How much does an emergency electrician cost?

Our emergency call-out costs £95 on weekday daytimes, £145 in the evenings and at weekends and £195 overnight and on bank holidays. That covers travel to you and the first hour on site, which is enough to find and make safe most faults. If the job runs longer, each extra half hour is £45 in the daytime, £75 in the evening and £100 overnight. Parts are charged at cost, and we agree them with you before anything is fitted.

Below we explain how emergency pricing works, what's included, what can add to the bill and how to keep the cost down.

Our emergency call-out prices

• Weekday daytime (Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm): £95, then £45 per extra half hour.
• Evenings and weekends: £145, then £75 per extra half hour.
• Overnight (10pm to 7am) and bank holidays: £195, then £100 per extra half hour.

Every call-out includes travel to you, the first hour on site, making the fault safe and a clear explanation of what went wrong. You can check the figures for your situation in our instant price calculator.

Do all electricians charge a call-out fee?

Most do for emergency work. A call-out fee pays for an electrician dropping what they're doing, travelling to you at short notice and often working outside normal hours. Some firms quote a low call-out fee and then charge a high hourly rate from the minute they arrive, so always ask what the fee includes.

For planned work, such as adding sockets or fitting a new fuse board, there's usually no call-out fee. You get a fixed quote for the job instead. If your problem can safely wait until a weekday, booking it in is the cheapest option.

What can add to the cost?

• Time of day. The same fault costs more to fix at 2am than at 2pm, because the electrician is working unsociable hours.
• Finding the fault. A tripping circuit with a damaged cable hidden in a wall can take longer to trace than a single faulty socket.
• Parts. A replacement breaker, RCD or socket is usually inexpensive. A new consumer unit is a bigger job that we'd normally quote separately.
• Follow-up work. Sometimes we make the fault safe on the night and come back in normal hours to finish a permanent repair, which keeps the overnight time short.

How to keep the cost down

1. Check whether it's a power cut first. If your neighbours and the street lights are off too, call 105, the free power cut line. An electrician can't fix the network. Our guide to power cuts and electrical faults walks you through it.
2. Look at your fuse board. A tripped switch can sometimes be reset, as long as it stays on. If it keeps tripping, leave it off and call us.
3. Tell us what you can see and smell. The more we know, the more likely we arrive with the right parts and finish in the first hour.
4. Ask whether it can wait. If the fault is isolated and nothing is unsafe, we'll tell you honestly if it can wait until a cheaper daytime slot.