Pricing guide · UK trades · 2026
How to price a job in the UK
Most UK tradespeople either use gut feel, copy a competitor's rate, or divide their desired salary by 250 working days and call it an hourly rate. All three approaches produce the same result: consistent undercharging.
This guide covers the actual maths — labour, materials, overhead, and profit — with trade examples and a clear framework for building quotes you can price confidently.
The four components of a job price
Every job you price has four elements. Getting any one of them wrong compounds into the others.
Labour
Your time on the job, priced at your correct hourly rate. The most important word here is 'correct' — not what you think the market will bear, not what you think the customer will accept, but the rate that actually covers your costs and hits your income target. This requires knowing your rate before you price the job, not after.
Materials
The cost of everything you supply for the job — parts, consumables, hardware, paint, chemicals — plus your materials markup. A 15–30% markup is typical for UK trades. The markup covers the time spent sourcing and purchasing, the risk of price changes, unused surplus, and the cost of capital tied up in materials before they are invoiced. If you are not marking up materials, you are doing the materials handling for free.
Overhead contribution
Every job should contribute to your annual business costs — van, fuel, insurance, tools, software, phone, accountant, training. If you run £8,000/year in costs and complete 200 jobs per year, each job should contribute approximately £40 toward overhead regardless of size. Many tradespeople skip this entirely and then wonder why their bank balance does not reflect their apparent billing.
Profit margin
The amount above break-even that you intentionally build into a quote. This is not the same as your take-home salary — that is accounted for in the labour rate. Profit margin is the business buffer: it funds quiet periods, reinvestment, equipment replacement, and unexpected costs. A 10–20% margin on top of the other three components is a reasonable target.
Job price = (Hours × Hourly rate) + (Materials cost × 1.markup) + Overhead contribution + Profit
The underpricing trap
Underpricing is not always obvious. It does not feel like undercharging — it feels like being competitive, being helpful, or being afraid of losing the job. The symptoms usually only show up months later: the bank balance does not reflect how busy you have been, you feel like you are working harder than you earn, and you cannot easily raise your prices because you have trained your customers to expect low rates.
The most common causes:
- Underestimating time. Jobs always take longer than the optimistic estimate. Quote for the realistic time, not the ideal one. If a job type consistently runs over, that is data — build it into your rate.
- Not accounting for non-billable time. If your hourly rate is £45 but you spend 35% of your working week on quoting, driving between jobs, and admin, your effective hourly rate is considerably lower. The rate needs to account for that.
- Skipping the materials markup. Materials at cost is a common habit. At 20% markup, a £200 materials job contributes £40 — which is real money over 200 jobs per year.
- Fear of losing the job. Some jobs are not worth winning at a low price. A job that covers costs but earns nothing is worse than no job — it fills the diary and stops you from taking profitable work.
Trade examples
Electrician: Consumer unit replacement
| Labour: 6 hours × £55/hr | £330 |
| Materials: £280 (18th edition CU + parts) × 1.20 markup | £336 |
| Overhead contribution | £40 |
| Profit (15%) | £106 |
| Total (ex-VAT) | £812 |
Add 20% VAT if registered. Quote in this format — itemised — so the customer sees the value, not just a number.
Painter and decorator: Front room repaint
| Labour: 2 days × £200/day | £400 |
| Materials: 15L paint, primer, filler, tape — £80 × 1.25 | £100 |
| Overhead contribution | £40 |
| Profit (15%) | £81 |
| Total (ex-VAT) | £621 |
Many decorators quote 'labour only' and have the customer supply paint. The markup model only applies if you supply materials.
Window cleaner: New residential customer (monthly round)
| Labour: 45 minutes per visit × monthly | From rate calc |
| Route contribution (travel, setup) | Built into hourly rate |
| No materials for standard window clean | — |
| Overhead + profit built into monthly rate | — |
Round-based services price per-visit, not per-job. The key is ensuring your per-visit rate across all customers hits your hourly target. Use the day rate calculator if you price rounds by day.
Fixed price vs day rate vs hourly
The pricing model you use affects more than revenue — it affects the customer relationship and how confident you feel quoting.
Fixed price
Best for clearly defined jobs (bathroom fit, full repaint, garden design). Client knows what they are paying. You are protected from scope creep if you define the scope clearly. Use your four-component calculation to set the floor — do not price below it.
Day rate
Best for variable or multi-day work where scope is uncertain. The client pays for your time, not a fixed outcome. Clarify upfront whether materials are included or extra. Use the day rate calculator to validate the rate covers your costs.
Hourly rate
Best for callout and repair work where job size is not known at booking. Quote a call-out fee (1 hour minimum) and an hourly rate after that. Transparency builds trust — customers are less surprised by the final invoice when they understand the rate.
Tools that support pricing
- Hourly rate calculator — work out your correct rate before quoting any job
- Day rate calculator — for multi-day or project-based work
- VAT calculator — add or remove VAT from any quote amount
- How to quote a job — once you have a price, how to turn it into a professional quote
Frequently asked questions
How do I price a job as a UK sole trader?
Start with the four components: labour (your hours × your hourly rate), materials (cost × your markup), overhead (your share of annual business costs on this job), and profit margin (the buffer above break-even). Add them together for your quote price. Use the hourly rate calculator to work out your correct hourly rate before you start quoting.
What markup should I put on materials?
A 15–30% markup on materials is typical for UK tradespeople. The markup covers the time spent sourcing, purchasing, and delivering materials, and compensates for the risk that materials cost more than quoted or some are unused. If you are not marking up materials, you are effectively doing the materials-handling work for free.
Why am I making less money than I expect from jobs?
The most common causes are: underestimating labour hours, not accounting for non-billable time in the hourly rate, no markup on materials, no overhead contribution per job, and no profit margin built in. Any one of these will erode take-home pay. All of them together can mean working full-time and taking home significantly less than you target.
Should I show my pricing breakdown to customers?
For materials, yes — itemising materials on a quote builds trust and makes it clear that the cost of your time is separate from the cost of goods. Whether to show your hourly rate is more nuanced: fixed-price quotes where the customer simply approves a total are common for large or well-defined jobs. Callout-rate + hourly is more transparent for variable repair work.
Written by the WrkGenie team
WrkGenie is a UK-built job management platform for sole traders and small service businesses. Our guides are written from the practical questions we hear from real customers — not for SEO purposes first.
We aim to keep guides factually accurate and up to date. If you spot something out of date or incorrect, let us know.
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