Three named guides price a London day. On electricians their published figures run from £150 to £800.
That gap is the useful fact here, and the section below sets out what pulls it so far apart.
A London quote can sit well outside any single guide's range and still be an ordinary price for the work. One tidy London figure cannot tell you that.
Why there is no London figure of ours
The absence is deliberate, and it is the same rule that governs every other figure on this site.
The model has no London row
Every town rate here comes from one geography index applied to a trade benchmark, and that index covers 30 towns.
London is not one of them. To add it we would have to invent the input, then publish the output as though somebody had measured it.
An uplift would be a guess
The obvious shortcut is to take the £200 decorator benchmark and add a London percentage.
One states a percentage. Another states a cash uplift.
They do not agree, and picking either one to call a London rate would publish a figure no source stands behind.
What the guides publish for London
All 13 trades read for London have a London figure somewhere.
The other 4 trades on this site shipped after that reading and have not been read for London.
Each one below is printed the way its source prints it, and nothing here is averaged or reconciled against anything else.
| Trade | Guides | Lowest to highest |
|---|---|---|
| Painter and decorator | 3 | £150 to £380 |
| Carpenter and joiner | 4 | £150 to £480 |
| Electrician | 4 | £150 to £800 |
| Plumber | 4 | £180 to £760 |
| Gas and heating engineer | 3 | £210 to £760 |
| Plasterer | 4 | £160 to £420 |
| Tiler | 3 | £180 to £380 |
| Roofer | 3 | £219 to £480 |
| General builder | 3 | £200 to £440 |
| Bricklayer | 1 | £300 to £450 |
| Groundworker | 1 | £280 to £440 |
| General labourer | 1 | £150 to £220 |
| Drainage engineer | 1 | £342 |
Where a trade shows one guide, the span is that guide’s own figure and not a comparison.
Every figure, guide by guide
The register behind the table above, one block per trade, with what each guide measures and the caveat it carries.
Painter and decorator3 published figures
| Guide | What it publishes | As published |
|---|---|---|
| ConcreteMath | published London range | £220 to £380 |
| HaMuch | across 34 London areas | £193 to £211 |
| HaMuch | cheapest to dearest London member | £150 to £300 |
Carpenter and joiner4 published figures
| Guide | What it publishes | As published |
|---|---|---|
| ConcreteMath | published London range | £280 to £450 |
| HaMuch | across 34 London areas | £223 to £239 |
| HaMuch | cheapest to dearest London member | £150 to £480 |
| PriceYourJob | published London range | £160 to £250 |
Electrician4 published figures
| Guide | What it publishes | As published |
|---|---|---|
| ConcreteMath | published London range | £350 to £550 |
| HaMuch | across 34 London areas | £271 to £283 |
| HaMuch | cheapest to dearest London member | £150 to £800 |
| PriceYourJob | published London range | £160 to £250 |
Plumber4 published figures
| Guide | What it publishes | As published |
|---|---|---|
| ConcreteMath | published London rangepriced as one trade with heating engineers. | £350 to £500 |
| HaMuch | across 34 London areas | £280 to £312 |
| HaMuch | cheapest to dearest London member | £235 to £760 |
| PriceYourJob | published London range | £180 to £280 |
Gas and heating engineer3 published figures
| Guide | What it publishes | As published |
|---|---|---|
| ConcreteMath | published London rangepriced as one trade with plumbers. | £350 to £500 |
| HaMuch | across 34 London areas | £292 to £331 |
| HaMuch | cheapest to dearest London member | £210 to £760 |
Plasterer4 published figures
| Guide | What it publishes | As published |
|---|---|---|
| ConcreteMath | published London range | £280 to £420 |
| HaMuch | across 34 London areas | £206 to £232 |
| HaMuch | cheapest to dearest London member | £170 to £280 |
| PriceYourJob | published London range | £160 to £250 |
Tiler3 published figures
| Guide | What it publishes | As published |
|---|---|---|
| ConcreteMath | published London range | £220 to £380 |
| HaMuch | across 34 London areas | £210 to £234 |
| HaMuch | cheapest to dearest London member | £180 to £300 |
Roofer3 published figures
| Guide | What it publishes | As published |
|---|---|---|
| ConcreteMath | published London range | £300 to £480 |
| HaMuch | across 34 London areas | £220 to £241 |
| HaMuch | cheapest to dearest London member | £219 to £300 |
General builder3 published figures
| Guide | What it publishes | As published |
|---|---|---|
| ConcreteMath | published London range | £280 to £440 |
| HaMuch | across 34 London areas | £231 to £238 |
| HaMuch | cheapest to dearest London member | £200 to £350 |
Bricklayer1 published figure
| Guide | What it publishes | As published |
|---|---|---|
| ConcreteMath | published London range | £300 to £450 |
HaMuch runs no London bricklayer page and PriceYourJob has no London bricklayer row, so one source covers this trade.
