Plumbing costs
13 priced projects, from a $125 backflow preventer testing to a $7,500 whole-house repipe. Most plumbing is billed against a shop rate rather than a fixed project price, so the useful question is how many hours a job takes and what the local rate does to them.
All 13, one axis
national ranges · typical marked · $0 – $20,0001 of the 13 have a cost guide of their own; the rest are priced from the same dataset.
The trade range, metro by metro
$0 – $20,000The typical project, adjusted by each metro's measured labour index. The spread between the cheapest and the dearest metro is 56% on identical work.
Also plumbing work
priced under the silo that owns them- Toilet Installation $400
- Toilet Fill Valve Replacement $125
- Bathroom Plumbing Rough-In $3,000
- Bathtub Replacement $2,500
- Shower Valve Replacement $425
- Bathroom Sink Installation $650
Price plumbing work
The typical one runs $3,425 in Chicago against $2,190 in San Antonio. The calculator below does the same for all 13. The method sets out where the factor comes from.
Cost Calculator
To get exact pricing for your project, request written quotes from at least three licensed contractors in New York.
Questions
- Why is plumbing quoted by the hour when other trades quote the job?
- Because the work is found rather than measured. A pipe repair runs $200 – $2,000 against a fixed-scope water heater installation at $800 – $3,000, and the spread on the repair is almost entirely how long it takes to reach the pipe.
- What separates a cheap plumbing call from an expensive one?
- Access, and whether anything has to be opened up. Drain cleaning runs $150 – $500 and a faucet repair $150 – $500 because both are reached from outside the wall; the same fault behind plaster or under a slab moves into the pipe repair range of $200 – $2,000.
- Does a plumber charge what they earn per hour?
- No, and the gap is large. The shop rate a homeowner is billed carries overhead, vehicle, insurance, licensing and warranty on top of the tradesperson's wage, so the billed figure runs several times the hourly wage that BLS records for the occupation.
- Which metro moves plumbing prices most?
- Chicago, by both measures on this site. It carries the highest labour adjustment factor of the twenty metros priced here, and the BLS wage data for plumbers separately puts it at the top — the two datasets agree, which they do not always do.
How the scale is built
Base ranges
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025
- Published contractor and industry pricing ranges
- Manufacturer and retailer material pricing
Metro adjustment
Labor adjustment factors are measured from BLS metropolitan wage data: the median ratio of local to national hourly wages across the ten trades this site prices.
Drawing rules
Every chart on a page shares one axis unless its caption says otherwise. Bars are drawn from zero and are never truncated. Full method →
Last updated: October 2026
Estimates, not quotes. These cost estimates are based on aggregated data from public sources. Actual costs vary by project scope, contractor, and local conditions. Always obtain multiple written quotes from licensed professionals. This site sells nothing, lists no contractors and takes no payment for placement. Methodology →