Know what car repairs cost before you book
Pick your car and the job. You get the parts, the labour hours and your regional rate, added up in front of you. Not a marketing price.
- 23,071 UK garages
- Every price sourced
- No email, no signup
Your car
Get a price for your car
Four answers and you have a figure you can hold a quote against. Where we do not have the parts research yet, we say so and show you the labour anyway.
The point
Why check first
A garage quotes what a garage quotes. You have nothing to compare it against until you know what the parts cost and how long the job takes.
We publish both. If a quote comes in at double, you will know, and you will know which half is wrong.
What we cover
What we can price today
Car servicing and repairs split into two kinds, and the difference decides what a page can honestly tell you. A fixed-price job is the same work every time. A quoted job depends on what the strip-down finds, so it gets a range and a note naming the thing that moves it.
Fixed-price work
The same job every time, so one figure covers it.
- MOT testFixed
- Full serviceFixed
- Full service and MOTFixed
- Interim serviceFixed
- Major serviceFixed
- Oil and filter changeFixed
Quoted work
Priced as a range, because what the strip-down finds changes the total.
- Clutch replacementRange
- Cambelt changeRange
- Timing chain replacementRange
- Head gasket replacementRange
- Turbocharger replacementRange
- Gearbox repairRange
Not sure which job you need? Start from your car and symptoms
By vehicle
Find your car
Car repair and maintenance costs change with the car. Parts prices differ, and so do the hours the same job takes.
The method
Why our number is different
You see the arithmetic
Parts, labour hours, your regional rate, VAT. Every step is printed beside the total so you can check it yourself.
Every figure has a source
Named survey, published date, sample size. When a figure is old we tell you how old instead of quietly adjusting it upward.
No number, no page
We will not invent a parts cost to fill a page. You get the labour we can stand behind and a straight answer about the rest.
The numbers
The labour rate where you live
An hour of a mechanic’s time is not priced the same across the country, so a national average tells you almost nothing about the quote in your hand. Labour runs from £50 an hour in Northern Ireland to £81 in London, before parts and VAT. These are the figures every price on the site is built from.
Regional averages from What Car?’s survey of 279 independent garages, published 12 April 2023.
These rates are real and they are old. We have not adjusted them, because multiplying a survey by an assumed percentage produces a figure no source published. The methodology page names both rate sources, their dates and their limits, and covers 11,088 postcode sectors.
| Region | Per hour, ex-VAT |
|---|---|
| London | £80.83 |
| South East | £68.79 |
| East | £64.17 |
| South West | £61.30 |
| Scotland | £61.04 |
| Midlands | £58.82 |
| Wales | £57.08 |
| North West | £56.28 |
| North East | £55.28 |
| Yorkshire | £54.69 |
| Northern Irelandno garages listed | £50.00 |
See what this works out to for your car
Get my priceWho we are
Who’s behind these numbers
Vehicle repairs are hard to price check, and a site that will not say where its numbers came from is no help at all. Ours are set out in full.
Find out what your repair should cost
Four answers, no email, and the arithmetic shown in full.