Pricing is the hardest part of being a tradie. Too low and you work yourself broke. Too high and you watch the customer go with a bloke down the road.
The good news: this is mostly a confidence problem, not a math problem. Customers who shop purely on price aren’t customers you want long-term. Here’s how to quote with conviction.
Step 1: Know your real break-even
Most tradies think they know their costs. They don’t. The hourly rate that keeps you afloat is usually 40-60% higher than what you’re charging.
Real cost per billable hour for a solo tradie in Sydney, 2026:
- Van + tools depreciation: ~$8-15/hr
- Fuel: ~$5-12/hr (worse in regional/remote work)
- Phone, internet, software: ~$2-4/hr
- Insurance (public liability, workers comp if you have staff): ~$6-12/hr
- Trade licence, registration, continuing ed: ~$2-5/hr
- Admin time (quoting, invoicing, chasing payments) — unpaid: adds 30-40% to all other costs
- Super + tax: 10% super, 25-32% tax bracket average
A $90/hr billed rate nets you ~$45-55/hr after all of the above. That’s the raw number. If you want to earn $100k/year working a realistic 40 billable hours/week, you need to be billing closer to $110-130/hr.
Step 2: Price by job, not by hour
Fixed-price quotes beat hourly quotes for 90% of jobs. Customers hate hourly because they can’t budget. Tradies lose on hourly because they don’t charge for the 20 minutes they spent fetching a part.
Build a spreadsheet of the 10 most common jobs you do with:
- Your average time spent (track 5-10 real jobs honestly)
- Average materials cost
- Your all-in hourly rate × time = labour
- Materials × 1.4 (markup) + labour + 10% buffer = quote
Now when a customer asks “how much to fix X?” you have a number in 30 seconds. Speed of quote correlates directly with close rate.
Step 3: Quote in writing, immediately
Verbal quotes lose jobs. Email or text the quote while you’re still at the customer’s place, or within 60 minutes of the call. Jobs quoted within 1 hour close at ~70%. Jobs quoted at 24+ hours close at ~35%.
Your written quote should have:
- Exactly what’s included (and what’s not)
- Total price ex GST + inc GST
- Deposit required (if any) and payment terms
- Expected timeline (“Can start Thursday, 2-day job”)
- Your ABN, licence number, contact details
- Quote valid for 30 days
Step 4: Stop discounting automatically
When a customer pushes back on price, most tradies drop 10-15% without a word. That’s the wrong reflex. Try these instead:
- “I can do it for less if we scope it back. Want to leave out X?” — moves the conversation from discount to scope
- “My price is based on [specific thing]. Happy to explain if you want.” — forces them to engage with the value, not just the number
- Silence. If they say “that’s more than I expected”, don’t jump to fix it. Let them fill the silence. Often they’ll talk themselves into it.
If they still say no after that, let them go. The customer who needs 15% off to say yes is the customer who’ll quibble over every little extra once the job starts.
Step 5: Raise your rates every 6-12 months
Costs go up. Skills go up. Rates should go up. Most tradies haven’t raised their rates in 2-3 years and are effectively earning 15% less than they were.
Plan: small increases, frequently, on new jobs only (don’t retroactively raise on existing customers mid-job). 5% every 6 months is better than 20% every 3 years — customers feel the small ones less.
The biggest mindset shift
You’re not selling your time. You’re selling the outcome. The customer with a burst pipe isn’t paying for 90 minutes of your labour — they’re paying for the pipe to stop bursting. Price the outcome, not the hours.
A customer who books the $450 job instead of the $350 one isn’t crazy. They’re paying for confidence: that you’ll show up on time, fix it properly, and not disappear halfway through. That confidence is worth $100.
Where your website fits in
A professional, trust-building website does 80% of the price-confidence work for you before the customer even calls. Reviews, photos of real jobs, clear “what we do” pages, visible pricing guidance — all of it pre-qualifies customers so that by the time they call you, they’re ready to pay your rate.
If your site still says “Call for a quote” with no other information, you’re losing jobs to competitors with better-presented sites, even at higher prices.
Tell us about your trade and we’ll build you a site that justifies your pricing. $199 to start.