National benchmark
£188
A modelled benchmark, published beside the guide spread rather than derived from it.
Our benchmark for a handyman is £188 a day.
Published UK price guides put handymen between £90 and £280, checked 30 September 2026.
Sources: HaMuch, MyJobQuote, MyBuilder and PriceYourJob (2025 guide).
Handyman rates across 30 towns
Ranked by modelled handyman day rate, built the way the method band below sets out. The modelled range beside each town is drawn to one shared scale, so two handyman towns can be read straight off against each other.
Showing all 30 towns.
No town on this page matches that. All 30 are in the table, and the town index explains which towns are not modelled and why.
| # | Town | Rate | vs £188 | Modelled range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GuildfordSouth East£166 to £287 | £221 | £33 above | |
| 2 | OxfordSouth East£161 to £280 | £215 | £27 above | |
| 3 | CambridgeEast of England£159 to £276 | £212 | £24 above | |
| 4 | BrightonSouth East£155 to £268 | £206 | £18 above | |
| 5 | BathSouth West£149 to £259 | £199 | £11 above | |
| 6 | ReadingSouth East£149 to £257 | £198 | £10 above | |
| 7 | BristolSouth West£145 to £251 | £193 | £5 above | |
| 8 | Milton KeynesSouth East£145 to £251 | £193 | £5 above | |
| 9 | CheltenhamSouth West£143 to £247 | £190 | £2 above | |
| 10 | EdinburghScotland£143 to £247 | £190 | £2 above | |
| 11 | ExeterSouth West£137 to £238 | £183 | £5 below | |
| 12 | YorkYorkshire£137 to £238 | £183 | £5 below | |
| 13 | PortsmouthSouth East£137 to £237 | £182 | £6 below | |
| 14 | NorthamptonEast Midlands£135 to £234 | £180 | £8 below | |
| 15 | SouthamptonSouth East£135 to £234 | £180 | £8 below | |
| 16 | CardiffWales£133 to £230 | £177 | £11 below | |
| 17 | ManchesterNorth West£133 to £230 | £177 | £11 below | |
| 18 | NorwichEast of England£133 to £230 | £177 | £11 below | |
| 19 | BirminghamWest Midlands£131 to £226 | £174 | £14 below | |
| 20 | LeedsYorkshire£131 to £226 | £174 | £14 below | |
| 21 | CoventryWest Midlands£128 to £222 | £171 | £17 below | |
| 22 | LeicesterEast Midlands£128 to £222 | £171 | £17 below | |
| 23 | GlasgowScotland£128 to £221 | £170 | £18 below | |
| 24 | SheffieldYorkshire£127 to £220 | £169 | £19 below | |
| 25 | DerbyEast Midlands£124 to £215 | £165 | £23 below | |
| 26 | LiverpoolNorth West£124 to £215 | £165 | £23 below | |
| 27 | NewcastleNorth East£122 to £212 | £163 | £25 below | |
| 28 | NottinghamEast Midlands£122 to £212 | £163 | £25 below | |
| 29 | Stoke-on-TrentWest Midlands£119 to £205 | £158 | £30 below | |
| 30 | SunderlandNorth East£113 to £195 | £150 | £38 below |
Read the rangeEvery range spans the same fraction of its own town rate, 0.75 to 1.30, so a higher priced town shows a wider one.That extra width is arithmetic and not evidence, because the range is a fixed rule rather than a measurement.
- Scale every bar drawn on £110 to £290
- Range the modelled range, the rate x 0.75 and x 1.30
Your next step
You have the £188 handyman benchmark, so the next step is a handyman rate that covers your own costs.
Put in the take home you want, your van and your insurance, and the Rate Sorted calculator turns them into your own handyman day rate, ready to price a job with.
Highest town
£221
Guildford, the biggest premium over the benchmark in the 30.
Cheapest town
£150
Sunderland, £38 under the benchmark and the floor of the table.
Published guide spread
£90 to £280
What 4 named guides publish for handymen, checked 30 September 2026.
Hiring a handyman?
A handyman quote between £90 and £280 a day is inside what the UK guides publish, and £188 is the benchmark this site models from.
Quoting as a handyman?
£188 puts handymen 14 of 17 on this site, between £140 for general labourer work and £280 for electrician.
How the 30 towns spread out
Every town on one axis, marked against £188. It shows where the weight of the handyman table sits, and how far each end has travelled from that benchmark.
£188 benchmark
Guildford £221
Sunderland sits at the other end, on £150.
That is a £71 span across the 30 towns for one day of the same work, and because every trade page on this site draws its rail on the identical £110 to £290 scale, handymen can be laid over any other trade here and read tick for tick.
Half the table sits here
17 of the 30 towns fall between £170 and £193. Read that middle £23 band first when a handyman quote needs a quick sanity check against somewhere of a similar size.
Above the benchmark
10 towns clear £188, and 9 of those are in the South East, South West or East of England.
How each town figure is built
Three inputs, in this order, and nothing else goes in.
- 01The trade benchmark, £188Stated and sourced at the top of this page. Nothing on this page works it out again.
- 02A geography multiplier, trade neutralOne multiplier per town, built from earnings data from the ONS and local house prices, applied to every trade the same way.
- 03A modelled range of 0.75 and 1.30Low and high are the town's own modelled rate multiplied by 0.75 and by 1.30, never the benchmark.
Rate estimates blend a national handyman day rate benchmark, checked against dated UK trade price guides, with official ONS regional earnings and local house price data.
Figures are modelled estimates for guidance, not quotes.
Sources: ONS ASHE 2025, UK House Price Index April 2026.
Nothing on this page is a survey of what handymen charged.
