How to price pest-control contracts

Start from your cost floor

Before market rates, know your own floor: technician time (including driving), materials, vehicle cost, and a share of office overhead per visit. A visit that takes 45 minutes on site can easily cost 90 minutes door to door. If you don't know your floor, discounts come straight out of your pay.

Price the contract, not the visit

A quarterly contract is worth more than four one-off visits — to you and to the customer. You get predictable revenue and efficient routing; they get priority response and no decision fatigue. Price it accordingly: a modest per-visit discount versus your one-off rate, in exchange for the annual commitment.

• ✓One-off callout: your full rate — it carries all the routing risk.
• ✓Quarterly contract: 10–15% below one-off per visit, billed per visit or annually.
• ✓Monthly commercial (restaurants, warehouses): price per site per month, include documentation.

Commercial work: charge for the paperwork

Commercial customers aren't only buying treatments — they're buying proof for their auditors: visit reports, materials logs, signatures. That documentation has value; price it in rather than giving it away. It's also your differentiator against the cheapest quote, which rarely comes with records.

Review prices once a year, on schedule

Put a yearly price review in the diary like any other recurring job. Small annual adjustments communicated in advance beat a painful 20% correction after three silent years. Customers leave over surprises, not over inflation.