Type your numbers. See your break-even, the price to quote, and exactly what pricing on markup instead of margin is costing you. No signup, nothing to download.
Embed this calculator on your site
In short: Price a contractor job from cost, not a going rate. On the defaults below, 8 hours at a $32.50 loaded rate is $260.00, plus $180.00 of materials for the job, plus $66.00 overhead, gives a $506.00 break-even. At a 35% margin the price to quote is $778.46. Change any number to see yours.
Send the result to yourself along with the free Job Pricing Starter — the same maths as a spreadsheet you can keep, in Excel or Google Sheets. No card, no trial.
No black box. Five steps, in order — check every one of them against your own job.
This page does one job at a time and forgets it. The spreadsheets keep every job, add the costs specific to your trade, work offline in Excel and Google Sheets, and are a one-time purchase — no subscription.
See the calculators →A wage is not a rate. Add employer payroll tax and a margin and the price per paid hour is about 1.66 times the wage, before overhead.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes median hourly wages for each occupation (OEWS, May 2025, national). The table runs eight of them through the same arithmetic as the calculator above: wage plus 7.65% employer Social Security and Medicare tax, then divided by 0.65 for a 35% margin on price. These are floors. They leave out workers' compensation, insurance, vehicles, tools, your own time and every other overhead line, so a real quote sits higher.
| Occupation | Median wage | Wage plus FICA | Price per paid hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electricians | $30.38 | $32.70 | $50.31 |
| Plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters | $30.67 | $33.02 | $50.79 |
| HVAC mechanics and installers | $29.33 | $31.57 | $48.57 |
| Carpenters | $29.12 | $31.35 | $48.23 |
| Painters, construction and maintenance | $23.75 | $25.57 | $39.33 |
| Landscaping and groundskeeping workers | $18.82 | $20.26 | $31.17 |
| Janitors and cleaners | $17.71 | $19.06 | $29.33 |
| Maintenance and repair workers, general | $23.84 | $25.66 | $39.48 |
Not every paid hour is billed. If 65% of your paid hours are billable, divide the price again by 0.65: the electrician row becomes $77.40 per billable hour. The full table for 27 trades, the multiplier grid for other margins and billable shares, and the method are in contractor hourly rate by trade. Put your own wage, burden and overhead into the calculator above for a number you can quote.
Work out the loaded cost of the labour (the wage plus payroll tax, workers comp, insurance and paid time off; the example assumes 30% on top, use your own figure), add materials, add your overhead share. That total is your break-even: below it you paid to work. Your price is the break-even divided by one minus your target margin - not cost plus a markup.
It depends on the wage you pay and what the business must cover. With only employer payroll tax (7.65%) and a 35% margin, one paid hour is priced at about 1.66 times the wage. BLS's May 2025 median electrician wage of $30.38 gives $50.31. Overhead, insurance and non-billable hours raise it, so enter your own figures above.
Only through the labor burden percentage you enter. The example uses 30% on top of the wage, which is a placeholder: set it from your own payroll records, state unemployment tax, workers' compensation rate and insurance. Your own time is not added automatically, so enter a wage for yourself if you work the jobs.
Markup is a percentage added on top of cost. Margin is the share of the final price you keep. Add 35% as markup to $506 of cost and you bill $683.10 and keep 25.9%. Price for a 35% margin on the same $506 and you bill $778.46. That is $95.36 more on one job for identical work, and at three jobs a week it is $14,876 a year.
More than the wage. Employer payroll tax alone is 7.65% (Social Security and Medicare), and unemployment tax, workers compensation, liability insurance and paid time off come on top; the total depends on your state and policies. This page assumes 30%, which takes a $25 an hour worker to $32.50 an hour before any vehicle or equipment share. Pricing off the wage instead of the loaded cost understates every quote you write.
Yes, and there is no signup. It runs entirely in your browser - the numbers you type never leave your phone or computer. You only give an email if you want the results and the free spreadsheet sent to you.
Then it is worth twenty minutes. I am not a contractor — I do the arithmetic. On the call you tell me how you price now, and at the end I tell you honestly whether a model built on your numbers would help you or whether this calculator is already enough. Both answers happen.
Book a 20-minute call →No cost and no obligation. What I will not promise you is more won jobs — a correct price sometimes loses work, and that is the method working, not a fault in it.