Groundworker1 published figure
| Guide | What it publishes | As published |
|---|---|---|
| ConcreteMath | published London rangepriced as groundworker and concretor together. | £280 to £440 |
No other named guide publishes a London groundworker day rate.
General labourer1 published figure
| Guide | What it publishes | As published |
|---|---|---|
| ConcreteMath | published London range | £150 to £220 |
HaMuch runs no London labourer page. ConcreteMath also states an agency supply rate of £130 to £200 a day, which is a different thing from a direct day rate.
Drainage engineer1 published figure
| Guide | What it publishes | As published |
|---|---|---|
| HaMuch | London row in its city tablefiled as drain specialist, excluding VAT and call out charges. | £342 |
MyJobQuote's £280 a day for London and southern England is written about tradespeople in general, not drain specialists, so it is not used here.
Dates and what each guide measures are in the source register below. A range is printed as a range: where a guide publishes £220 to £380, that is what appears here, never £300.
Your next step
You have what the guides publish for London, so the next step is the London rate your own costs need.
The Rate Sorted calculator opens already set to London, which it models and this page does not, and builds that rate from your overheads.
Reading the disagreement
The guides are not measuring the same thing, which is why they can all be right and still be hundreds of pounds apart.
- 01A member list is not a market averageHaMuch's wide London figures are the cheapest and the dearest rate among its own listed members, so a single member at either extreme sets that end. Its area table, built from the same members, lands in a much tighter band.
- 02A trade rate is not a domestic quoteConcreteMath prices construction labour excluding VAT, including gang and site work. Those figures sit above the consumer guides on every trade.That is a difference in what is being priced, not a contradiction.
- 03A date is part of the figurePriceYourJob's London table is dated 23 March 2025 and the other two are 2026 pages. Some of the gap is just eighteen months of prices.That is why every figure on this site carries the date it was read.
- 04So a quote outside one guide is not automatically wrongA quote anywhere inside the published band matches something a named guide stands behind today, and the useful question is which of these your job is.
The stated uplift
On average, if you are based in London, you can expect to pay around £30 to £80 more on day rates and around £2 to £5 more on hourly rates than if you live in the Northern region of the UK.
PriceYourJob, guide dated 23 March 2025. It is a statement about day rates in general and not about any one trade, and it is quoted here rather than applied to anything.
Who publishes nothing for London
Named for what they do not publish, because a reader who has already found their national figure deserves to know it is national.
| Guide | What it does publish |
|---|---|
| Checkatrade | publishes national day rates for sixteen trades, last updated April 2026, and states that London prices are higher without putting a figure on it. |
| MyJobQuote | prices by town rather than by city premium, and the towns it names on its heating engineer page are Kilmarnock at £190 a day and Southampton at £280 a day, not London. |
| MyBuilder | states that London professionals charge more and publishes no separate London rate. |
The source register
Every guide named on this page, with the date it carries and what it measures.
| Guide | Dated | What it publishes for London |
|---|---|---|
| ConcreteMath | updated February 2026 | a London day rate range per trade, excluding VAT, beside its national rate. It also states a 35 per cent London and South East premium over its Midlands baseline. |
| HaMuch | 2026 pages, read 17 August 2026 | two different London figures per trade. One is the cheapest and dearest day rate among its own listed London members, which is why it is so wide. The other is a table of 34 London areas, each with its own day rate, and that one is tight. For drain specialists it prints a city table with one London row instead. |
| PriceYourJob | guide dated 23 March 2025 | a London row for four trades in its city table, and a general statement that London adds £30 to £80 a day. |
Heads up
Rate estimates blend the national decorator day rate benchmark, published against the spread named UK trade price guides print, 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 one of our modelled estimates. These are other publishers' figures, reproduced with their dates so you can check them yourself.
Cite this page
13 trades, every figure printed as the guide that publishes it prints it.
The London comparison is free to use in an article or a fact check, and a credit with a link back is all we ask, under CC BY 4.0.
Credit each guide's own range to that guide, because not one London rate on this page is ours.