How Much Should an Electrician Charge Per Hour in the UK?

TL;DR: There is no official national hourly or day rate for self-employed UK electricians. Work out your real cost per chargeable hour first — overheads, unpaid admin, travel and the hours you do not bill — then set a rate that covers it with margin left over. Treat any published price range as a sense-check requiring a dated source, not a rate to copy.

There is no single national hourly rate for a UK electrician. Rates vary by area, work type, competence, scope, insurance, travel, whether VAT applies and the amount of non-billable work. Calculate your own floor first. If you test an example range such as £40–£70 per hour or £200–£400 per day, treat it only as a hypothetical sensitivity band unless you can support it with a current, relevant source; it is not a claim about the 2026 market.

These are ranges, not a recommendation. Your right number depends on your area, your work type, your overheads and your competence. The rest of this guide shows how to find it instead of guessing it.

Most new electricians ask the wrong question first. They ask "what do other electricians charge?" when they should ask "what does an hour of my time actually need to earn?"

The chargeable hour on the tools is not the whole business. A paid hour has to carry the unpaid hours around it. Travel between jobs. Quoting work you may not win. Wholesaler runs. Answering messages. Writing certificates. Chasing invoices. Calibrating testers. Doing the books. Training to stay current.

If you bill 25 hours in a 40-hour week, the other 15 hours still cost you. They have to be paid for somewhere, and the only place they can be paid for is inside your rate. An electrician charging £35 an hour while billing 25 hours a week is often earning less than an employed spark with none of the risk.

So the real task is not "match the local rate". It is "set a rate that covers my true cost per chargeable hour, then add the margin that makes self-employment worth it".

Here is a worked example using round numbers. Adjust every figure to your own business — these are illustrative, not a quote.

Say you want to take home £40,000 a year before tax. Start by adding your annual business costs on top:

• Van running costs, fuel and maintenance: £6,000
• Public liability and professional indemnity insurance: £700
• Optional competent person scheme fees and assessment budget: £600 (a hypothetical input only; competent person scheme membership is voluntary, provider fees vary and Building Control is the alternative route where applicable)
• Tester calibration, tools and consumables: £1,200
• Phone, software, bookkeeping and subscriptions: £500
• Accountant: £600

That is roughly £9,600 of overhead on top of the £40,000 you want to keep. So the business needs to generate about £49,600 before tax.

Now the hours. There are about 1,920 working hours in a 48-week year at 40 hours a week. But you will not bill all of them. If 60% of your time is genuinely chargeable — a realistic figure for a one-person business doing domestic work — that is around 1,150 billable hours.

£49,600 divided by 1,150 hours is about £43 per hour just to hit your target before tax. That is your floor, not your rate. Price below it and you are subsidising your own customers.

This single calculation is more useful than any "average electrician rate" article. It tells you the number below which the business does not work for your costs, in your area, at your billable ratio.

A spreadsheet makes this faster to test. The LaunchKit electrician pricing calculator (Premium tier, £14.99) is an Excel workbook built to run exactly this kind of labour, overhead, travel and margin breakdown, so you can change the billable-hours assumption and watch the floor move. It does not set your prices for you. It shows you what each price actually leaves once the business is paid.

Both have a place, and good electricians use each for the right job.

Use an hourly rate for uncertain work where the scope can change. Fault finding is the obvious case. You are selling paid diagnosis, not a promise that the fault is fixed in an hour. Small works, minor additions and "can you just look at this" call-outs also suit hourly pricing.

Use a fixed price for well-scoped jobs you have surveyed properly. A consumer unit change, a known number of additional sockets, a lighting circuit — once you can control the assumptions, a fixed price protects the customer from an open meter and protects you from underquoting if you work efficiently.

Use a day rate for full-day jobs where hourly accounting becomes pointless. Rewires, larger installs and planned upgrades often work better as day or staged pricing, especially where materials are significant and cash flow matters.

The mistake is using one model for everything. An electrician who quotes fixed prices for fault finding will lose money on the awkward jobs. One who charges hourly for a surveyed consumer unit change will worry the customer with an uncapped bill.

Small jobs are admin-heavy out of all proportion to their size. A single light fitting replacement still involves travel, parking, a quick risk assessment, safe isolation, the work itself, testing, an invoice, payment and any warranty questions afterwards.

If you charge a flat hourly rate with no minimum, those jobs lose money. A minimum call-out or first-hour charge fixes this. It says the first slice of your time has a floor price because the cost of turning up is real whether the job takes ten minutes or fifty.

Be clear about it up front. Customers accept a call-out charge when they understand it covers attendance, diagnosis and safe working. They resent it when it appears as a surprise on the invoice.

