Is my electrical quote fair?
Sometimes. We can price electrical panel replacement in 434 of 530 US metro areas — everywhere we hold a published electrical wage series. Across those metros the job runs $1,500 to $5,400, and which end you are near is mostly local labour rates.
In the other 96 we fall back to a national wage, the range gets too wide to mean anything, and we withhold rather than guess. Put your ZIP in and the result page tells you which of those two you are in before it tells you anything else.
Where the number comes from
We price electrical work bottom-up: a published material price for each component, a Bureau of Labor Statistics wage for your metro, a range of labour hours, and a margin band. We do not average other people’s cost guides, and we never write a figure we cannot point at.
| Jobs we can price in this trade | 5 |
|---|---|
| Metros where we give a verdict on electrical panel replacement | 434 of 530 — the rest have no published wage series for this trade |
| Spread across those metros | $1,500 to $5,400 — same job, local wages |
| Metro wage series held | 527 of 530 |
| National median wage, electrical | $33.19 per hour |
| Margin band applied | 33% to 42% — substituted from NAICS 238220, which does not cover this trade |
| Electrical panel replacement: inputs we measured | 1 of 4 (load centre) |
| Electrical panel replacement: inputs we had to assume | 3 (Labor, Consumables and permit, Overhead and profit) |
Margin: 2022 Economic Census, verified 2026-09-13 — Census sector 23 tables. Wages: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics. Every figure on this page is read from those files when the page is built, not typed into it — see our method and the open dataset.
Why this is a different kind of answer
Search this question and most of what comes back is written by people who sell electrical work. A free second opinion from a contractor is a sales call with a diagnosis attached, and it is not dishonest of them — it is what they do. We take no money from electrical contractors, run no lead marketplace, and never show your quote to a contractor. Our disclosures page names every way we could make money and what we would not do for it.
The other difference is that we will refuse. Three tests decide it: a range wider than 3.2×, measured coverage below 34%, or one unmeasured input moving the answer more than 40%. The arithmetic behind those three is published, and it is what produced the 434-of-530 figure at the top of this page rather than a number we felt comfortable with.
What makes an honest electrical quote look expensive
A panel replacement is mostly labour and permit, not parts, so it looks expensive next to the price of a panel. The utility disconnect and reconnect is scheduled around the utility, not the electrician.
What actually goes wrong in an electrical quote
A panel quote that does not say whether the service entrance, meter base and grounding are included. Those are the lines that turn into a change order on the day.
We price electrical work from real material and wage data, but we have not built the electrical compliance checks yet. Nothing here says the work itself is correct or lawful — only what it should cost. Why those are different jobs.
Questions people actually ask
- Is my electrical quote fair?
- In 434 of 530 US metros, yes: electrical panel replacement runs $1,500 to $5,400 depending on local wages. In the other 96 we hold no published wage series for this trade, the range widens past what is useful, and we withhold.
- Who else will tell me whether an electrical quote is fair?
- Mostly other contractors, offering a free second opinion on work they would like to sell you. We take no money from electrical contractors, run no lead marketplace, and never show your quote to a contractor. That is a structural difference, not a claim about anyone's character — the incentive is simply not there.
- What makes an honest electrical quote look expensive?
- A panel replacement is mostly labour and permit, not parts, so it looks expensive next to the price of a panel. The utility disconnect and reconnect is scheduled around the utility, not the electrician.
- What actually goes wrong in an electrical quote?
- A panel quote that does not say whether the service entrance, meter base and grounding are included. Those are the lines that turn into a change order on the day.
- How much of the price is the contractor's margin?
- We do not have a federal margin figure for this trade. The only NAICS code we verified is 238220 (Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors), so we apply its 37% figure here as a stated substitution and label it that way wherever it appears. We attempted the other codes and the parses failed our identity checks, so we did not publish them.