What to charge as an electrician in the UK

Start from your costs, not from what the van down the road charges. A rate copied from someone else can leave you busy and broke, because their van, insurance, hours and pay target aren't yours.

The sum has three parts:

1. 1Add up a year of business costs: van, fuel, tools and test kit, insurance, scheme fees, phone, software, accountant, training and marketing.
2. 2Add the pay you want to take out of the business before tax.
3. 3Divide the total by the hours you can actually bill a customer for in a year. That gives your break-even hourly rate. Multiply by your working day for a day rate.

Then add a margin on top for profit, quiet weeks and bad debts, and check the result against what the market pays. If you're far below the market, you're probably leaving money on the table. If you're far above it, look hard at your costs or the type of work you're chasing.

Every self-employed electrician's costs are different, so use your own bank statements for the last 12 months. The usual lines are:

• Van: finance or lease, insurance, road tax, servicing, tyres and fuel.
• Tools and test equipment: replacements, calibration and the kit you'll need for new work.
• Insurance: public liability at the least, plus cover for tools and professional indemnity if you design installations.
• Competent person scheme fees and assessments, if you self-certify notifiable work.
• Phone, software for quotes and invoices, and your accountant.
• Training and keeping up to date with the wiring regulations.
• Marketing: website, directory listings, lead sites and signwriting.

Scheme fees are a fixed cost worth checking every year. NICEIC's Domestic Installer scheme costs £695 plus VAT in the first year and £595 plus VAT a year after that, at 2026 to 2027 prices, with a small fee for each job you notify. Competent person schemes let you self-certify notifiable work instead of getting building regulations approval.

If you use simplified expenses for your vehicle instead of claiming actual costs, HMRC's flat rate for cars and goods vehicles is 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in 2026 to 2027, and 25p a mile after that. That rate is for working out your tax, but it's also a useful check on what your van really costs you per mile.

This is where most rates go wrong. You might work 50 hours a week, but you can't bill a customer for driving to the wholesaler, pricing jobs, chasing invoices, waiting for access or going back to fix a snag.

To estimate your billable hours:

1. 1Take the weeks you'll work in a year after holidays, bank holidays and the odd sick day.
2. 2Multiply by the days and hours you work on site.
3. 3Take off the share of that time you can't charge for. Check two normal weeks in your diary to see what that share really is.

A lower billable share means a higher rate. That's why a self-employed rate looks high next to employed pay: the ONS puts the median hourly pay of employed electricians and electrical fitters at £19.00 in 2025, but an employee doesn't pay for the van, the tools, the insurance or the hours spent quoting.

The pay figure in your sum is before tax, so set money aside from every job. For the 2026 to 2027 tax year in England, Wales and Northern Ireland:

• Income Tax: the first £12,570 is your Personal Allowance, then 20% up to £50,270 and 40% above that. Scotland has its own bands.
• Class 4 National Insurance: 6% on profits between £12,570 and £50,270, and 2% above that. Class 2 is treated as paid once profits reach £7,105.
• VAT: you must register once your taxable turnover goes over £90,000 in the last 12 months. After that, most work carries 20% VAT, so decide whether your prices to homeowners include it.
• Making Tax Digital: sole traders with qualifying income over £50,000 should have started using Making Tax Digital for Income Tax from 6 April 2026. The threshold drops to £30,000 from April 2027 and £20,000 from April 2028.

If you work as a subcontractor under the Construction Industry Scheme, the contractor deducts 20% from your payments, or 30% if you're not registered. That money counts towards your tax bill, but it still comes out of your cash flow, so plan for it.

These figures are examples to show the sum. They aren't averages for electricians and they aren't Ringzel customer data.

1. 1Working time: 46 weeks × 5 days × 8 hours = 1,840 hours.
2. 2Billable time: three quarters of that, so 1,380 hours.
3. 3Break-even rate: £61,200 ÷ 1,380 = £44.35 an hour.
4. 4Add a 10% margin for profit and quiet weeks: about £49 an hour, or around £390 for an 8-hour day.

On £45,000 of profit, 2026 to 2027 rates give Income Tax of £6,486 and Class 4 National Insurance of £1,945.80, leaving about £36,568. If that take-home isn't enough, change the pay line and run the sum again rather than guessing a new rate.

In this example the result lands inside the market range in the next section. If yours lands well below it, you may be able to charge more. Well above it, check your costs and billable hours before you put the rate up.

Homeowner cost guides show what customers expect to pay, which makes them a useful check on your own number. These are published figures from Checkatrade and MyJobQuote:

Rates are from Checkatrade's electrician hourly rate guide (May 2026). Job prices are from its guides to new socket installation (June 2026), consumer unit replacement (June 2026) and house rewiring (January 2026), and MyJobQuote's EICR cost guide (October 2026). The hourly rate guide says rates are usually higher in London and major cities.

Even one source can disagree with itself: the same Checkatrade guide also gives £55 an hour and £500 a day further down the page. That's why these figures work as a range to sense check against, not a price list.

A small job still costs you the drive, the parking and a slot in your day. Checkatrade notes that some electricians charge a minimum call-out fee, so small jobs can cost more than the hourly rate suggests, and MyJobQuote puts a typical minimum call-out fee at £50 to £80. There are two common ways to cover it:

• A minimum charge, often the first hour, which covers travel and the start of the job.
• A separate call-out fee plus your hourly rate, which is more common for emergency and out-of-hours work.

Whichever you choose, set your emergency rate on purpose. Work out what a call at 10pm costs you: the lost evening, the extra fuel and the slower next morning. Then decide the lowest you'd go out for, and say it on the phone before you set off.

Our guide to out-of-hours call answering covers how to handle the calls you don't want to go out for.

Each suits different work:

Fixed prices are where you earn more as you get faster, because the customer pays for the result, not your time. Build them from your hourly rate and how long the job really takes you, then add materials.

Put prices in writing. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, what you tell a customer about the price can become part of the contract, and if no price is agreed, the customer only has to pay a reasonable price. A clear written quote protects you as much as them.

There's no set rule. Whatever markup you choose has to cover the time spent ordering and collecting parts, returns, waste and standing behind what you fit. Some electricians add a percentage to cost; others build materials into a fixed price for the job.

Be open about it. Show materials as a line on the quote, decide whether you'll fit customer-supplied parts, and if you do, say whether your guarantee covers them.

1. 1Rerun your costs once a year. If van, fuel or insurance went up, your break-even rate went up too.
2. 2Raise prices for new customers first. Give existing customers notice, ideally a month or more.
3. 3Update your fixed prices and your call-out charge, not only your hourly rate.
4. 4Keep a record of quotes won and lost. If you win nearly every quote, you're probably too cheap.

Raising prices loses a few customers, but often not the ones you want to keep. Fewer, better-paid jobs leave more time for the work that pays.

With your rate set, our guide on how to get more electrical work covers where the jobs come from, from landlord inspections to EV chargers.

Once you know your rate, you can put a number on the calls you miss. The cost of one missed call is the value of the job it would have become multiplied by the chance that caller would have booked you.

Using the example rate above, a missed enquiry for a day's work at £390 that books one time in three costs about £130. A missed consumer unit enquiry at Checkatrade's £485 average that books half the time costs about £243. Put your own figures into our missed call calculator to see the weekly and yearly total.

Our guide to what missed calls cost a UK trade goes through the sum in more detail.