HVAC hourly rate calculator
Work back from what you need to take home, and the van, insurance, tools and slow months, to your hourly rate and the price of a service call, a tune-up and an install day.
Help and background Back to the tool
HVAC · Hourly rate
What goes into an HVAC hourly rate
The tool above opens on a made-up HVAC hourly rate, so you can see the finished paper before you put in your own. Every name and price in the example is made up.
Start yours-
Billable hours, not clock hours
Driving, quoting and picking up parts fill the day. The rate is worked out from the hours you can bill, so it pays for the ones you can't.
-
The slow season
Heating and cooling come in waves. The weeks you don't work are in the sum, so the busy months pay for them.
-
Flat prices from one rate
A service call, a tune-up and an install day priced from the same rate, so your prices agree with each other.
-
What every call has to cover
The van, fuel, insurance, licences, phone and software, spread over the year and carried by each hour you bill.
The papers of one HVAC job
Each one hands what it knows to the next: the rate prices the estimate, the estimate becomes the invoice, and the unit on the invoice goes on the warranty and into the plan. A plan's visit that finds work starts the next estimate.
- 1 Hourly rate You're here
- 2 Estimate Next
- 3 Invoice
- 4 Warranty certificate
- 5 Maintenance plan
Do plumbing too? Plumber hourly rate calculator
Every rule an estimate or a sale at the door has to follow, side by side by place: the trades page
How it works
- 1 Say what you do and where. Then the pay you need to bring home each month, or add it up line by line.
- 2 Set your working year: days, hours, weeks off, holidays, sick days, and how much of the time is booked and paid.
- 3 List what the business costs, as you pay it, and what card and booking fees take.
- 4 Get the rate to charge, what each hour pays for, a price for every service, and the changes that would move it most. Print a price list or the worksheet.
Free, with no account. The sums run in your browser: your figures stay on this device and are never sent to us. Remember is off unless you turn it on, and then keeps them on this device only. The made-up example is never kept.
Good to know
- Why not just double what an employee earns?
- An employee is paid for holidays and sick days, and the employer pays half their CPP and all the rent and tools. Working for yourself, your rate pays for all of it, and only the hours a client books pay at all. So this works from the hours that actually get paid, not from 40 a week.
- Why both halves of CPP?
- Self-employed, you pay the employee and the employer contributions on your net business income, and CPP2 above the first earnings ceiling. Half is deducted on line 22200 of your return, which the estimate allows for.
- What about GST/HST?
- Once your sales pass $30,000 in four quarters in a row, you register and add GST/HST on top of your rate (verify). Clients see the rate before tax and with it. Registered, you claim back the GST/HST on most costs.
- How sure is the number?
- It's a 2026 estimate for a sole proprietor, and it leans high: no RRSP or other deductions, and the rate rounds up. Quebec income tax and QPP use your own rate. Guidance, not tax advice. Check with CRA or your accountant.
Where it fits in a trade
Pricing the job Know the rate that pays you, price the jobs you do again and again from one book, measure it up or price a home's cleaning by the room, hand the customer a written estimate with the rebates they may get, and have them sign the contract.
A hand-off only moves when you press it, and never through a link: signed in, the next tool reads your account's book; signed out, it waits in this browser until the next tool picks it up.
Pricing the job
More for this part of the day
Crew labour rate
A wage isn't what an hour costs. Put in the crew, the working year and the vans, and see what a crew hour really costs and what to charge for it, for the crew and for each role.
Save it: your crew's rate, for the estimate builder
Flat-rate price book
Write down the jobs you do again and again, with the hours and the parts each takes. Every one is priced the same way: your rate, each part marked up by its price, rounded up. One price to say at the door, what an hour of each job earns, and a price list for the customer.
Save it: your price book, kept in step when your rate or parts go up
Estimate & quote builder
Price a job line by line, offer good, better and best, and print an estimate that keeps you inside Ontario's 10% rule.
Save it: estimates linked to your customers
Rebate finder
The rebates a homeowner may get for a heat pump, insulation, windows or solar, worked out with a home energy assessment and without. See which way pays more, what each rebate hangs on, and the steps in the order that keeps it, with a handout for the homeowner.
Save it: your checks, with Today saying when a pre-approval or a claim is due
House cleaning price calculator
Count the rooms, say how often and the state of the home, and add the extras. Get the price a visit, the first deep clean's and every frequency side by side, from your own hour and your own pace, with who cleans what and a quote for the customer.
Save it: your numbers and quotes, for the estimate builder
Renovation contract
Turn the estimate they said yes to into the written contract: the price and taxes, what's paid when, the dates and the terms. Both sign on your phone, and signed at their home it prints with their rights and counts their 10 days to cancel.
Save it: each job's contract, signed and locked
Change order slip
Have the customer sign a change on your phone before the extra work starts: what it adds, the new price and the days, against the estimate and its 10% line.
Save it: each change, signed, on its job
Paint calculator
Enter each room once. See it unfolded in your colours, and get the litres, the cheapest mix of cans and a job sheet to print.
Save it: every job's rooms and colours, ready to quote again
Snow pricing calculator
Measure the driveway, walks or lot and see what one push costs you, then price it per push, per snowfall, by the hour or for the season. See which way pays in a light or heavy winter, plan the storm-night route, and print the quote.
Save it: your sizes, rates, costs, winter and route times
Snow removal contract
Write one place's winter down before the first snow: what's cleared, the snow that starts a visit, when it's done by and how it's paid. They sign on your phone, each payment is billed when it's due, and the visits it pays for are never billed twice.
Save it: each place's contract, signed, season after season