Electrical Pricing: How to Price Electrical Work
Electrical pricing starts with one number: what an hour of billable time costs your shop. Add up labor with payroll burden, the truck and your share of overhead, divide by the hours you actually bill, then add margin. You then sell that rate three ways: by the hour for troubleshooting, as a flat price for repeatable service tasks, and per device for remodels and new work. The worked example below gets a solo electrician to $161 an hour and a journeyman-plus-apprentice crew to $210, then turns both into sample prices you can check line by line.
Three ways to charge for electrical work
Electrical jobs fall into three kinds, and each has a pricing method that suits it.
| Method | How the price is built | Fits | Where it goes wrong |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hourly (time and materials) | Hours on site x rate, plus materials at markup | Dead circuits, nuisance tripping, intermittent faults | The customer watches the clock, and a slow electrician bills more than a fast one |
| Flat rate per task | Your median time for the task x rate, plus parts, sold as one price | Device swaps, fixtures, fans, breakers, EV charger circuits, panel changes | Old wiring and surprises behind the wall, unless you have adders for them |
| Per device (per opening) | A set price for each box, plus a price for each new circuit | Basements, additions, kitchen remodels, new construction | Long home runs and awkward framing, if you never check the allowance against real hours |
Troubleshooting stays hourly for a plain reason: nobody knows how long it takes until the fault is found. Quote a first-hour price and the rate after it, then give a flat price for the repair once you know what the repair is. That keeps the open-ended part honest and the fix predictable.
The electrical pricing formula, worked for a solo and a crew
The rate is your total yearly cost divided by billable hours, then divided again by one minus your profit margin. Dividing by (1 – margin) rather than multiplying by (1 + margin) is what makes a 15% margin actually come out at 15%.
The example uses a journeyman paid $36 an hour and an apprentice paid $21. For reference, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median wage for electricians at $30.38 an hour as of May 2025. Payroll burden is set at 28% of wages. Of that, 7.65% is the employer’s share of Social Security and Medicare, per the IRS; unemployment insurance, workers’ comp and benefits make up the rest, and those vary a lot by state and carrier. Take your real burden from payroll reports and your insurance agent.
| Per year | Solo electrician | Journeyman + apprentice |
|---|---|---|
| Wages per paid hour | $36.00 | $57.00 |
| With 28% burden | $46.08 | $72.96 |
| Labor for 2,080 paid hours | $95,846 | $151,757 |
| Truck, tools, fuel, vehicle insurance | $21,000 | $21,000 |
| Overhead share: office, licensing, liability insurance, software, marketing, owner’s salary | $68,000 | $68,000 |
| Total cost | $184,846 | $240,757 |
| Billable hours | 1,350 | 1,350 |
| Cost per billable hour | $136.92 | $178.34 |
| Rate at a 15% margin | $161.09 | $209.81 |
The 1,350 billable hours are 65% of the 2,080 paid. The rest goes to holidays, driving, supply-house runs, estimates and unpaid callbacks. Measure yours: invoiced hours over the last quarter divided by paid hours in the same quarter. A rate built on a billable share you don’t hit loses money on every ticket.
The crew column answers a question every electrical contractor argues about: when to send two people. The apprentice adds $48.72 an hour to the price. Since $161 / $210 is about 0.77, the crew has to finish in no more than 77% of the solo time to earn the same on a job. A task that takes one electrician 4 hours has to take the crew 3 hours and 4 minutes or less. On rough-in, where one person feeds wire and the other pulls, the second pair of hands can clear that bar. On a device swap it cannot, so send one person.
Materials, permits and the copper problem
A single markup on every part makes cheap items too cheap and big equipment look padded. A sliding scale fixes both:
| Your cost per item | Multiplier | Margin on the part |
|---|---|---|
| Under $25: devices, plates, connectors, standard breakers | 2.0 | 50% |
| $25 to $200: GFCI and AFCI breakers, fixtures, fittings | 1.6 | 37.5% |
| $200 to $1,000: wire for a run, surge protection, small subpanels | 1.4 | 28.6% |
| Over $1,000: panels, transfer switches, service gear | 1.3 | 23.1% |
A multiplier and a margin are not the same number, which trips up a lot of rate books; the guide to markup versus margin has the full conversion table.
Wire is the part that moves. Its price follows copper, so a book built when copper was cheap undercharges every circuit when it isn’t. Check your supply house’s price on the three cable sizes you use most each time you update the book, and on big runs show wire as its own line instead of burying it inside a flat price.
Permits get two lines. The fee itself goes on at cost, taken from your city or county building department’s fee schedule. Your time goes on separately: pulling the permit, meeting the inspector, and the reinspection if the first visit fails. The examples below allow one billable hour for that on small jobs and two on a panel. Panel changes also need the utility to disconnect and reconnect service, so ask yours how far ahead to book it and whether it charges.
