Replacing a tap is labour of £140 on average, inside a published range of £60 to £180. The spread is wide for a job that sounds identical every time, and what sits behind it is access rather than the tap.
One tap, and the range around it
Checkatrade's tap installation figures put labour at an average of £140 with a range of £60 to £180, on a basis the guide does not state clearly, so establish with your plumber whether a quote built on it includes VAT. Cost guides commonly exclude it and homeowner quotes commonly include it, which is a fifth of the bill either way.
The £60 end is a straightforward swap: an accessible kitchen mixer, working isolation valves under the unit, fittings that undo. The £180 end is a basin tap in a fitted vanity where someone spends most of the time lying on their back with a basin wrench.
Why a pair is not double
Two taps fitted in one visit cost more than one and less than two, and the reason is the same reason a day rate beats an hourly one: the travel, the parking and the call-out are paid once. The second tap is close to pure labour.
What can be said is that no dated cost guide publishes a two-tap rate. The £160 to £300 figure that circulates for a pair is derived by aggregator sites from single-tap numbers rather than measured, so use it as a shape rather than a benchmark. The safer approach is to ask for the pair to be quoted as one job, and to compare that against £140 for a single as a sanity check.
What drives the labour
- Access. A basin tap in a vanity unit, or a kitchen mixer behind a butler sink, is slow work in a confined space. This is the single biggest variable.
- Isolation valves. If there are working isolation valves under the fitting, the plumber shuts off two valves. If there are none, the mains goes off and the system drains, which adds time to every subsequent step.
- Corroded fittings. Old brass and copper in a Victorian conversion sometimes does not undo, and the pipework has to be cut back and remade.
- Changing the type of tap. Swapping two pillar taps for a single mixer means new tails and often new pipework rather than a like-for-like exchange.
- Discovering something else. A seized stopcock turns a tap job into a stopcock job, and Checkatrade prices replacing one at £140 to £240, on a basis the guide does not state as either including or excluding VAT.
The taps themselves are extra
Every figure above is labour. The tap is yours to buy or the plumber's to supply, and Housekeep notes plumbers commonly add 20 to 25% on parts. That is one source, without published methodology, so ask rather than assume it applies.
Supplying your own taps is usually cheaper and carries one catch worth knowing: if the tap fails, the workmanship is the plumber's responsibility and the product is yours. Make sure what you buy fits what you have, particularly the tail length and whether the basin is drilled for one hole or three.
Getting a comparable quote
Say how many taps, where they are, whether isolation valves exist, and whether you are supplying the taps. Those four facts turn "somewhere between £60 and £180" into a real number, and they are the difference between a quote and a guess.
Ask too whether the old taps are taken away and whether the price covers making good if a tail has to be cut back. Both routinely appear on the invoice rather than the quote.
Two taps, one visit, one set of questions about what the figure covers.