How Much to Charge for Process Serving
Standard process serving typically runs $75–$175 per serve including three attempts within a stated radius, with additional attempts at $20–$50 each, rush or same-day service adding $25–$75, mileage beyond the radius at $0.70–$1.00 per mile, and skip tracing or stakeout work at $75–$125 per hour. Rural serves and evasive defendants should be quoted with a higher included-attempt count or moved to hourly.
Base rates
- Standard serve — $75–$175, including 3 attempts within a stated radius
- Additional attempt — $20–$50 each
- Rush / same-day — +$25–$75
- Evening, weekend, holiday attempt — premium
- Mileage beyond radius — $0.70–$1.00/mile
- Skip tracing — $50–$150 flat, or hourly
- Stakeout / surveillance — $75–$125/hr
- Court filing or pickup — $25–$75
- Affidavit of non-service — base rate, attempts documented
What the base rate has to cover
- The drive, at whatever time of day the serve actually requires
- Three genuine attempts, varied by time
- The affidavit and its notarization
- Your license, bond, and insurance
- The records that make the service hold up
If any of those aren’t covered at your current rate, it’s the rate that’s wrong, not the market.
Price the difficulty, not the document
A defendant living at a known address is a $95 job. An evasive defendant with a stale address is an investigation, and it should convert to hourly with authorization instead of quietly eating six unpaid trips.
Bill the non-service, always
You can’t control whether someone’s home. You can control whether you documented it.
Attempts made, times logged, affidavit produced — that’s a completed job, and firms will treat it as one when you invoice it as one.
Local beats national on responsiveness — charge for it
You can attempt before work and again after dinner on the same day. National platforms route to whoever’s available, and often that’s nobody until tomorrow.
That’s the product firms are actually buying, and it’s worth more than the $20 they’d save going with a national platform.
Frequently asked questions
Should I compete with national platforms on price?
No. Compete on being local, fast, and reachable — you can attempt at 6am and again at 9pm the same day, which a national routing platform cannot promise. Price for that, and say it plainly when a firm asks why you're higher.
How many attempts should the base rate include?
Three, within a stated radius, at varied times of day. Three is the industry expectation and it's also the honest number — most serves land inside it, and anything beyond it is genuinely additional work.
What should rural serves cost?
Base rate plus mileage beyond the radius, and consider a higher included-attempt count. A 60-mile round trip per attempt is a different business from a suburban route, and pricing it as the same job is a slow loss.
When do I switch a job to hourly?
When it becomes an investigation — evasive defendant, unknown address, or surveillance. Say so before you start, get authorization for a stated number of hours, and bill against it. Firms authorize this routinely; what they resent is discovering it on an invoice.