Sample flat prices for common service calls
These use the $161 solo rate, except the panel change, which uses the crew. Hours are on-site time; driving is already inside the rate because it came out of billable hours.
| Task | Hours | Labor | Parts | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Replace a GFCI receptacle, first on the visit | 0.6 | $96.60 | $24 x 2.0 = $48 | $144.60 |
| Each additional GFCI, same visit | 0.35 | $56.35 | $48 | $104.35 |
| Hang a ceiling fan on an existing fan-rated box, customer’s fan | 1.5 | $241.50 | $8 x 2.0 = $16 | $257.50 |
| Replace a standard single-pole breaker | 0.75 | $120.75 | $12 x 2.0 = $24 | $144.75 |
| Level 2 EV charger circuit, 30-foot run, panel has space, customer’s charger | 4.0 + 1.0 permit time | $805 | $260 x 1.4 = $364 | $1,169 plus permit fee |
| 200-amp panel replacement | 9.0 crew + 2.0 solo permit time | $1,890 + $322 | $1,100 x 1.3 = $1,430 | $3,642 plus permit fee |
Round to numbers you can say out loud: $145, $105, $258, $145, $1,169 and $3,645.
Look at the first two rows. The first GFCI costs $40 more than the second because it carries the setup, the walk-through and the testing. Pricing “first device, each additional” is how you keep a six-receptacle visit from being priced as six separate visits, which would lose you the job, or as one visit, which would lose you money.
None of these prices include a separate trip charge, because the flat price pays for the visit. When a customer wants only a diagnosis, charge your first-hour or diagnostic price; the guide to setting a service call fee covers the wording. For a full book with adders for attics, crawlspaces and aluminum branch wiring, see the guide to flat-rate pricing for electricians.
Per-device pricing for remodels and new work
On a basement or an addition, the number of boxes drives the hours, so price by the opening. An opening is any box: receptacle, switch, light, smoke alarm. Its price covers rough-in (box, drilling, pulling cable) and trim (device, plate, test). New circuits get their own price because each one needs a breaker and a home run to the panel.
- Per opening: 0.45 crew hours x $210 = $94.50, plus $14 of box, roughly 18 feet of cable, device and plate at a 1.5 bulk multiplier = $21. Total $115.50.
- Per new circuit: 0.6 crew hours x $210 = $126, plus $45 of breaker and home run x 1.5 = $67.50. Total $193.50.
A basement with 22 openings on 4 new circuits: 22 x $115.50 = $2,541, plus 4 x $193.50 = $774, plus two hours of permit and inspection time at $161 = $322. That comes to $3,637 plus the permit fee.
Before you trust the per-opening figure, check it against the clock. By the book’s own allowances the basement takes 12.3 crew hours (22 x 0.45 + 4 x 0.6). Write actual hours on every job ticket. If your first three basements take 16 hours, the per-opening labor is low, not the crew slow. Price the known troublemakers as time adders: plaster and lath, finished ceilings you have to fish through, runs over 50 feet, fire blocking, and old ungrounded wiring you meet along the way.
Four checks that tell you a price is wrong
- Close rate by job type. If you win every panel quote, the panel price may be low. If you lose most EV charger quotes, look at how you present the price before you cut it.
- Hours against the book. When a task runs over its allowance three jobs in a row, raise the allowance. When it runs under, keep the price and enjoy the margin; that is what flat rate is for.
- Callbacks. A task that keeps bringing you back for free needs a time adder or a different method, because each return trip eats the margin of the original job.
- Calls nobody answered. An electrician with both hands in a panel can’t pick up, and a call that goes to voicemail is a job priced correctly and never sold. The missed-call calculator puts a dollar figure on that, and the page for electrical contractors shows how DispatchLine answers and books while you work.
Electrical pricing is never finished. Rebuild the rate whenever an input moves: a raise, a new truck payment, an insurance renewal. The method stays the same; only the numbers change.
FAQ
How much do electricians charge per hour?
The right rate comes from your own costs rather than a national figure. In the worked example, a solo electrician needs $161 an hour and a journeyman with an apprentice needs $210, based on $36 and $21 wages and 1,350 billable hours a year. That solo rate is about 4.5 times the journeyman’s wage once burden, truck and overhead are counted.
Should electricians charge per outlet?
Per outlet, or per opening, fits remodels and new work, where the count of boxes drives the hours. On service calls, use a first-device price and a lower each-additional price, so the setup is paid once. Check your per-opening labor against real job hours every few jobs.
How do I price an EV charger installation?
As a flat price for the circuit: your median hours for a standard run, wire and breaker at your markup, permit time, and the permit fee as its own line. Add a footage adder for runs longer than your standard. Quote a panel or service upgrade separately when the panel has no room or the load calculation doesn’t work.
How much should an electrician mark up materials?
Use a sliding scale, higher on cheap parts and lower on expensive gear. The example uses 2.0 under $25, 1.6 up to $200, 1.4 up to $1,000 and 1.3 above that, which is a 50% to 23% margin on the part. Update wire prices often, because they move with copper.
Should I charge customers for pulling the permit?
Yes, as two lines: the permit fee at cost, and your time to pull it, meet the inspector and handle a reinspection. The example prices that time at one billable hour on small jobs and two on a panel change. Listing both keeps the customer from thinking the permit is padding.
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