The full working behind every handyman figure, with each source dated, is on the methodology page.
Which regions pay the most
The median of the towns we cover in each region, which means a region with one town in it is that one town. London has no modelled town yet, so it does not appear.
South East7 towns covered, £180 to £221£198
East of England2 towns covered, £177 to £212£195
South West4 towns covered, £183 to £199£192
Scotland2 towns covered, £170 to £190£180
Wales1 town covered, £177 to £177£177
Yorkshire3 towns covered, £169 to £183£174
North West2 towns covered, £165 to £177£171
West Midlands3 towns covered, £158 to £174£171
East Midlands4 towns covered, £163 to £180£168
North East2 towns covered, £150 to £163£157
The spread is the story
A Guildford day and a Sunderland day are the same handyman work at a £71 difference.
How the £188 is set, and what checks it
The first card is the spread published according to the named UK price guides. The rest are independent checks that never fed the £188.
What the guides publish
£90 to £280
4 named UK price guides publish a handyman day rate.Between them they run from £90 to £280, and the £188 benchmark sits inside that.It is the figure the benchmark is published beside; the cards after it are the tests.
HaMuch, MyJobQuote, MyBuilder and PriceYourJob (2025 guide), checked 30 September 2026
Office for National Statistics
£625
The Office for National Statistics files general handymen with construction operatives, at £625 a week (2025 pay survey).
ONS ASHE 2025 provisional, employee earnings, not a charge out rate · ASHE Table 14
Hudson Contract, what firms pay
£1,021
Hudson Contract, which tracks what firms pay trades, publishes no handyman trade, so the figure is its all trades average of £1,021 a week, about £204 a day.
Hudson Contract, subcontractor payroll, England and Wales, three year average, July 2023 to June 2026
Fewer guides cover this tradeOnly one price guide publishes a single national handyman day figure, so treat this benchmark with extra care and read it beside the published spread.
This Hudson figure is not a trade figureRead that Hudson number as a whole industry benchmark, not a handyman rate.
Handyman wages and pay rates
What handymen are paid is a different measurement from the £188 a customer is charged, and both are on this page.
Paid as an employee
£625 a week
ONS publishes no handyman code, so the figure is the construction operatives group ONS files general handymen under.It is a wage before tax, not a rate anybody quotes a customer.
Paid as a subcontractor
£204 a day
Hudson Contract paid £1,021 a week on its all trades series, which is £204 over five days.ALL trades averaged together, because Hudson publishes no series for this one
What tradespeople earn sets handymen beside the other 16 trades, sourced 5 September 2026.
Pricing a short job rather than a full day, the £188 works out at £26.86 an hour on the working day this site assumes, which is ours rather than a published figure.
What the trades charge an hour sets that against the hourly range the price guides publish for handymen, and names the day it divides by.
Against the decorator benchmark
Decorators benchmark at £200 a day on this site.
Handyman work comes in £12 under that figure.
- Handyman benchmark
- £188
- Painter and decorator benchmark
- £200
- Gap at the benchmark
- £12 under
Checkatrade London day
£350
Checkatrade publishes London handymen at £350 a day and no national day rate at all.None of the 30 towns here is London, and this site models no London rate.
Common questions
The same answers the structured data on this page gives a search engine, word for word.
How much does a handyman charge per day in the UK?
Our benchmark for a handyman is £188 a day.
Published UK price guides put handymen between £90 and £280, checked 30 September 2026.
Sources: HaMuch, MyJobQuote, MyBuilder and PriceYourJob (2025 guide).
Across the 30 modelled towns the figure runs from £150 in Sunderland to £221 in Guildford.
Does the handyman day rate include materials or VAT?
No.
The £188 is one full working day of handyman labour, before materials and VAT.
Why do handyman rates differ between towns?
The £188 benchmark is spread town by town with ONS regional earnings (ASHE 2025) and local house prices (UK House Price Index, April 2026).
That is what puts £221 on Guildford and £150 on Sunderland.
That is a £71 gap across the 30 towns for the same day of handyman work.
What is the handyman pay rate in the UK?
The handyman pay rate depends on who is paying it.
ONS publishes no handyman code, so the figure is the construction operatives group ONS files general handymen under.
Employed on a payroll, handymen earn an ONS median of £625 a week, under SOC 8159.
For handymen paid as subcontractors instead, the nearest Hudson Contract figure is its all trades series at £1,021 a week, which works out at about £204 a day over a five day week.
That is an all trades average, as Hudson has no handyman series.
Neither is the £188 a handyman charges a customer.
Take the data
Every figure on this page is in the file, with the same sources and the same date.
Download · CSVhandyman-day-rates.csv30 rows, one per town, with the rate, the modelled range and the published spread.
Cite this pageThe Day Rate Report, Handyman day rates, 30 September 2026, https://thedayrate.co.uk/handyman-day-rates/
Embed this figure
The handyman card carries the benchmark and the date, and the link goes to this page.
<a href="https://thedayrate.co.uk/handyman-day-rates/"><img src="https://thedayrate.co.uk/og/handyman-day-rates.png" alt="Handyman day rates in 30 UK towns, from The Day Rate Report" width="1200" height="630"></a>
The handyman figures are free to use in an article, a fact check or a quote, and a credit with a link back is all we ask, under CC BY 4.0.
Quoting handyman work yourself?The £188 handyman benchmark beside every other trade on this site, read from the side of the person sending the invoice.What should I chargeWeighing up a handyman quote?A £188 handyman day multiplied by the day count is the sum behind a whole job price.Day rate or price per job
The full guide index carries all 12, including the ones that turn the handyman day rate into a job price.