How we work out prices

Every price is the same three parts added together.

parts + (labour hours × regional labour rate) + VAT

Parts and labour hours come from the research for that specific job on that specific car. The labour rate is the average for the region the postcode falls in. VAT is added at 20% at the end, so the figure you read is the figure a garage would quote you.

Published prices are rounded to the nearest £5. A repair estimate carrying pence claims a precision the research does not have.

What the price does not include

Anything the garage finds once the car is apart. On a job we price as a range, that range covers the normal outcome, and the page says what the common complication is. A seized bolt or a corroded part is quoted separately by the garage before the work starts.

We use two separate sources. They are kept apart on purpose: they measure different things by different methods, and averaging them would produce a number neither publisher stands behind.

Source 1: the regional rates

The rate used in every calculation is the regional average, published 12 April 2023. The source reports by postcode area. We roll those 87 areas up into 11 regions, and that roll-up is ours rather than the publisher’s.

Derived from What Car?'s survey of 279 independent garages, published 12 April 2023. Source figures are inc-VAT; converted to ex-VAT here. Regional roll-up is ours, not the source’s. What Car? published by postcode area.

The rates run from £50.00 an hour in Northern Ireland to £80.83 in London, ex-VAT.

Where the average hides a wide range

In some regions the underlying areas disagree enough that the average alone would mislead. We record the range as well, and those regions are London, East, Yorkshire.

• London, £61.67 to £117.50: London ranges from £74 to £141 an hour inc-VAT, an inner and outer gradient rather than noise. South West London at £141 sits far above the next highest area at £112, so the mean understates the centre and overstates the edges.
• East, £53.33 to £86.67: East ranges from £64 to £104 an hour inc-VAT, but £104 is Watford alone; every other area in the region is £82 or below. The top of the range is one commuter town, not the region.
• Yorkshire, £39.17 to £65.00: Yorkshire ranges from £47 to £78 an hour inc-VAT. Huddersfield at £47 is a low outlier that pulls the mean down; most of the region sits nearer the top of that range.

Source 2: the national benchmark

To show how far the regional figures have fallen behind, we carry a national benchmark from Garage Industry Trends, run by Garage Hive. It is built from over a million invoiced garage transactions from more than 175 workshops. These are invoiced rates rather than survey answers, which is a measurement rather than a recollection.

Published figures, ex-VAT: £74.04 in January 2024, £75.87 in December 2024, £77.00 in January 2025.

The direction of travel comes from that source measuring a rise in every year it has published, not from comparing one region against the national average.

The benchmark is never mixed into a price. It is context for reading one. Prices are calculated from the regional rate alone.

We hold one further figure that we do not show anywhere, because the publisher never published it. It is our own projection of what the most recent measurement becomes at the growth rate that source has measured. Presenting our arithmetic as theirs would be the same error as inflating the survey.

Every price carries a confidence level. It describes the evidence behind the figure, not how close to correct we think it is.

• High: researched for that exact make and model.
• Medium: taken from the vehicle class, so a car of similar size and complexity, where we have no model-specific figure.
• Low: a service-level default, with nothing specific to the car.

A price is only ever as strong as its weakest input. A model-specific parts figure combined with a low-confidence labour rate is reported as low confidence, because the labour rate is the part that is uncertain.

Why most prices are low confidence today

The regional labour rates rest on small samples. The eleven regions are rolled up from 87 postcode areas between them, and some regions rest on very few: Scotland on 4, Wales on 2, North East on 3, Northern Ireland on 1. A region built from three area figures is a weaker average than one built from thirteen, and it is reported that way rather than presented as equally solid.

No rate on this site claims high confidence. It is one survey, rolled up by us, and that ceiling holds however good the parts research beneath it is.

The page does not exist. It does not appear with a blank figure, an estimate, or a national average standing in for a local one. A URL with no research behind it returns a 404.

That is why the site is small. We have no researched prices published yet, so every page that needs one is queued rather than published. The alternative is thousands of pages carrying numbers we invented, which is the pattern this site exists to be an alternative to.

The same rule applies to a region where we can calculate a price but cannot show a garage. A labour rate with no local supply behind it produces a figure that looks like a market and is not one, so nothing publishes there.

That currently applies to Northern Ireland. The rate is in the table above, and it appears in the range quoted earlier, but no page is built from it.

Every figure on this site is research, not a quote. We have not seen your car. The garage confirms the price after looking at it, and that confirmed price is the one that counts.

We do not carry out repairs, we take no payment for any job, and we are not party to the work you agree with a garage. What we publish is the range a job normally falls in, so you can tell whether a quote is ordinary or worth a second opinion.

If a figure here looks wrong, tell us and we will check it against the source. Our editorial policy sets out how prices are reviewed and corrected, and how we make money explains why a garage paying us cannot move a price.