HVAC Maintenance Plans and How to Price Them for Profit

Residential HVAC maintenance plans usually sell for $175 to $350 a year, or $15 to $30 a month, according to Trane. But your price should come from what one visit costs you to deliver, and the guides that show their math put that between about $85 and $112.

That gap matters. A plan priced off the shop down the road, or set as a small discount on two retail tune-ups, can lose money on every member before a single repair call comes in. This guide is for owners of residential HVAC companies who already sell tune-ups and want a price that holds up. It covers what others charge, what goes in a plan, and how to build your own number from the cost up.

What HVAC maintenance plans cost

Trane puts residential HVAC maintenance plans at $175 to $350 a year, or $15 to $30 a month. Consumer cost guides such as Angi and HomeGuide land at about $150 to $360 a year. Two large Atlanta-area contractors list plans from $14.99 to $34.99 a month. A single tune-up sells for $75 to $200 in those same guides.

Source	What it covers	Per year	Per month
Trane (manufacturer blog)	Spring and fall visit	$175 to $350	$15 to $30
Consumer cost guides (Angi, HomeGuide)	Typical homeowner plan	$150 to $360	About $13 to $30
Reliable Heating & Air, ReliableClean	Yearly maintenance and filters, no repair coverage	$179.88	$14.99
Reliable Heating & Air, ReliableProtect	Parts and labor coverage, unlimited service calls, priority, no maintenance visit	$299.88	$24.99
Reliable Heating & Air, ReliableProtect Plus	Maintenance, filters, parts and labor coverage, priority	$419.88	$34.99
Coolray, Priority Plus+	2 HVAC visits, water heater flush, drain cabling, no service fee, 15% off repairs	From $203.88	From $16.99
Software vendor example (Oxmaint), Bronze	1 visit, 10% repair discount	$144 to $192	$12 to $16
Software vendor example (Oxmaint), Silver	2 visits, 15% discount, next-day priority	$264 to $360	$22 to $30
Software vendor example (Oxmaint), Gold	2 visits, 20% discount, same-day priority	$420 to $600	$35 to $50

Read two things into that table. First, Reliable’s two upper tiers cover parts and labor on repairs. That makes them closer to a home warranty than a tune-up plan. Don’t hold your two-visit plan up against $34.99 and decide you’re cheap.

Second, Reliable runs seven locations and shows more than 20,000 Google reviews. Coolray bundles a water heater flush and drain cabling, which only works if you run plumbing trucks. Their costs and their markets are not yours.

So use the range to see where you sit. Don’t use it to set your price.

What to put in an HVAC maintenance plan

A solid HVAC maintenance plan includes two visits a year, a spring cooling check and a fall heating check, done from a written checklist. Add priority scheduling, a repair discount and a waived service fee. Then write down what is not included. Heat pumps get two visits too, since they work in both seasons.

The visits and the checklist

Trane’s visit list is a fair baseline. Inspect the thermostat. Check electrical connections. Inspect ignition, blower and heat exchanger. Run a carbon monoxide test on furnaces. Lubricate moving parts, check or clean the coils, check refrigerant, flush the drain line, clean the condensate pan and change the filter if needed.

Reliable says its tune-up runs 60 to 90 minutes and covers “30 separate procedures.” Yours can be shorter. What matters is that it’s written down, so every tech does the same visit and you can price a visit that doesn’t change from truck to truck. Business coach Ellie Marshall points to the ACCA Quality Maintenance standard for exactly that reason: a defined task list.

Region shapes the plan too. Trane notes that northern plans center on the fall furnace tune-up, and southern plans lean on heat pump and air handler work.

The perks, and what each one costs you

Every perk in a plan is a cost to you. Treat it that way when you price.

Priority scheduling means bumping a paying non-member on a 98-degree day. A 10% to 20% repair discount comes straight off the margin on every repair ticket. A waived trip or diagnostic fee is money you would have billed. “No overtime charge” is labor you pay for and don’t collect.

New-system customers may get an extended labor warranty. Trane says the standard labor warranty is one year, and an extended one may go up to five. That’s five years of labor risk tied to a monthly fee.

