How much does a plumber charge per hour?

A solo maintenance plumber, a drainage specialist with an excavator, and a two-van business doing renovations carry completely different overheads - so their rates should sit a long way apart. Copying another plumber's rate means copying a number built for someone else's costs. Here's what pushes plumbing rates up, and how to build yours from your own numbers.

Why plumbing rates sit toward the top

Every hour a plumber bills has to carry costs most trades never see:

• Licence and registration renewals - your plumbing licence or registration, with periodic fees that differ by state. See our licence costs by state pages for current sourced figures.
• Per-job compliance certificates - in Victoria, plumbers lodge Compliance Certificates with the VBA at about $37 and up per job, indexed yearly. Other states run their own certificate schemes with their own fees.
• A heavily stocked vehicle - fittings, valves and consumables riding around so jobs finish in one visit. Stock on the van is money that has to earn its keep through the rate.
• Higher insurance - public liability priced for water damage risk, plus required warranty cover for some work.

None of these appear on an invoice as a line item. They only get paid one way: through the hourly rate.

The rate you charge isn't the rate you keep

Out of every billed hour you're also covering the hours you can't bill - quoting, travel, supplier runs, paperwork - plus the van, super and your own pay, before a cent of profit. A rate that looks healthy against the market can still leave you behind once your real costs come out. Busy and broke usually means the rate was set from the market, not from the costs.

Build your rate from your numbers

The method is four lines of arithmetic. As a worked example - these are illustration figures, not market data; put your own numbers in:

1. Yearly overhead - say $34,000: van running costs, insurance, tools and van stock, phone, software, licence renewals and certificate fees.
2. Your pay plus super - say $90,000 wages, plus 12% super = $100,800.
3. Divide by billable hours - say 1,100 hours you can actually invoice in a year. ($34,000 + $100,800) / 1,100 = about $123 an hour just to break even on those numbers.
4. Add a margin - 10% on top brings it to about $135 an hour (ex GST).

Change any input and the answer moves - that's the point. Your overhead, your wage, your billable hours: your rate.

Work out your real hourly rate

After-hours and emergency work

Plumbing is the trade the phone rings for at 11pm. An after-hours job carries the same fixed travel and vehicle costs as a daytime one, with no other jobs around it to share the day's overhead - and it spends your time outside the hours your rate was built on. Charging a higher after-hours rate is cost recovery, not opportunism. Decide the multiplier before the phone rings, not during the call.

Sources Average hourly rates: ServiceSeeking tradie rate data. Plumbing compliance certificate fees: Victorian Building Authority. Licence and registration fees by state: figrd licence costs guide (sourced per state regulator). Super guarantee rate (12%): Australian Taxation Office. Employee award baseline: Fair Work Ombudsman (Plumbing Award pay guide). Fees vary by state and change yearly - check your own regulator. Worked example figures are illustrations only.