Plumber Near MeWhat a plumber actually charges
We read every South African plumber website we could reach, 1 098 of them, looking for a price. Only 27 publish one. This page is that finding, and the figures from the few who do.
Why there is no price list for plumbing in South Africa
Every directory that claims to show plumber rates is either quoting one franchise or making the numbers up. We went looking for the source data and found there mostly is none: 2.5% of plumber websites in this country carry a price of any kind.
That is not evasion so much as the shape of the work. A blocked drain might be twenty minutes with a rod or a collapsed sewer line under a driveway, and no honest business prices both the same. What a plumber can quote up front is the callout, which covers getting a van and a person to your door, and usually the first half hour once they are there.
So treat the figures beside this as what 19 plumbers were willing to commit to in public, not as a market rate. A business that publishes a number is telling you something about how it operates, which is arguably worth more than the number itself.
Publish any price
27 of 1 098 plumber websites show a callout fee, an hourly rate or a starting price. The rest ask you to phone.
Median callout fee
From R250 to R850 across 19 published fees. A small, self-selecting sample.
Advertise no callout fee
More plumbers advertise the absence of a callout fee than publish what one costs. It is usually built into the labour rate instead.
Published callout fees
What it costs to get a plumber to your door, before any work. Ask whether it covers the first half hour, because it often does, and whether after-hours carries a premium, because it almost always does.
Each dot is one plumber’s published callout fee. 19 of them.
Hourly rates are rarer still: 2 plumbers publish one, between R550 and R567 an hour.
Why there is no price by province
We wanted to show what a callout costs in each province. Only Gauteng has enough plumbers publishing a fee to support a median, 15 of them. Everywhere else is a handful or none: Western Cape (3), North West (1).
Publishing a regional median off three or four websites would be inventing a number, so we have not. If you run a plumbing business and would like your rates counted, claim your listing and send them to us.
The plumbers who publish a price
All 27 of them, cheapest first. Figures are read off their own websites and were correct when we last checked. Confirm before you book.
What to ask before they drive out
Is the callout included in the quote?
Sometimes the callout is deducted once you accept the quote, sometimes it is charged on top. Ask which, and get it in writing before the van leaves.
What does after-hours cost?
A Sunday night callout is not priced like a Tuesday morning. Most plumbers charge a premium and few publish it, so ask for the actual figure rather than a percentage.
Is the quote fixed or an estimate?
For a geyser replacement it can be fixed. For a drain that keeps blocking it cannot be, because nobody knows what is down there until they look. Ask what would make the number change.
Does it include the certificate?
A geyser replacement should come with a plumbing certificate of compliance. A cheap quote that leaves it out is not cheaper, it is incomplete.
Method: we fetched each listed plumber’s website and read the homepage, services, pricing and about pages for published amounts in rands, discarding phone numbers and anything under R50. Figures are what the business published, not quotes we obtained. How we rank