Handyman Pricing: An Hourly Minimum or a Task Menu

“Should I charge by the hour or by the job?” The practical answer is both: an hourly rate with a minimum for the odd job and the unknown repair, and a short menu of flat prices for the tasks that come up every week. The hard part is not choosing. It is setting both from your own numbers instead of a figure somebody quoted in a forum.

This article builds the two from the same three inputs: what your hour costs, how long each task really takes, and what a visit costs before you lift a tool.

What the homeowner is comparing you to

A homeowner who looks up handyman prices before contacting you finds guides like HomeAdvisor’s. Its handyperson guide, updated June 2026, tells them that rates range from $50 to $150 an hour depending on experience and location, and that most homeowners spend $405 per project on average, with a range of $65 to $1,500. It says the figures come from a survey of over 30,000 customers about their project costs. It also lists typical task prices:

The same guide gives homeowners three pieces of advice that shape every conversation you have. Bundle several small tasks so they are done in one visit. Ask about travel, because some pros build it into the hourly rate while others travel free within an area, such as the first 10 miles. And expect a written, firm quote before work starts. Its FAQ even works an example: a three-hour job at $75 an hour totals $225, which may be less than a flat rate of $300.

So a customer who has read a guide like this one may arrive expecting a range per task, a firm number, and a suspicion that hourly is cheaper for small jobs. These are national figures from a company that sells leads; what your area pays is the market you price against. But you should know what the customer has read.

Start with what your hour costs

The closest federal job category to a handyman is general maintenance and repair workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts their median wage at $23.84 an hour in May 2025. That figure is for employees; the Bureau says it does not include pay for the self-employed.

The wage is not the cost. In the Bureau’s Employer Costs for Employee Compensation for June 2026, an hour of a private-industry installation, maintenance and repair worker cost the employer $49.01 in total: $33.61 in wages and $15.41 in benefits, or 31.4% of the total. Paid leave, supplemental pay, insurance, retirement and legally required benefits are all in that $15.41. Your Real Hourly Cost walks through building that loaded rate for your own crew.

Then divide by the hours you can actually bill, not the hours you work. A handyman loses hours to driving, supply runs, estimates and the job that runs short. Say your yearly costs (truck, insurance, tools, phone, software) plus the pay you want for yourself come to $90,000, and you can bill 25 hours a week for 48 weeks. That is 1,200 billable hours, and your break-even rate is $75 an hour. Charge less and every job quietly loses money. The examples below use $85, which leaves a margin above that break-even.

The hourly minimum: what it has to cover

A minimum exists because a small job is never as small as the work. Say a homeowner wants a sticking door planed, and the work itself takes 30 minutes:

Billing the 30 minutes at $85 brings in $42.50. The 100 minutes cost you $125 even at the $75 break-even. A minimum closes that gap: in this example, a two-hour minimum at $85 is $170, which covers the visit with something left over.

Write the minimum so nobody feels tricked. “Minimum visit: two hours, which includes the first two hours of work. After that, billed in 30-minute steps.” Then use it as the bundling reason the cost guide already gave your customer: the first two hours cover as many small tasks as fit. If you charge a trip fee instead of a minimum, or both, Minimum Charges and Trip Fees covers that choice.

The task menu: build it from timed jobs

A flat price is only as good as the time estimate under it. Pick the ten or fifteen tasks you do most. For each one, write down the on-site time of the next several you do, from walking in to walking out, with the drive kept separate. Use your slower typical time, not your best day. As a cross-check, HomeAdvisor’s price list says a toilet valve replacement typically takes about 1 hour, a leaky pipe about 2 and a drywall repair about 3. Your times may differ; it is your own timing that sets the price.

Then the formula: on-site minutes plus the trip, at your rate, rounded up to the next $5, never below your minimum, with materials extra. Here it is with $85 an hour, a 50-minute round trip and the two-hour minimum. The times are made-up examples to show the math:

Three things fall out of a table like this.

• The add-on column sells the bundle. The second task skips the trip, so it costs less. That is the honest version of a multi-task discount, and it is the bundling the homeowner was told to ask for.
• Jobs that need a second trip are priced as two trips. Drywall mud and paint have to dry. A menu price that assumes one visit loses money every time.
• Compare each price with the guide, then decide. In this example the TV mount lands inside HomeAdvisor’s $150 to $350 range. The dresser lands above its $90 to $150 range for furniture assembly. That does not mean cut the price; it means this task, at your speed, belongs as an add-on to a bigger visit rather than a job you drive out for alone.

Materials and the supply run

HomeAdvisor tells homeowners that some quotes include labor and materials and that materials can drive up the total. Decide which yours are and say so on every price. There are three ways to set it up: the customer buys the part and you install it; you carry common stock on the truck at a set price; or you special-order, which means a supply run.

The supply run is an easy place to lose money. A 40-minute round trip to the store is $57 of your time at $85 an hour, and the homeowner never sees it unless you price it. Either charge it as time, add it as a flat supply-run line, or build it into the price of special-order work. Mark up the materials themselves as well, and mind the difference between markup and margin: a 20% markup is not a 20% margin (Markup vs. Margin has the table).

Which one, when

• Use the menu for repeatable tasks with a scope you can see from a photo or a sentence. The customer can book from a list, and you keep the gain when you get faster.
• Use hourly with the minimum for diagnosis, old houses, long to-do lists and anything behind a wall. Put the rate, the minimum, the billing step, the materials rule and an estimated range of hours in writing, and agree on the point where you stop and check with the customer before going further. That is the written quote the cost guide told them to expect.
• Leave the licensed trades alone unless you hold the license. Even HomeAdvisor’s guide tells homeowners that a handyperson cannot do major plumbing or electrical work without the proper licenses, and that licensing rules depend on where you live. For the rules by state, see What Can a Handyman Do Without a License?

Check the menu every few months

Compare the time you priced with the time each job took. If the TV mount keeps taking 100 minutes instead of 75, the menu price is wrong, not the job. Job costing shows how to keep that record without much paperwork. And when your costs rise, the rate rises with them, and the whole menu moves at once.

Once the menu is written, put it where customers look: a price list with “from” prices on your handyman site, or ranges worked out from a few questions. NapkinPrice™ does the second: you set the rules, your website shows the homeowner a price range at any hour, and you get the lead with their answers attached.