HVAC Labor Rate and Maintenance Agreement Pricing

The HVAC wage and what the work includes

BLS reports a May 2025 national median of $61,010 a year, or $29.33 an hour on 2,080 hours, for heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics and installers, with about 440,900 jobs (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook). The lowest-paid 10% earned less than $40,050 (about $19.25 an hour) and the highest-paid 10% more than $95,210 (about $45.77). For the plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors that employ 68% of these workers, the median is $60,030, about $28.86 an hour.

Two other facts on that page matter for pricing. BLS says residential technicians may sell service contracts, and that the service usually includes inspecting the system, cleaning ducts, replacing filters and checking refrigerant levels. It also says overtime and irregular hours are common in the peak heating and cooling seasons. Federal law sets overtime for nonexempt employees at no less than one and one-half times the regular rate for hours over 40 in a workweek (U.S. Department of Labor), so at $29.33 a peak-season overtime hour costs about $44.00 in wages alone.

A national median is not what you pay. Use the wage from your payroll register, per person.

The example shop at the HVAC median

These are the calculator's inputs with the trade set to HVAC and no state chosen, so the wage is the national median. Paid leave is the BLS private-industry average; overhead, the SUTA rate and the profit target are examples.

• Wage: $29.33 an hour, 2,080 paid hours, so $61,006.40 of gross pay.
• Paid time off: 8 holidays, 11 vacation days and 7 sick days, 208 hours, leaving 1,872 worked hours.
• Billable efficiency: 65% of worked hours, the site default. It comes from a software vendor's sample of 300 HVAC companies, measured on paid time and reported by ACHR News on June 16, 2026; it counts about 1.13 hours a day of driving that trip charges and flat-rate pricing do not recover (ACHR News). The report measured 65% as a share of paid time; applying it to worked hours, as the calculator does, gives fewer billable hours and a higher rate. See billable efficiency.
• Payroll taxes: Social Security 6.2% and Medicare 1.45% (IRS Topic 751); FUTA 0.6% on the first $7,000 after the state credit (IRS Topic 759); state unemployment 2.7% on the first $9,000 (an example).
• Workers' comp and benefits: the calculator defaults of $2.67 per $100 of payroll and 15.25% of gross pay, explained in the labor burden guide.
• Overhead: $120,000 a year for three techs (example). Truck: $16,719.14 a year per tech. Net profit: 10% of price (example).

The same shop at the plumber median of $30.67 lands at $125.20, so the HVAC median is $3.20 lower. Across the BLS range above, from $19.25 to $45.77 an hour, the rate runs from $97.96 to $161.21. The wage swings it far more than the trade does.

Pricing a two-visit agreement from that rate

ENERGY STAR recommends an annual pre-season check-up by a contractor, with cooling checked in spring and heating in fall, and lists what a technician looks at: electrical connections, the condensate drain, coils, refrigerant level and blower components for cooling, and gas connections, combustion and the heat exchanger for heating (ENERGY STAR). The page gives no dollar figures for savings, so a plan's price has to rest on your own costs, not on a promised benefit.

Here is a two-visit plan, one in spring and one in fall. The visit time and supplies are examples; time them on your own jobs.

• On-site time: 1.0 hour per visit.
• Drive and paperwork billed to the visit: 0.5 hour. The 65% efficiency already absorbs unrecovered driving, so pricing 0.5 hour of drive into the visit, and counting it as billable when you measure efficiency, recovers it once, not twice.
• Supplies: a filter and consumables at a cost of $12.00, priced at a 40% margin, which is $12.00 ÷ (1 − 0.40) = $20.00 (an example; see markup vs margin).

Each visit is 1.5 hours × $122.00 = $183.00 of labor plus $20.00 of supplies, or $203.00. Two visits make $406.00 a year. The shop's cost for the same plan is 3.0 hours × $109.80 = $329.40 plus $24.00 of supplies, or $353.40, which leaves $52.60 of profit, 13% of the price.

Visit length moves the price more than anything else on the sheet. With 0.5 hour of drive and paperwork and $20.00 of priced supplies per visit, two visits cost:

A plan priced from the price on a competitor's flyer, not from these hours, is a guess. Suppose a plan is offered at $149.00 a year (an example price). After $24.00 of supplies at cost, $125.00 is left to pay for 3.0 hours, or $41.67 an hour against a $109.80 break-even. At the break-even rate, $125.00 covers only 1.14 hours of the two visits. The plan loses money unless the visits are very short or the agreement sells repair work you can price at the full rate.

Member discounts come out of profit

Plans often promise members a discount on repairs. Take a 2-hour repair with $100.00 of parts, priced at the same 40% margin ($100.00 ÷ 0.60 = $166.67). At the full rate the job is 2 × $122.00 + $166.67 = $410.67. Its cost is 2 × $109.80 + $100.00 = $319.60, so profit is $91.07, or 22% of the price.

A 10% member discount takes $41.07 off, to $369.60. Profit falls to $50.00, about 14% of the price, and the discount has given away 45% of the profit on that job. That can still be the right call if members also buy more work or fill slow weeks, but those gains are yours to measure; none of the sources above states one. Price the discount knowing what it costs.

Before you set the price

• Time your visits. Use the clock times from your last 20 or so agreement visits, including drive and paperwork, not the checklist length.
• Count drive time once. If the visit price includes drive and paperwork, treat that time as billable when you measure efficiency, or you recover it twice. The service call fee guide shows the same rule for trip charges.
• Check the wage. Use the payroll register for the techs who run the visits; an apprentice and a lead tech do not cost the same.
• Ask about tax and plan rules. Sales tax on service contracts and any rules on how plans are sold differ by state. Your state revenue department, an attorney or your accountant can say what applies; the sales tax guide shows how different states treat labor and materials.

All wage, payroll and plan figures here are general information, not tax, legal or insurance advice.

Next step

Open the labor rate calculator, enter your HVAC techs' real wages, your policy's comp rate and last year's billable hours, then multiply your measured visit time by the result. Compare that number with what your current plan charges.