What should a handyman charge per hour?

The handyman trade has the widest pricing spread of any home service, because "handyman" covers everything from hanging a picture to swapping a light fixture. The number that matters isn't the rate on your card — it's whether that rate, after drive time and the slow jobs, clears what you actually need to earn. Price the day, not the task.

Hourly versus flat rate — use both

The seasoned answer is that you need both tools and the judgment to pick:

• Hourly is fair for the unknown. Troubleshooting a problem, chasing a leak, "can you look at this and tell me what's wrong" — when you genuinely can't scope it in advance, hourly protects you from eating an open-ended job.
• Flat per task is better for the known. Mounting a TV, installing a faucet, hanging a door, assembling a shed — if you've done it fifty times and know how long it takes, a flat price rewards your speed and gives the customer a clean number to approve. Get fast and flat pricing pays you for being good.

There's a psychology point here too: a customer watching an hourly meter gets anxious and second-guesses. A flat number they already agreed to removes that friction and closes faster. Most experienced handymen quote flat whenever they can scope it, and fall back to hourly only when they truly can't.

Minimums and day rates

The single most important thing a new handyman gets wrong is having no minimum. A five-minute fix that took you 25 minutes of driving each way is a money-loser at "I'll just charge for the few minutes." Set a minimum of one to two hours of labor, or a flat trip/service charge, and state it before you book. It's not unfair — it's the cost of mobilizing.

For bigger work, quote in blocks. A half-day (about four hours) and full-day (about eight hours) rate, usually carrying a small discount off the straight hourly number, are easy for the customer to understand and let you bundle a whole punch list into one efficient visit. Day-rate work is also where your drive-time-to-billable-time ratio is best, so it's worth steering customers toward batching small jobs into one block.

Skill level sets the band

Not all handyman hours are worth the same, and your rate should say so:

• General tasks ($60–$90/hr): furniture assembly, TV mounting, shelving, weatherstripping, caulking, basic drywall patching, hardware swaps. Low risk, broad demand.
• Skilled tasks ($90–$125+/hr): minor electrical (within what's legal for you locally), minor plumbing, trim carpentry, door and window adjustments, tile repair. Higher skill, higher risk, often requires being licensed and insured.

Know your lane on licensing. Many jurisdictions cap what an unlicensed handyman can legally do — particularly electrical, plumbing, gas, and larger projects above a dollar threshold. Pricing skilled work you're not licensed or insured to do isn't a rate problem, it's a liability problem. Stay inside what you can legally and safely carry, and charge appropriately for the skilled work you can do.

Marking up materials

You're not a charity supply runner. A materials markup of roughly 15–30% is standard and fair — it covers the time you spend sourcing and buying, the trip to the store, carrying the parts, and dealing with returns when something's wrong. If a customer would rather buy their own materials, that's fine, but make the trade clear: if they supply the parts, you're not responsible when the wrong size faucet or a missing bracket shows up and the job has to be rescheduled. That reschedule is on their clock, not yours.

Typical task price bands

Rough flat-rate ballparks for common jobs (labor only, before materials and before your minimum kicks in). These vary a lot by market and complexity — treat them as a starting frame, not a price sheet:

• TV wall mount: roughly $100–$250, more for in-wall cable concealment.
• Faucet replacement: roughly $125–$250, more if shutoffs or supply lines need work.
• Ceiling fan or light fixture swap: roughly $100–$250, more for new wiring or high ceilings.
• Interior door install (pre-hung): roughly $150–$350.
• Furniture assembly: often billed hourly or a flat per-piece rate.
• Drywall patch (small): roughly $100–$300 depending on size, texture, and paint.
• Toilet replacement: roughly $150–$350 labor.
• Punch list (multiple small items): price as a half- or full-day block.

The handyman who builds a repeat clientele is the one who quotes clearly, shows up when they said, and makes paying easy. That last part is where a lot of solo operators bleed time — texting a total, waiting on a check, forgetting to follow up. Claver handles the business side — quote, schedule, invoice, and take card or Stripe payment on the spot — so you can spend the day on the tools instead of the paperwork.