The UK average is £50 an hour excluding VAT, in a range of £45 to £60. That figure comes from Checkatrade's dedicated electrician hourly-rate guide, with a cost table dated May 2026. It is the number to use, and it is worth knowing why the alternatives exist.
The same publisher prints four different hourly rates
Checkatrade is the best-sourced cost publisher in this market, and its electrical guides disagree with each other on every headline figure. On the hourly rate specifically, its own pages currently show £50 on the dedicated hourly-rate guide, £25 to £50 on the rewire guide, £45 on the consumer unit guide, and £55 within a £40 to £70 range on the electrical safety check guide. All exclude VAT.
That is a spread of £45 to £55 on the headline average depending purely on which page you land on. None of them is dishonest. Cost tables get updated at different times under page titles that carry the current year, and the safety check guide is the clearest case: its table reads September 2024 while the page presents as a 2026 guide.
The practical consequence is that any website quoting one national hourly rate has told you which page it copied, not what an electrician charges. Where a specific figure is needed, the dedicated hourly-rate guide is the one built for the purpose, which is why £50 is used here.
The London premium is documented. The London rate is not
Two different things get conflated here, and separating them is most of the answer.
Which? says only that prices are likely to be at the upper end of the scale in London and the South East. Checkatrade's rewire and consumer unit guides say labour rates are higher in London and the South East. Neither publisher puts a number on it, and neither publishes a regional rate table.
So the South London figure of £55 to £75 an hour used across this site is our estimate, derived from the UK average uplifted in line with the London premium those publishers describe but decline to quantify. It is not attributable to either of them. Elsewhere you will see London hourly rates of £50 to £60 generally, and £75 to £90 for central postcodes. Those come from contractor blogs rather than surveyed data, and should be read that way.
Checkatrade does give one London-flavoured example, and it is useful: in a major city like London you could pay up to £100 for a first hour on site, with further hours at £45. That describes a minimum call-out rather than a standing rate.
Out of hours is roughly double
The only published emergency figure is £90 an hour, in a range of £80 to £100 excluding VAT, covering evenings, weekends, bank holidays and overnight work. Against the £50 standard rate that is close to double.
No published source states a multiplier, a night surcharge or a bank holiday premium as a rule. If an electrician quotes one, it is that firm's policy rather than an industry convention, and it is a fair thing to ask about before agreeing to an out-of-hours visit.
The VAT question changes the comparison
Every figure above excludes VAT, which is how cost guides publish. A quote from a VAT-registered firm adds 20% on top.
An electrician who charges no VAT at all is not necessarily cutting corners: the registration threshold is £90,000 of taxable turnover, so a small sole trader charges none legitimately. That alone can make two honest quotes differ by a fifth. What is not legitimate is a VAT-registered firm offering to drop the VAT for cash, and the tell is the paperwork rather than the discount.
What sits behind the rate
A registered electrician's hourly rate carries costs before any of it becomes wages. Scheme registration runs to a four-figure annual fee, £2m of public liability cover is a scheme condition, test instruments have to be calibrated, records kept for six years, and anyone carrying out condition reports needs professional indemnity cover on top.
The supply side is also tightening. The ECA's 2026 Electrical Skills Index reports that electrical apprenticeship starts fell 5.5% in the past year while apprenticeship starts overall rose 4.1%, against a Skills England estimate that the UK needs an additional 12,000 electricians by 2030. Over 26,000 learners enrolled on government-funded electrical courses in 2024/25, and fewer than one in five moved into an apprenticeship or skilled employment within twelve months.
A trade that cannot convert trainees into working electricians is one where rates hold up. That is the pressure behind the number rather than a temporary spike.
Rates only tell you so much, so start from a shortlist worth comparing.