IN THIS GUIDE ▾
Published guidance splits two ways. Shops that bill time and materials mark parts up 25% to 100%, less on big equipment. Flat-rate shops mark up on a sliding scale by part cost: several times cost on cheap fittings and cartridges, down to about 1.4–1.6× on water heaters. A single 50% is about right for a water heater and well short on a $9 fill valve.
Every chart on this page on two printable pages, for the truck or the office: download the plumbing markup chart PDF. No email needed.
Markup vs margin: markup is what you add to cost; margin is the share of the price you keep. A 50% markup is a 33% margin, a 100% markup is a 50% margin. Every table here shows both.
The sliding scale and the part costs are from the price book we researched for plumbing shops in October 2026: 106 parts priced from retail and distributor listings, and published guidance from the trade sources linked in section 3. No plumber has reviewed it yet, so treat every number as a starting point for your own costs and market.
Plumbing parts markup by part cost. The cheaper the part, the higher the multiplier.
Most flat-rate plumbing shops don't use one markup on parts. They use a sliding scale, also called matrix pricing: a $3 fitting can't sell for $4.50, and a $1,500 tankless unit can't sell for $4,500. This is the scale the EstimateKit plumbing book uses, with a real part at each step.
Between the steps the multiplier slides smoothly, so a $60 part and a $90 part don't jump from one price band to the next. Above $5,000 it settles at 1.3×.
At a flat 50%, a toilet fill valve that costs you $9 sells for $13.50 and the trip to buy it costs more than that. At a flat 150%, a $1,000 water heater sells for $2,500 and you lose the job. The scale keeps both honest.
Plumbing markup by category. What the sliding scale gives each kind of part.
The same scale applied to the 106 parts in the plumbing book, grouped the way a supply house groups them. The range is the cheapest to the most expensive part in each group.
Pass through, don't mark up
A permit marked up 100% is easy for a homeowner to check and hard to explain.
What plumbing pricing guides recommend. Two camps: time and materials, and flat rate.
The published numbers disagree because they describe two ways of pricing. Shops that bill hours plus parts quote lower markups on parts; flat-rate shops build travel, warranty and callbacks into the part and task price, so their multipliers are higher.
Our scale sits between the camps: higher than the time-and-materials guides on small parts and lower than the flat-rate guides on the cheapest ones. On water heaters it lands inside the flat-rate range and above the 20–40% that time-and-materials guides suggest for big-ticket items; if you bill hours plus parts, use their range.
Try it on your own job. Cost in, selling price out.
Enter the equipment and materials cost of a job, the labor hours and what an hour costs you, then pick a target margin. The calculator gives the price, the profit and the markup that margin needs.
Selling price
$6,000
Profit
$2,400
Markup on cost
66.7%
Set your markup scale once in EstimateKit and every part on every quote is priced from it, starting from a plumbing price book you can edit. $49 a month for your whole team, 14-day free trial, no credit card.
Plumbing labor rates in 2026. Published billed rates run $90 to $225 an hour.
Labor isn't marked up like parts. You build a billed rate from what an hour costs you (wages, burden, truck, insurance, office) and the margin you need, then check it against your market. Here's what published 2026 sources say residential plumbers bill:
Rates in the EstimateKit plumbing book (change them to yours)
To build your own rate from your costs, use the labor rate calculator; the math is the same for any trade.
Worked example: a 50-gallon water heater. Equipment at 54%, fittings near 3×, labor by the hour.
The standard tier of the water heater quote every new plumbing account starts with, line by line, with the sliding scale applied to each part.
Before the permit
The heater is marked up 54%: inside the flat-rate range for parts over $1,000, and above the 25–40% time-and-materials guides use for big-ticket items. The fittings around it carry their share of the parts margin, which is exactly where a flat 50% would have left money behind.
Time-and-materials guidance runs 25% to 100%, lower on big equipment. Flat-rate shops use a sliding scale: around 2.5 to 3 times cost on parts under $25, about 2 times on parts near $100, and 1.4 to 1.6 times on water heaters.
Time-and-materials guides put big-ticket equipment at 20% to 40%. Flat-rate guides go to 1.5 to 1.8 times cost on parts over $1,000. On the sliding scale in this guide, water heaters costing $450 to $2,000 come out at 39% to 65%, nearer the flat-rate end; a typical unit lands around 50%.
For water heaters and pumps it's about right. For small parts it's well short: a $9 fill valve at 50% sells for $13.50, which doesn't cover the time to buy and stock it. That's why most flat-rate shops use a sliding scale.
Markup is what you add to cost; margin is the share of the selling price you keep. A 50% markup is a 33% margin, a 100% markup is a 50% margin, and a 200% markup is a 67% margin.
Pass permits and inspection fees through at cost, or as a clearly labeled fee. They're public numbers a homeowner can check, and a marked-up permit costs more trust than it earns.
Published 2026 sources put residential billed rates between $80 and $160 in most markets, and up to $200 to $225 in high-cost areas or for flat-rate shops building a fully loaded rate.