Free Mobile Mechanic Estimate Calculator

Add up your true direct costs — labor including burden, materials with markup, and job extras like equipment or disposal. Add a contingency for surprises if the job has any. That's your break-even, the floor you never quote below. Then add your profit on top: price = break-even × (1 + profit%). This calculator runs exactly that math as you type, and shows the result both ways — what you added on to your costs, and what share of the final price that leaves you — because the two numbers are easy to confuse and quoting on the wrong one is how a job loses money.

Burden is everything an hour of labor costs beyond the paycheck: payroll taxes (typically 8–10% of wages), workers' compensation (a few percent for low-risk trades, well over 15% for high-risk ones like roofing or concrete), liability insurance, and paid time off. All-in burden commonly lands between 15% and 40% on top of base pay — and forgetting it is one of the most common ways a profitable-looking job loses money. If you're solo and paying yourself, you can leave it at 0%.

Markup is a percentage added on top of your cost; margin is your share of the final price. Adding 100% on top — charging double your costs — is the same thing as a 50% margin. Quoting a markup when you mean a margin is one of the most common ways contractors underprice a job, so this calculator keeps it simple: you enter what you add on top — no cap — and it always shows what share of the final price that leaves you.

Work backward from your own numbers instead of copying competitors: add up what you want to earn in a year plus every cost of being in business, then divide by your realistic billable hours — most mobile mechanics bill far fewer hours than they work. That result is your floor. Local demand, licensing, and skill decide how far above it you can go.

Somewhere between 15% and 50% is common practice across the trades, and it isn't padding: the markup pays for sourcing time, supply runs, returns, warranty callbacks, and the money you float between buying materials and getting paid. If the customer supplies materials, price the labor accordingly — you still carry the workmanship risk.

Rust decides most of it. A caliper bracket bolt that shears, a bleeder that rounds off, an oxygen sensor that brings the bung with it, leaf spring U-bolts nobody has turned since the factory. Any one of those turns a two-hour job into heat, penetrant and an extractor, done lying on somebody's driveway.

Access is the rest of it. You have jack stands and gravel, not a lift, so a car parked on a slope has to be moved before you can safely get under it, and a lowered car costs you the first half hour. Weather is real work here because there is no bay to roll it into and you cannot leave a stripped car on a street overnight.

An intermittent fault will not act up while you stand there watching it. And the counter sends a superseded number, or the reman unit is dead out of the box, and the afternoon goes to waiting. Modern vehicles add their own tax: a job that once ended at the bolt now ends at a calibration, and a scan tool waiting on a slow connection in somebody's driveway is time you cannot compress.

This is parts and fluids, so there is no waste factor to add. You fit one starter or you do not. What it carries instead is cores and returns. A remanufactured starter, alternator or caliper has a core that goes back in the box the new one came in, and a cracked case or a missing pulley can lose that credit, so the old unit rides home with you the same day.

Electrical parts are commonly non-returnable once installed. Order against the VIN rather than year and make, because a mid-year change puts a different connector on the same listing.

Fluids are what gets miscounted. Capacity is not bottle size, a diesel oil change is not a five-quart jug, and a coolant spec, an ATF spec or a European long-life oil is not interchangeable with whatever is already on the van. Crush washers, drain plug gaskets and clamps are consumables you replace every time. Part grade is a conversation, not a default: economy, mid-grade and original equipment carry different warranties and different return windows, and the customer should be choosing that with you rather than discovering it after a failure.

Free and unlimited, no account needed. The math runs in your browser and your pricing setup saves only on your own device — we never see your numbers. Printing or sending the estimate it makes counts as a document: your first 2 are free, with no account.