List the work, set your own labor rate, then add parts, the call-out, an after-hours premium if it applies, and your overhead and profit. You get the bid and, more usefully, what it actually pays you per hour on site. Free, and no signup needed.
Work on this job
Parts, out-of-hours, overhead and profit
A margin is a share of the price, so it can never reach 100%: at 99% the bid would be a hundred times your cost. Capped at 80% here. If you meant a markup on cost, a 100% markup is a 50% margin.
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These figures are estimates to help you bid a job. Adjust the labor hours and your hourly rate to match your own crew, your market, and whether the work is new construction, a remodel, or a service call.
It is a free tool that turns a job description into a priced quote. You list the work (clear a blockage, replace a toilet, swap a water heater, chase a leak), and each item carries a typical labor time. The tool multiplies quantity by hours by your hourly rate, adds an out-of-hours premium if the call is at night or at the weekend, adds parts and markup, adds the call-out and anything else, then applies overhead and profit. It also shows the total hours and what the quote pays you per hour, which is the number that tells you whether the job is worth going to.
Add one row per task and set the quantity. Each item starts with a typical labor time, which you can change: your own times are better than any average. Set your hourly rate, enter your parts cost and the markup you apply to it, and set an out-of-hours premium if the call is outside normal working hours. Tick the call-out fee, a camera inspection, a permit or making good. Finally set your overhead and profit margin. Everything updates as you type, and nothing is sent anywhere.
Two ways, and most plumbers use both. Flat rate puts one price on a named task, taken from your own book of times, so the customer hears a number at the door and you carry the risk of the job running long. Time and materials bills the hours you actually spend plus the parts. This calculator is built on the time underneath both of them: set a standard time per task and your rate, and you get a flat-rate price you can quote with confidence, because it is derived from hours rather than guessed.
On top of that sit the things specific to this trade. A call-out or diagnostic fee covers getting there and finding the fault, and it is charged whether or not the customer goes ahead. An out-of-hours premium covers an evening, a weekend or an emergency. Parts are marked up separately, because you carry the cost of buying, collecting and warrantying them. Overhead (the van, insurance, license, phone, the hours nobody pays you for) is spread across the job as a percentage, and profit is applied last. For more detail, see our guides on how to estimate a plumbing job and how to price plumbing jobs.
This is the mistake that quietly costs plumbers money. A 20% markup on a $1,000 cost gives a $1,200 bid, and your profit is $200 on $1,200, which is a 16.7% margin, not 20%. To actually keep 20% of the price you divide by 0.80 and bid $1,250. The calculator treats the profit field as a margin and divides, so the number you type is the share of the bid you keep. Overhead is applied to cost before that, because overhead is a cost, not a profit.
These are common starting points in the United States for residential work. Treat them as a baseline and replace them with your own recorded times, which is the single biggest improvement you can make to your pricing.
| Work | Typical labor time |
|---|---|
| Replace a stop or shut-off valve | 0.75 h each |
| Clear a blocked sink or basin | 1.0 h |
| Replace a tap or faucet | 1.0 h each |
| Replace a toilet | 2.0 h each |
| Clear a main drain or sewer line | 2.0 h |
| Replace a shower valve or mixer | 3.0 h |
| Replace a tank water heater | 4.0 h |
| Install a tankless water heater | 6.0 h |
| Plumber hourly rate | $75 to $150 / h |
| Call-out or diagnostic fee | $50 to $150 |
| Out-of-hours premium | 50% to 100% on labor |
Record your real times on the next ten jobs and replace the defaults with them, because your times beat any published average. Charge the call-out whether or not the work goes ahead, and say so when the customer books, or diagnosing a fault for free becomes most of your week. Quote the out-of-hours premium at the time of the call rather than on the invoice afterwards, which is where the arguments come from. Write down what you have NOT priced: a wall opened, a floor lifted, a pipe found to be the wrong material. When the job is agreed, our free plumbing quote template and estimate and quote generator turn the same line items into a document you can send in seconds.
Once the estimate is accepted, invoice the job straight away and keep the payment terms short:
From our invoice data: Shorter terms bring the money in sooner: invoices due on receipt are paid in 15.9 days on average and Net 30 invoices in 47.2 days, while the share paid by the due date barely changes (39.1% against 42.3%).
Source: Billbooks invoice payment study, 53,095 paid invoices from 180 businesses, 2007 to August 2026. See the invoice payment study
This calculator provides estimates for planning purposes only. Your final quote should reflect your own costs, your own times, local rates and what you find when you get there.
Bid the job here, then send a branded estimate and invoice, collect payment online, and track it all from one Billbooks account.
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Every trade bills differently. See how Billbooks fits yours:
Several small jobs a day, labor and materials on one invoice.
Deposits, materials markup, and job line items, handled right.
Keep the diagnostic fee separate from the repair cost.
Progress billing, retainage, and change orders.
Approve the extra work in writing, get paid at the counter.
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