upgrade path, present three options in writing rather than one number.
Rotted door frame, for example:
- Repair the damaged section, prime and paint: $340.
- Replace the frame with primed pine, weatherstrip and paint: $620.
- Replace frame and door with a pre-hung unit, new hardware and threshold: $1,150.
Three effects, all reliable. The middle option gets chosen most of the time, which lifts the average ticket. The customer feels like a decision-maker rather than a price-taker. And the cheap option makes you the honest one rather than the expensive one.
Write the options in a text or an email so they can be shown to a spouse. Verbal quotes get remembered wrong and remembered low.
Material, deposits and the money conversation
For anything with material over roughly $300, take a deposit that covers the material, in writing, before you buy it. A short text is enough: "Deposit of $420 covers the door and hardware, balance of $730 on completion." Nobody objects to this. Owners who skip it end up financing customers with their own credit card.
Charge for material with a markup that reflects the running around: 15% to 25% is normal and defensible. Say so up front rather than hiding it, because homeowners can look up the price of a door.
Get paid on completion, on site, with a card reader or a payment link, before you pack the truck. Invoicing a homeowner and waiting is how a repair business ends up with $6,000 outstanding and no time to chase it. Property managers are different, and they are covered in the slow season plan.
How pricing changes your marketing
Pricing decides which channels can work. At a $150 average ticket, no paid channel is viable: a $45 Google Ads call that books at 40% costs you $112 to earn $150. At $275, ads work. At $450, ads work comfortably and you can outbid the operators who are guessing.
Raising the average ticket does more for your marketing than any campaign change. The three fastest levers are the two-hour minimum, the "anything else on your list" question, and good-better-best quoting. All three are free.
There is one more constraint on your pricing that is not financial. Your scope is bounded by what you can legally do in your state, and the exemptions that let unlicensed handyman work happen are often written as a dollar cap per job that includes labor and materials. In those states the price of the job and the legality of the job are the same question, so check your state board before you quote large. The website guide covers how to describe those limits publicly.
Frequently asked
Should I charge for estimates? Not for a photo quote, which costs you nothing. For an on-site estimate more than 20 minutes out, charge a diagnostic fee and credit it to the job. It filters out the people collecting five quotes.
What if a customer says another guy is cheaper? "He might be. I'm insured, I show up when I say, and I guarantee the work for a year. If price is the deciding factor, go with him and call me if it needs doing again." Said calmly, this closes more jobs than it loses.
How often should I raise prices? Once a year, on new customers first. Existing repeat customers can be moved at the next visit with a sentence of warning.
If you want the pricing put into the website, the ads and the phone script at the same time, that is what the free 14-day trial is for. Text or call (385) 832-6175.