Plumbing costs vary widely depending on the job, your local market, and whether the work is a simple repair or involves opening up walls or floors. These figures reflect typical U.S. ranges and are meant as a starting point for budgeting and for sanity-checking quotes, not a substitute for an actual estimate on your specific job.
Minor repairs — a leaky faucet, a running toilet, a slow drain — typically run $150 to $400, including a standard service call fee that most plumbers charge just to show up and diagnose the problem. These jobs are usually priced flat-rate once the plumber sees the issue in person, since the labor is fairly predictable.
Fixture installation or replacement — a new toilet, a garbage disposal, a water heater — generally falls between $300 and $1,500 depending on the fixture and whether existing plumbing needs modification to fit it. A straightforward like-for-like toilet swap is on the low end of that range; a tankless water heater conversion, which often requires new gas or electrical lines, is on the high end.
Drain and sewer line work is where costs start climbing. A standard drain cleaning or snaking is usually $150 to $500, but if a camera inspection reveals a cracked or collapsed sewer line, full replacement can run $3,000 to $10,000 or more depending on the length of the line, the depth it's buried at, and whether trenchless repair is an option versus digging up a yard or driveway.
Whole-home repiping — replacing old galvanized or polybutylene piping with modern copper or PEX — is the largest plumbing expense most homeowners will face, typically $4,000 to $15,000 depending on the home's size and how accessible the existing pipes are. Homes with finished basements or slab foundations generally cost more to repipe than homes with open crawl spaces, since more demolition and patching is required.
The biggest cost driver across all of these is access, not materials. Two identical repairs can cost very differently depending on whether the plumber can reach the pipe easily or has to cut through drywall, tile, or concrete first. When comparing quotes, ask each plumber to specify how much of the price is labor for access versus the actual plumbing work — it's often the single biggest source of variation between bids for the same job.