In their worked examples, vendor guides put the yearly cost of perks at about $35 (Dael) to $40 (Ansdale) per member. And word them carefully. Dael’s guide warns that “free repairs” starts arguments, while “15% off repairs” does not.

What to leave out

Spell out the exclusions: parts, refrigerant, major repairs, ductwork and damage from misuse. Trane tells homeowners to know “exactly what’s included and what will cost extra” before they sign. Give them that in writing. Also price per system. A house with two systems is twice the work, so it should be twice the price.

How to work out your real cost per visit

To find your cost per visit, add the tech’s loaded hourly cost (wage plus taxes and benefits), your truck and overhead per hour, the drive and paperwork time, and the filter. Then multiply by the number of visits a year. Guides that show the full math land between about $85 and $112 per visit.

Here is one worked example from EosLog’s pricing guide, a software vendor. Swap in your own numbers.

Line	How it’s figured	Amount
Tech wage	Assumed	$30/hr
Loaded labor	Wage ÷ 0.70 (benefits run about 30% of total pay)	About $43/hr
Truck and overhead	Per tech-hour	About $22/hr
Fully loaded tech-hour	Loaded labor + overhead	About $65/hr
Time per visit	1.0 hr on site + 0.4 hr drive and admin	1.4 hr
Labor cost per visit	$65 × 1.4	About $91
Filter and consumables	Per visit	About $12
Cost per visit		About $103
Two visits a year		About $206

For the wage, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median HVAC tech at $29.33 an hour ($61,010 a year) as of May 2025. The bottom 10% earned under $40,050 and the top 10% over $95,210. That spread is why you use your own tech’s pay, not the median.

Watch the low numbers. One software vendor builds its plan math on a $45 “fully-loaded” visit. Other guides land at $85 (Dael), about $103 (EosLog), about $105 (Marshall) and about $112 (Ansdale). The gap is mostly overhead and drive time. Any cost figure that leaves those out will make a losing plan look profitable.

Then add the pieces people forget. Marshall’s example budgets $15 a year for admin and billing and $20 as a buffer for callbacks and tough jobs. Add the cost of your perks on top. Her two-visit total comes to $210.

How to turn that cost into a price

To price a plan, divide your yearly cost by one minus the margin you want. Do not multiply. If two visits cost you $200 and you want a 20% margin, the price is $200 ÷ 0.80, which is $250. Adding 20% gets you $240, and that leaves only a 16.7% margin.

Marshall puts it bluntly: “Most HVAC owners do not have a maintenance agreement problem. They have a pricing problem.” The difference between markup and margin is a big part of that problem. Markup is a percent of your cost. Margin is a percent of the price. On $200 of cost, a 30% margin means $286, 35% means $308 and 40% means $333.

Three worked examples from the guides:

• Marshall: $210 of yearly cost at a 20% margin is $262.50, so a minimum of $263 a year.
• EosLog: $206 at a 35% margin is about $317. The guide rounds to $299 a year, or $25 a month, which still leaves about a 31% margin.
• Dael: $205 (two $85 visits plus $35 of perks) at a 25% margin is about $273. The guide rounds to $275, or $23 a month.

Monthly billing is an easier yes for a homeowner, and a card on file renews without a phone call. Ansdale’s guide says to price monthly a little above the annual total divided by 12, so the customer who prepays gets a small break. Marshall adds a fair warning: monthly billing can help sign-ups, annual helps cash flow, and “Neither one fixes underpricing.”

Now the trap. EosLog says a tune-up retails for $120 to $150, so two run $240 to $300. Many shops then set a plan near $180 to $199 as a “discount off two tune-ups.” Against a true cost of about $206, a $189 plan loses $17 per member. A $159 plan loses about $47, or about $9,400 a year across 200 members. That’s before you pay a cent to sell or run it.

Check the price every year. Wages, fuel and insurance move, and last year’s margin goes with them.

