Emergency premium calculator
Evenings, weekends and bank holidays — priced properly, not guessed.
Base rate & premium
What you charge per hour during normal working hours.
A rough guide: evenings ~25%, weekends ~50%, bank holidays ~100%.
Emergency call-out rate
— an extra £25 an hour on top of your normal rate.
A starting point, not a fixed rule. Local demand, callout distance and how much you actually want the job all belong in the final number too.
Out-of-hours work costs you more than daytime work — your evening, your weekend, sometimes your bank holiday — and the rate charged should reflect that, not just match whatever the customer expects to hear. This tool takes your normal hourly rate and a premium percentage and works out the actual emergency rate, plus exactly how many extra pounds an hour that premium is worth. Once the number's set, it's easy to hold to it instead of talking yourself down on the phone at 9pm.
Why a flat "emergency rate" undersells itself
Most tradespeople have a rough idea that evenings and weekends cost more, but few have actually worked out the number and stuck to it. A vague "I'll add a bit on" tends to mean twenty quid extra regardless of whether it's a Tuesday evening or Christmas Day — which undercharges the days that actually hurt to work. Setting the premium as a percentage of your base rate keeps it proportional: bigger disruption, bigger premium, and a number you can quote with a straight face.
A worked example
A £50/hour base rate with a 50% weekend premium works out at £75/hour — an extra £25 for every hour on site. Push that to a 100% bank holiday premium and it's £100/hour, an extra £50 an hour, which starts to properly compensate for giving up the day. Once you've settled on the figure, it's what should actually land on the invoice & quote generator for that job — not a rounder, smaller number picked on the spot because asking felt awkward.
Picking a premium that fits the job
There's no single correct percentage — it depends on how much the call genuinely disrupts your evening or weekend, how in-demand you are locally, and how much you actually want the work. A rough starting point many trades use is around 25% for a normal evening call, 50% for a weekend, and up to 100% for bank holidays or the middle of the night, then adjusted from there based on what the local market will actually bear.
What this isn't
This only calculates the hourly rate uplift — it doesn't add call-out travel costs, materials, or the risk premium for a job you haven't seen yet, all of which still need pricing separately. It also assumes you already know your base rate is right; if that figure itself is too low, an emergency premium on top of it is still an emergency rate that undercharges.
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