There is a cross-trade benchmark and it is about £50 an hour excluding VAT across the UK, with London running roughly £5 an hour above that. It is a useful anchor and a poor prediction, because the variation between trades is larger than the number itself.
Where the benchmark comes from
Checkatrade publishes a cross-trade cost guide covering what tradespeople charge, updated April 2026, and it is the right source for a question phrased this generally. The London adjustment stated there is around £5 an hour and £80 a day. Both figures exclude VAT, in line with published cost guides generally.
A VAT-registered firm adds 20% on top. At £55 an hour that is £11, so the invoice reads £66. The registration threshold is £90,000 of taxable turnover, so a small sole trader legitimately charges none at all. That is why two honest quotes for identical work can differ by a fifth before anyone has priced anything differently.
Why one hourly rate cannot cover every trade
Trades sit at different levels for reasons that are structural rather than arbitrary.
Certificated trades sit highest. An electrician or a gas engineer carries mandatory registration, periodic reassessment, test equipment, and a legal exposure that a carpenter does not. That cost is inside the rate.
General and finishing trades sit lower: bricklaying, carpentry, plastering and general building. The work is skilled, but the barrier to entry is competence rather than a statutory register, and the insurance profile is different.
Labouring sits lower again. In London a labourer is commonly charged out at something in the region of £150 to £250 a day excluding VAT, though that range comes from agency and commercial sources rather than an authoritative one, and a competing range of £120 to £160 exists. Treat it as an order of magnitude.
The per-trade tables circulating online are not reliable
You will find tables giving a day rate for every trade in London to the nearest ten pounds. They are almost all published by commercial blogs with no methodology stated, and they disagree with one another by wide margins.
We are not reproducing one here, and the reason is worth stating. The internal ordering in those tables is usually sensible, with the finishing trades below the certificated ones, which is what you would expect. The precision is invented. A table can be directionally right and numerically worthless at the same time, and a homeowner comparing a real quote against an invented figure is worse informed than one comparing it against nothing.
The government does not fill the gap either. Official earnings statistics measure what employees are paid, which is a different quantity from what a self-employed tradesperson charges a customer. Using one as a proxy for the other would be wrong, however tempting the authority of the source.
What to do instead of using a cross-trade average
Get the trade-specific figure rather than the general one. A question about what an electrician charges has a better answer than a question about what a tradesperson charges, because the range is narrower and the published sources are closer together.
Then use it the way a benchmark should be used. If a quote sits inside the range, it tells you nothing except that nothing is obviously wrong. If it sits well below, look at what has been left out rather than assuming a bargain. Insurance, waste, access equipment and the second pair of hands are the usual omissions. If it sits well above, ask what is in the scope that the others have not priced.
The questions that matter more than the rate
- Is that inclusive or exclusive of VAT? Ask everyone, every time. It is a fifth of the price.
- What is the minimum charge? Many trades apply a two to four hour minimum, so a short visit never costs one hour of labour.
- Is this hourly or fixed? An hourly rate on a scopeable job leaves the overrun risk with you.
- Are labour and materials separated? Two identical totals can conceal very different rates.
- What happens when the estimate is exceeded? Agree who authorises extra hours before anyone starts.
Three written quotes on the same scope tell you more than any published average, because they price your job rather than an average one.
An average rate answers a question nobody has.