How Much to Charge for Onsite Computer Repair
Onsite computer repair is typically billed at $75–$150 per hour for residential work and $100–$200 for small business, with a one-hour minimum, a $25–$75 trip charge, and a $50–$100 diagnostic credited against the repair. Common jobs — virus removal, OS reinstall, data transfer, new-PC setup — are often quoted flat instead, and after-hours or same-day work carries a stated premium.
The baseline numbers
- Residential labor — $75–$150/hr, one-hour minimum
- Small business labor — $100–$200/hr
- Diagnostic — $50–$100, credited against the repair
- Trip charge — $25–$75, by distance
- After-hours / same-day — 1.5× or a stated flat premium
Flat-rate the jobs you’ve done a hundred times
A customer with a slow laptop wants a price, not a rate. These four are predictable enough to quote flat:
- Virus / malware removal — $100–$200
- OS reinstall with data preserved — $150–$250
- Data transfer to a new machine — $100–$200
- New PC setup and migration — $150–$300
Hourly is for troubleshooting, where the scope genuinely isn’t knowable up front.
The trip charge you keep giving away
Twenty minutes each way plus fuel is most of an hour, and it happens on every single job. Print the trip charge every time, even when you waive it — a discount the customer can see buys goodwill, while an invisible one buys nothing at all.
Business clients change the math
Residential work is one-off and price-sensitive. Small business work is recurring, less price-sensitive, and predictable enough to plan a week around. A monthly arrangement with three small offices beats forty laptop calls a year, and it’s priced per month, not per incident.
Say the number before you open the machine
Almost every billing dispute in this trade traces back to a price nobody said out loud before the work started. Quote the diagnostic on the phone, quote the repair before you begin it, and get a yes by text — then the invoice is a formality rather than a negotiation.
Frequently asked questions
Hourly or flat rate?
Flat for anything you've done fifty times — a reinstall, a data transfer, a new-PC setup — because you already know how long it takes and the customer wants a number. Hourly for troubleshooting, where the honest answer is that nobody knows yet.
Should I charge business clients more than residential?
Yes. A business is buying downtime avoidance, not a favor, and the response time they expect costs you more to provide. The same hour on a Tuesday is worth more to a five-person office than to a retiree with a slow laptop.
Do I charge if I can't fix it?
Yes — the diagnostic, quoted before you started. Time spent proving a motherboard is dead is the same time as time spent fixing one, and a tech who works for free on unfixable machines is a tech who loses money on the hardest jobs.
How do I raise my rate on existing clients?
Announce it once, in writing, with a date, and honor the old rate until then. Rates that creep up silently on the invoice are how a good recurring client becomes a former one.