Three tiers that don’t give away the middle

Offer three tiers (basic, standard and premium) so the customer can choose up instead of choosing no. Build the middle tier to carry your margin, since vendor guides report most buyers pick it. Price each tier from its own cost, not by adding $20 to the one below.

This table pulls together the example tiers from Dael and Oxmaint. Treat it as a starting layout, not a standard.

	Basic	Standard	Premium
Visits a year	1	2	2
Priority	None	Priority scheduling	Front of the line or same day
Repair discount	5% to 10%	10% to 15%	15% to 20%
Fees	Normal trip fee	Trip fee waived	Trip fee waived
Extras	Yearly billing	No overtime charge	Filters each visit, extended labor warranty while active

Marshall calls the middle tier “the economic engine” and says it should carry the strongest net profit. That means the standard plan can’t be the one where you give away the margin to look like a deal.

Premium needs the most care. A second visit, a deeper discount and a labor warranty each add cost. Run each tier through the cost table on its own. A basic plan with one visit may cost you about half of a two-visit plan. A premium plan with filters and a 20% discount can cost far more than the standard.

Trainer Stephen Dale of Power Selling Pros gives a good test for any tier. He told ACHR News to ask: “What’s in it for the company, what’s in it for a technician, and what’s in it for a homeowner?” If one of the three has no answer, fix the tier.

Does a plan pay for itself?

An HVAC maintenance plan can pay for itself, but the visit fee alone is thin, even priced right. The money comes from repairs found at the visit and from a member who calls you first when something breaks. That repair work is upside. It should not be the excuse for a plan priced under the cost of the visits.

The industry figures come from bigger shops. A BuildOps executive, Christian Anderson, told ACHR News that sophisticated contractors plan this way: “We know we’re going to generate maybe $2 of pull-through work per $1 of preventive maintenance.” In a ServiceTitan survey of commercial service contractors, 75% reported more than 20% extra revenue from pull-through work on customers with agreements. Both describe large or commercial operations, not a three-truck residential shop.

There is a quieter benefit. I sold phone leads to HVAC contractors for years, and every no-heat call cost the contractor money before anyone picked up. A member is already in your system. When his furnace quits, he calls you, and that call didn’t cost you a lead.

Anderson also said plans only stay profitable “if they are measured accurately.” So track each tier on its own: renewal rate, cost to deliver per plan, callbacks and net profit.

Then check capacity before you sell. Dael’s guide puts it plainly: “Two visits a year for 800 members is 1,600 visits.” Those visits land in spring and fall, when your techs are also running service calls. Count the hours you actually have. A visit you sold but never did is a refund, or an angry member.

Write it down and set up the system

Put your maintenance plan on one page: the visits, the price, the equipment covered, the perks, what’s not included, the term, how it renews and how to cancel. Then build it in your field software so every visit you owe gets booked. A plan nobody schedules turns into refunds and bad reviews.

That one page is your HVAC maintenance plan template. Keep the wording plain enough that a homeowner reads it in two minutes.

Put the renewal and cancel terms in writing, and check your state’s auto-renewal rules before you charge a card on repeat. This isn’t legal advice. Ask your attorney if you’re unsure.

In ServiceTitan, a membership is built from a member discount, a duration, recurring services with a frequency (annual, seasonal or monthly) and a billing setup. The recurring visits then show up as follow-ups to book. Other tools offer their own versions. The point is the same in any tool: the software tracks the visits you owe. ServiceTitan can also count plan money as earned only when each visit is done, called deferred revenue, which is worth raising with your bookkeeper or in your construction accounting software.

Two selling tips from the vendor guides are worth stealing. Ansdale suggests offering to credit today’s tune-up price toward the plan if the customer joins on the spot. Dael suggests paying techs a small bonus per agreement sold, since the tech is the one standing in the basement.

Run your numbers before spring

Pull last year’s payroll, truck costs and insurance. Run the cost table above for one tune-up with your real tech’s pay and real drive time. Double it for two visits, add your perks and admin, then divide by one minus your margin.

If the answer comes out well above $350 a year, don’t just cut the price. Look at drive time and overhead first. Routing spring and fall visits by neighborhood is the easiest place to start.