Your right number is not the same as the electrician two streets over. The honest variables include:

• Location. London and the South East generally support higher rates than much of the rest of the UK. Travel area and traffic also affect how many hours you can bill.
• Work type. EICRs done properly, commercial maintenance, EV charging and industrial work usually price above general domestic repair.
• Overheads. Insurance, calibrated test equipment and lawful notification costs must be priced. If you voluntarily join a competent person scheme, include the current provider fee; if a job uses Building Control, include the applicable job cost instead.
• Competence and certification. Being able to inspect, test, certify and stand behind your reports is worth more than time alone. It is part of the product.
• Billable ratio. The more of your week is genuinely chargeable, the lower your hourly rate can be while still hitting your income target.

None of these are reasons to race to the bottom. A cheap EICR that leaves no time for proper testing, coding and reporting is not a good product. It is a liability quietly priced as a bargain.

Whatever rate you land on, the quote is where it either holds or collapses. A clear quote prevents the "I thought that was included" argument that eats your margin after the job.

A good electrician quote makes the assumptions visible:

• What is included and what is excluded.
• Whether making good is part of the price.
• Whether certification and notification are included.
• Whether access, parking or tenant delays could affect the price.
• How variations are agreed before extra work starts.
• When payment is due.

This is where the admin layer pays for itself. The LaunchKit electrician business documents (Standard tier, £11.99) cover the customer-facing forms that sit around a priced job — quote with exclusions stated, job sheet, terms and handover wording — so the rate you worked out so carefully is not undermined by a vague one-line quote. They are a starting structure to adapt to your own business, not a replacement for surveying the job properly.

A rate is a hypothesis until your own records prove it. An electrician business can look busy while cash quietly leaks — materials on the trade account, fuel on a personal card, a late-paying landlord, a tester calibration receipt lost in an email.

Three numbers tell you whether your rate is working:

• Average invoice after materials. If this is thin, your labour rate or your materials markup is too low.
• Callback rate per ten jobs. Callbacks are unpaid hours that quietly drop your effective rate.
• Days between invoice and payment. A good rate on paper means nothing if you wait nine weeks to be paid.

Keep money records boring and weekly. Record income, log expenses against jobs, keep vehicle costs separate, and review debtors every Friday. The LaunchKit financial forms bundle (Standard tier, £11.99) gives you the income, expense and mileage records to do this without inventing a system from scratch. Pair it with official HMRC guidance and your accountant. It is a record habit, not a tax-return tool or tax advice.

If you are still at the planning stage, the LaunchKit guide on how to start an electrician business in the UK walks through scheme route, insurance and the first 90 days, and it pairs naturally with getting your rate right before the diary fills.

There is no official national figure, and rates vary widely by area and work type. Calculate from your own cost and billable capacity. Any example band in this article is a hypothetical sensitivity test, not evidence that the market commonly charges that amount.

Add your target take-home pay to your annual business overheads, then divide by your realistic billable hours — not your total working hours. A one-person domestic business often bills around 60% of its time. The result is your floor; add margin on top of that.

A minimum call-out or first-hour charge is sensible for small jobs, because attendance, diagnosis and safe isolation cost the same whether the job takes ten minutes or an hour. Explain it up front so it is never a surprise on the invoice.

Because it has to cover costs an employee does not pay personally: van, insurance, tools, unpaid admin, travel, the hours you cannot bill and, where relevant, either optional scheme fees or job-specific Building Control charges. Compare the full annual result rather than an hourly wage alone.

Use local rates as a reality check, not a starting point. A competitor's price tells you nothing about their costs, billable ratio or quality. Build your rate from your own numbers, then check it sits within a defensible range for your area and work type.

Often, yes — when done to standard. EICRs require inspection, testing, coding and clear reporting time, and commercial work brings access, out-of-hours and site requirements. Price them so the work can be done properly, not as a race to the lowest number.

Last reviewed: June 2026.

This guide gives ranges and a costing method, not a fixed rate. UK electrician pricing varies by region, work type, overheads and competence, so the worked example uses illustrative numbers you should replace with your own.

Sources checked while preparing this guide:

• Health and Safety Executive's electricity guidance
• GOV.UK rented-sector electrical safety guidance
• GOV.UK VAT registration

LaunchKit guides and templates are designed to help with business admin, planning, pricing, records and customer-facing paperwork. They are not legal, tax or regulatory advice. For regulated work and tax decisions, check the current official guidance and take professional advice where needed.

Written by the LaunchKit team for UK electricians setting their pricing on a sound footing. LaunchKit creates practical business templates, spreadsheets and guides for UK small businesses.